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« It pays not to be green | Main | A haszelnut in every bite »
Thursday
Jan282016

Misson possible?

Just days after getting planning permission to drill 12 monitoring boreholes at its prospective shale pad in Misson, Nottinghamshire, IGas have started installing equipment.

Separate planning applications would be required to drill a well and again to frack it, so it's fair to say that there is a long road ahead.

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Reader Comments (28)

A brave move, considering that, the world is drowning in a sea of oil and in a bubble of cheap 'natural' methane gas.


Maybe though, at LONG last we'll find out just how much gas is recoverable? At least that, would be a start.

Jan 28, 2016 at 9:10 AM | Unregistered CommenterAthelstan.

The last time I looked, Barnsley was in Yorkshire, not Nottinghamshire. At least people in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire have been used to the effects of coal mining for a couple of hundred years - they know all about the effects of earth tremors and subsidence, not to mention the wealth that fossil fuels has brought to the area.

Jan 28, 2016 at 9:18 AM | Registered CommenterPhillip Bratby

They probably might want to give their legal team the heads up to start preparing to obtain exclusion orders for the environmental whingers, obstructionists, vandals, and thugs.

Jan 28, 2016 at 9:29 AM | Unregistered Commentermichael hart

Shale gas opposition is a sprawling fraud ? Nick Grealy has done some digging.

Certainly in my neck of the woods the same anti goons are appearing at "town meeting" events across the area and their claims to represent the locals are immensely formulaic, tiresome and presumptive on an industrial scale. The local geology (as in there's no notable shale) hasn't stopped "No Fracking Here" claiming ! Victory ! and filling up letters and comments in local rags who oblige the antis with repeated sympathetic articles.

Jan 28, 2016 at 9:30 AM | Registered Commentertomo

Boring........!

Jan 28, 2016 at 9:31 AM | Unregistered CommenterNCC 1701E

If it is Nottinghamshire then perhaps they should read this: "50-year-old fracking site that makes a mockery of the Balcombe zealots ..."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2396378/50-year-old-fracking-site-makes-mockery-Balcombe-zealots-Its-nature-reserve--fracked-gas-oil-power-21-000-homes-day--complaints-locals.html#ixzz3yX5c6Mv4

Jan 28, 2016 at 10:15 AM | Unregistered Commentergraphicconception

Athelstan.
They're anticipating that by the time they start producing commercial quantities of gas the market will have moved back up. As the Bishop says:

so it's fair to say that there is a long road ahead.

Probably a number of years from now.

Jan 28, 2016 at 10:18 AM | Unregistered CommenterSandyS

Always 10 years behind the Yanks

Jan 28, 2016 at 10:25 AM | Unregistered CommenterBLACK PEARL

Athelstan - couldn't agree more; let's start establishing some facts and bring an end to the navel gazing.

Jan 28, 2016 at 11:09 AM | Unregistered CommenterVernon E

Separate planning applications? Boy, does those parasites know how to look after themselves. Make work is alive and kicking and ready to for the 21st century. So much for freeing up the T & C planning process - the empire fought back.

Jan 28, 2016 at 11:13 AM | Unregistered CommenterMartin Reed

They're anticipating that by the time they start producing commercial quantities of gas the market will have moved back up.

If they've got the cash/credit, everything will be way cheaper for the next 2-5 years anyway.
Great time to get your drilling done and infrastructure in.

I must admit that we drilling types were completely wrong-footed by all the fracking hysteria that followed that absurd movie.

It just came out of left-field, like people protesting against cars because of the kind of air they put in their tyres or something.

No illogicality or absurdity seems too far for them.
The irony of protesting about little gas wells , often in areas riddled with giant coal mines, is lost on them.
the fact that fracking has been done in the UK for decades is denied, ignored or dismissed.
And so on.

Jan 28, 2016 at 11:27 AM | Unregistered Commenterkellydown

NCC 1701E, I'm very excited by this.
Could you drill-down on your comment and expand?

Jan 28, 2016 at 11:28 AM | Registered CommenterM Courtney

Even the BBC know really that fracking is not a real problem

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-23756320

Fracking confusion: How UK has been 'fracked' for decades

Protests by environmental campaigners have increased awareness of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", but the process has been used in the UK's oil and gas industries for decades.

Jan 28, 2016 at 11:31 AM | Unregistered CommenterJeremy Poynton

The useless wind turbine industry should be compelled to carry out tests for at least a year at any site, so that their actual application for Planning Permission could contain some real data, rather than speculative greed based on factory conditions.

The Planning Authority should then be compelled to take heed of any evidence submitted, that opposed the wind turbine, including the wind turbine industrys failure to deliver anything other than fat profits at taxpayers expense.

Jan 28, 2016 at 11:56 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

But people are fools....
Fracking will do nothing they are but slaves to the cistern.
Nothing but exporting the wealth that we deserve.
Why? I keep telling yee all. It's that simple.
True, but often in doubt....
Until the truth is revealed and the diesel use crash ends the cars.

Jan 28, 2016 at 12:08 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

@M Courtney: you got it! All such endeavours must finish off with expanding reamers, to fill reams of printed paper in the planning applications.

