Streamlined planning for shale development
28 May 2014
The Government today announced proposals to speed up the development of shale oil and gas in the UK by allowing horizontal drilling below properties without the owner’s consent.
The newly published consultation document on underground drilling access criticises the current planning system, where developers must negotiate individually with every property owner under which the well passes.
It says sticking with the current planning system will “mean that neither the shale gas nor deep geothermal industries will be able to fully explore their potential in the UK”.
Instead, the government is proposing that landowners are only consulted if there is any drilling activity less than 300m from the surface, with a one-off payment of £20,000 made to local communities for each unique horizontal well that extends by more than 200 metres laterally.
The launch of the consultation today came at the same time as the British Geological Survey (BGS) published its estimate of shale oil reserves in southern England.
The Weald Basin Jurassic Shale study estimates a range of shale oil in place between 2.20 and 8.57 billion barrels (bbl) across an area that stretches from Salisbury, across the South Downs to West Kent.
No significant gas resource in the Weald Basin is recognised by the study, which the BGS says “is mainly because the shale is not thought to have reached the geological maturity required to generate gas”.
