The shale gas deposit around Blackpool is 50 per cent bigger than previously estimated, The Times has learnt. The news will put more pressure on ministers who are due to lift the ban on extraction as early as next week, to support what could prove to be a gas bonanza for Britain. The British Geological Survey (BGS) is carrying out an independent analysis of shale gas reserves which it plans to publish in the new year. It is understood that the BGS will estimate that the 1,000 square kilometres covered by the Bowland Basin to the east of Blackpool contains 300 trillion cubic feet of gas, equivalent to 17 times the remaining known reserves in the North Sea. --Timm Webb, The Times, 8 December 2012
The consequences of the shale revolution are difficult to exaggerate. Not just in terms of the economic benefit of a new and abundant source of relatively cheap energy, but in geopolitical terms, too. It has shaken up the old world order — and the global balance of power is being permanently transformed before our eyes. The green lobby, of course, is terrified that, despite the promotion of expensive and heavily subsidised wind power at the heart of the Energy Bill — a subsidy paid to a considerable extent by poor householders through their bills to wealthy landowners with wind turbines — the emergence of large supplies of cheap gas will make this policy unsustainable. –Nigel Lawson, Daily Mail, 8 December 2012
