Liam Halligan: Is UK fracking back?

Boris Johnson described Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a “moment of great clarity”. The Prime Minister is now all too aware of the dangers of West European countries’ heavy reliance on Russian oil and gas.

As petrol and diesel prices spiral, with utility bills set to spike, the UK’s long-term energy security – typically a subject for academics and other nerds types – is now at the top of the domestic political agenda.

“We need alternative sources of energy,” a UK government source tells me, “that are cheaper, more reliable and less vulnerable to the whims of a dictator”.

Those “alternative” energy sources could now well include UK shale gas extracted using a controversial drilling technique called “fracking”.

Shale wells like the one in Lancashire have been developed on various sites across the UK – but, since November 2019, fracking has been banned after Johnson’s government imposed a moratorium.

Ministers imposed this ban under pressure from environmental campaigns. Fracking involves pumping a water and chemicals into tight underground rock formations under huge pressure. Protesters claim that fracking causes serious earth tremors and threatens local water supplies.

Fracking enthusiasts deny that – and point to what they call an anti-fracking campaign backed by a well-funded environmental lobby. And, as it happens, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society just reviewed the scientific and engineering evidence on shale gas and this is what they said.

The risks of fracking can be “managed effectively in the UK”, said the Royal Academy and Royal Society, “as long as operational best practices are implemented and enforced through regulation”.

So, given this Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the related East-West economic war, could fracking once again be permitted? As it happens, some UK fracking wells were due to be filled with concrete in the very near future.

The Business Secretary was asked about this in the Commons this week – and this is what he said" "In conversation with my right honourable friend the prime minister, we were clear that it didn’t necessarily make any sense to concrete over the wells. We’re still in conversations about that."

This Russia-Ukraine conflict clearly is a “moment of great clarity” – not least when it comes to the astonishing mess that successive governments, prioritizing environmental virtue signalling above energy security at every turn, have made of ensuring the lights stay on.

North Sea oil and gas and British nuclear energy are all set to make a huge comeback. Will shale gas now also become part of the UK’s energy mix – as it is in the US.