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A Short Guide to the Legal Position of Fracking
Extracting natural gas from shale – fracking – is an investment opportunity, an opportunity for a nation that has shale gas deposits to be more energy independent, and could bring environmental benefits if natural gas replaces coal for electricity generation. There are, however, many legal issues involved and what follows is a short guide to those issues as I understand them.
In the United Kingdom the Royal Society has undertaken an independent review about Shale gas extraction. This method of extracting methane from rock involves drilling into gas bearing rocks and by injecting chemicals and water under pressure fracturing the rock to release the natural gas, which is collected and then used for generating energy, either by being fed into the gas grid network or by being fed into a gas burning power station. The exploitation of shale gas has transformed the energy market in the United States, where it has proved cheap and easy to extract, leading to a lowering of natural gas prices. In parts of the USA where natural gas extracted from shale is used, the price of it is about a third of the price of European natural gas extracted by more traditional means.
There have been problems in the United States particularly water contamination but the United States has a different geology from the United Kingdom, so the exploitation of shale gas in the United Kingdom requires its own special study and if it is to be exploited special rules that relate to the particular risks encountered where the gas is to be extracted.
Most UK deposits of shale gas are very deep – more than a thousand metres underground. Our resources of shale gas are very small; the nations which have the greatest resources are China, the USA, Argentina, Algeria, Brazil, Poland France and Australia.
In the view of the Royal Society there are two risks concerning extraction or “fracking” of shale gas – the risk of earth tremors and the risk of water contamination. Officially the Royal Society advises that both risks are very remote if best practise is followed.
There have been earth tremors caused by some test fracking in the Blackpool area in 2011. These tremors were very small and it is believed that the tremors that will be experienced by UK fracking will not be significant or noticeable, although they will be measurable. They will on the whole be less than earth tremors created as a result of coal mining. Earth tremors will be below a magnitude of 3, which is extremely low.
The second risk of water contamination is also remote. Because the gas is found at deep levels water tables generally are much higher – seven or eight hundred metres higher than the shale rock that contains gas. Although extraction of gas from shale involves penetrating through the water table underground, the advice of the Royal Society is that the risk of water contamination by methane is “very low” provided that companies involved in the extraction of shale gas adhere to strict regulations.
All kinds of mining and drilling activity theoretically have strict regulations. There were what were thought to be robust strict regulations in July 1988 when the Pipe Alpha Oil Rig exploded and then caught fire, killing 167 souls in the process and contaminating the water and the atmosphere. In order to ensure a safe regime for fracking it is essential to separate the licensing of fracking from the health and safety and environmental regulations, with these functions being carried out by separate bodies.
Under English law the mineral and resources rights under the surface of the earth vest in the Crown. If you buy some land you do not own what lies beneath it, the Crown does. This involves the Crown licensing the exploitation of fracking in a particular area. The Crown will charge for the permit to exploit shale gas, and the funds raised will go into the coffers of the government.
After a licence is granted the use of the land and any installations on it have to be approved by the local planning authority. This might not be straightforward. No doubt groups opposed to fracking will use the planning laws as best they can in an attempt to defeat it, but there are other less obvious issues that have a planning impact. Planning position is needed for plant and fracking equipment to be installed on land. These are relatively small items but it is expected that to make the natural gas cheaper and more exploitable the different rigs in an area will have to be linked together in a surface installation which the industry calls a Pod. In fact a fracking Pod is no more than a gas works, and that will have a great and ugly impact on land.
Assuming that the planning objections are met then the Health & Safety Executive has to approve the methodology of extracting methane from shale safely. Short cuts with the health and safety of the workers must not be taken. The problem is that we probably do not fully know what constitutes safe fracking practice. We probably should not permit fracking operations until we do. and finally the Environment Agency should provide a licence or permit subject to conditions to protect the environment, in terms of environmental protection.
There is a danger of concentrating on the health and safety compliance at the expense of environmental protection. One feature of safe fracking is that it requires modern machinery, which is expensive and this should be monitored and regulated by an independent body, probably the Environment Agency. Fracking requires very large quantities of water, so the Environmental Agency should be alert to limit the water used for fracking and ensure that the water is paid for and not used when there are times of drought. Extracting large quantities of water can cause environmental damage.
I think that there is a great deal of ignorance about what constitutes safe fracking, not just by the companies that what to undertake fracking but also by the regulatory authorities that are likely to be involved in granting permits and checking operations comply with conditions of permits.
Having regard to required regulatory framework natural gas from shale deposits will not be as cheap as policy makers imagine it to be. Fracking in the United Kingdom is unlikely to provide significantly cheaper natural gas, if it is carried out properly and safely. The great danger is that ignorance will prevail and we will rush into a technology in respect of which we have not developed safe and sensible controls.
You can read the Royal Society’s report at http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/shale-gas-extraction/report/
Filed under: carbon emissions, climate change, energy, global warming, law, natural gas Tagged: countries which have deposits of shale gas, fracking, legal issues concerning fracking, methane, natural gas, Pods, shale gas, UK’s shale gas deposits 
2012-11-13 08:11:31
Source: http://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/a-short-guide-to-the-legal-position-of-fracking/
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