Jan 28, 2016 at 12:12 PM | Unregistered CommenterNCC 1701E

Jeremy, that BBC report seems to think it has an obligation to write the protesters' script for them , perhaps because they're too stupid to work it out themselves:

Quote: "So when a protester is described as being "anti-fracking", a less banner-friendly description could be "opposed to widespread hydraulic fracturing for the extraction of shale gas".

Rubbish.

Every protester or anti-fracker I've spoken to, or who has infested my Facebook, is simply against all hydrocarbon drilling, anywhere, regardless of scale, and does not have the slightest clue about the frac process other than what they've gleaned from activist anti-fracking sites and hopelessly ignorant media reports parroting the activist propaganda.

Nor do they even know or care whether a well will be fracked, or have any idea which wells would be candidates.
Just "OMG they're going to poison our water!"
As if everybody drinks untreated groundwater.

Jan 28, 2016 at 12:40 PM | Unregistered Commenterkellydown

Dork:"Fracking will do nothing they are but slaves to the cistern."

Voice wreck ignition?

Jan 28, 2016 at 1:45 PM | Unregistered Commenterrhoda

The whole problem has always been the name.

'Frack off' is sooooo - er - hilarious.....

Supposing the process was called - say - 'boring'..?

'Bore off' doesn't have quite the same impact, does it..?

Jan 28, 2016 at 1:52 PM | Unregistered Commentersherlock1

kellydown : "Every protester or anti-fracker I've spoken to, or who has infested my Facebook, is simply against all hydrocarbon drilling"

Oil and gas are a proxy for modern industry wealth and an economy that provides health and enjoyment unknown to previous generations.

That is what the frackers are against - the best of worlds - and they seriously want to send us back to the Stoneage.

Of course they don't out it that way - because to be blunt they are without exception too stupid to know any different.

Jan 28, 2016 at 2:11 PM | Registered CommenterMikeHaseler

Anti-fracking nuts.... please SHOW me the BODIES
.... how many people has fracking killed ?

Big Oil Conspiracy lewnies .... please SHOW me the MONEY (like say last 5 years)
.... No one has ever shown me any proper evidence ...everything seems to go back to speculative Greenpeace reports from about 15 years ago.
..Like just show us who these climate skeptic guys whose flash holidays are paid for by big oil ?

Jan 28, 2016 at 2:11 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Vernon E

Nobody wants to know how much gas we have got waiting to be exploited; if they did then they would have read what Cuadrilla reported 6 years ago. The government and the BGS work on the basis of a 10% recovery from shale gas deposits. Cuadrilla drilled down 6000 feet as well as doing seismic surveys, Egan reported back then that he expected a 40% recovery rate which would increase over time with new technology. There has been an explosion of technological advances in the six years that followed. The UK will have the same problems that the USA had because of Cameron's second wife (Nick Clegg).
When the results come in the problem will be "what the hell are we going to do with all this gas?". They can not use it for power generation because of the Climate Change Act and they will have trouble exporting it because we have not built an LNG export terminal (5 years).

Jan 28, 2016 at 3:21 PM | Registered CommenterDung

rhoda

thanks for that observation :-)

I think you've nailed it

Jan 28, 2016 at 5:36 PM | Registered Commentertomo

Separate planning applications? Why, in the name of God?

Is there anything these regulatory drones can't inhibit, drag, slow down, reduce, etc etc?

Between the planning system and OpenReach, I reckon there's a couple of % off GDP growth right there; not to mention exacerbating the housing crisis indefinitely.

Jan 29, 2016 at 8:50 AM | Unregistered CommenterAndrew Duffin

Dung

Wrong again as usual. No wells have yet been tested and the delivery capability and decline rates are crucial. Witness San Leon Energy walking away from its concession in Poland. As with the UK nobody doubts that the gas is there but the inherent low permeability of shale makes development uneconomic. All reports currently are saying that this uncertainty is behind the collapse of shale in the US at the low oil price. Wrong again on LNG: two terminals have been built and expanded (Milford and IOG) and, unfortunately, there are no other viable locations on the UK coast (which is why the IOG terminal was pushed through illegally by John Prescott).

Jan 29, 2016 at 10:41 AM | Unregistered CommenterVernon E

Dung: before you start having a hissy, you are correct, Milford and IOG are IMPORT terminals. But why refer to export terminals when we haven't even considered building an LNG production plant in the UK. Illogical.

Jan 29, 2016 at 10:48 AM | Unregistered CommenterVernon E

Vernon E No wells have yet been tested and the delivery capability and decline rates are crucial. Witness San Leon Energy walking away from its concession in Poland. As with the UK nobody doubts that the gas is there but the inherent low permeability of shale makes development uneconomic. All reports currently are saying [...]

So why not settle this by granting a full license to eg Cuadrilla (just one 'test bed' if you like) so that they can make complete fools of themselves and lose investors money? It isn't as though there is any taxpayer loot involved.

Jan 29, 2016 at 11:50 AM | Unregistered Commenter3x2

Dung: on this, at least, we are in agreement. The potential of shale gas can ONLY be determined by drilling, fracking and testing a well or pad of wells and I have posted many times that in my view this is such a critical issue that the government should take it over, with or without one of the serious players, and get on with it. Put some taxpayers money to good use instead of wasting it on interminable debates and speculation. Good on yer.

Jan 29, 2016 at 3:10 PM | Unregistered CommenterVernon E

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