GMB hits back at claims UK shale gas reserves are ‘overhyped’

The union was responding to professor John Underhill, Heriot-Watt University’s chief scientist, who has challenged the implication that “because fracking works in the US it must also work in the UK”. 

Underhill said: “Both sides of the hydraulic fracturing debate assume that the (UK’s) geology is a ‘slam dunk’ and it will work if exploration drilling goes ahead.

“In locations where the geology has led to large potential deposits, uplift and the faulted structure of the basins are detrimental to its ultimate recovery. The inherent complexity of the sedimentary basins has not been fully appreciated or articulated and, as a result, the opportunity has been overhyped.”

It would be extremely unwise to rely on shale gas to ride to the rescue of the UK’s gas needs

Professor John Underhill

According to Underhill, areas beneath the UK that were once buried to depths and at temperatures where oil and gas maturation occurs, have been uplifted to levels where they are no longer actively generating petroleum.

Writing in The Conversation, Underhill highlighted three potential fracking sites in the UK to illustrate the issue: the Weald Basin in southern England, the Bowland Shale in Lancashire and the West Lothian Oil Shale in Scotland.

In response, GMB said rather than speculating how large the UK’s shale gas reserves might be, “the sensible course of action would be for government to give the go-ahead to sufficient exploratory wells to establish exactly how much gas is present”.

The union’s national secretary Justin Bowden added: “Rather than importing ever-increasing quantities of foreign gas, many of it from regimes with appalling human rights records, government should stop dragging its feet and authorise the necessary exploratory wells to allow an informed public debate, with the facts, about this potential energy self-sufficiency.”

Underhill said because of the shift in the UK’s geology, “it would be extremely unwise to rely on shale gas to ride to the rescue of the UK’s gas needs only to discover that we’re 55 million years too late”.