Fracking in the UK will be impossible on any significant scale and will not help with the energy price crisis, the founder of the UK’s first fracking company has warned.
Chris Cornelius, the geologist who founded Cuadrilla Resources, which drilled the UK’s first modern hydraulic fracturing wells in Lancashire, told the Guardian he believed the government’s support was just a “political gesture”.
“I don’t think there is any chance of fracking in the UK in the short term.”
He said that when Cuadrilla had operated here, it had discovered that the UK’s geology was not suitable for widespread fracking operations. “No sane investor” would take the risk of embarking on major projects here, he said. “It’s a very challenging geology, compared to North America [where fracking is a major industry].”
Unlike gas-bearing shale deposits in the US, the shale resource in the UK is “heavily faulted and compartmentalised”, making it much more difficult to mine on any scale.
Liz Truss, the Prime Minister, has made it clear that she supports fracking and will lift the moratorium that has been in place since 2019, although it remains to be seen where and how the sites will be authorised. He has said he expects to see gas from the fractured sites as soon as six months from now.
But Cornelius said it “wasn’t going to happen.” Truss’ decision to give the green light to fracking “will have no impact” on the UK’s energy supply, he told the Guardian in an interview. “He makes good grades, but I don’t see anything happening,” he said.
In the longer term, he said it was possible there would be some localized operations, but they would be small and unable to make a significant contribution to the UK’s energy needs. “They’re never going to scale, because capital costs are a big issue,” he said.
Writing in today’s Guardian, Cornelius and his former colleague Mark Linder, who handled Cuadrilla’s public affairs in its early days, said the UK was over-regulated as it “has become singularly the energy sector for regulations that prevent operations that are standard in agriculture.” and other industries”. But Cornelius said that was unlikely to change and that frackers would not have the “social license” to operate.
Founded in 2007, Cuadrilla was the first company to use modern hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technology in the UK on dense shale rock, first at a site in Lancashire in 2011 and running until 2018. Rocks of shale, which contain small pockets of methane, are blasted with a mixture of sand, water and chemicals to create fissures through which the gas can escape, to be diverted to the surface.
The CEO of Cuadrilla, Francis Egan. The company has spent “hundreds of millions of pounds” in its bid to start a fracking operation. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
However, Cuadrilla quickly ran into problems, including failing to report damage to an exploratory well, and as public awareness of fracking grew, protests began at sites and potential sites. In 2018, a magnitude 1.5 earthquake at its site near Blackpool caused a halt to fracking. In February this year, the company said its only two horizontally drilled and hydraulically fracturing wells in the UK would be “capped and abandoned”, in line with the regulator’s instructions.
Cornelius resigned from Cuadrilla in 2014, after Lord Browne, former head of oil company BP, took over as chairman. Browne left in 2015. The company declined an opportunity to comment on Cornelius’ views.
Cuadrilla has spent “hundreds of millions of pounds”, according to its chief executive, Francis Egan, in its efforts to start a fracking operation. However, the company never produced gas to sell.
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Egan welcomed this month’s announcement that the moratorium would be lifted, but the company has not yet said whether it will open any wells.
Cornelius, an academic geologist, remains a staunch supporter of fracking – “it has been used safely all over the world, in the US, without problems” – and shale gas, but said UK geology and the densely populated nature of the British countryside made it impossible to establish a commercially viable fracking business here.
For Truss to promote fracking was “mainly a political decision – they have to be seen to be doing something”, Cornelius said. “It doesn’t make economic sense. I don’t think sane people are putting money into that.”
He added: “This is a sad situation. It’s a disappointment. 10 years ago there was an opportunity to look at it [fracking] no doubt, but that opportunity is gone. It was worth looking at then, but it’s not practical now.’
Writing in today’s Guardian, Cornelius and Linder call for investment in key technologies they say are more likely to produce energy than fracking, including geothermal and tidal energy.
Cornelius, which in 2014 also tried to start fracking under the Irish Sea with a project known as Nebula, which never went live, is involved in a geothermal consortium called Triassic Power, which is evaluating the potential to use hot water found underground in certain geological formations in the UK as a source of energy. It has no commercial interest in tidal energy.