Conflating resources with reserves is the oldest elision in the energy huckster’s lexicon.
But what’s a poor government to do after having to announce yet another round of spending cuts because (whisper it) growth is over.
So yesterday the British Geological Survey (a sub-branch of gov.uk’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) stepped up with news that shale gas resources in the north of England could be twice as big as previously estimated.
It worked like a charm. It always does. Throwing a big number at the UK’s mainstream media is like chucking a crate of sweets at a primary school class. Cor! One thousand three hundred trillion cubic feet of shale gas!
The sole purpose of the exercise was to generate big headlines like the Guardian’s Britain’s shale gas deposits ‘could supply country for 25 years’. Yes siree! It’s all good news, consumers. Go back to sleepwalking.
But it’s a very odd story even by the today’s standards of run-of-the-mill government lying and manipulation. Professor Mike Stephenson, head of energy at the BGS, had to deny that the BGS had been leant on by gov.uk to come up with a large number.
Reporting the story also seems to have pushed the BBC’s news-poodle tendencies to the limit. Its story was at pains to highlight the difference between resources and reserves. It also pointed out that:
The report for the government comes as energy regulator Ofgem warned that the risks of power blackouts has increased because excess capacity in the power industry has fallen in the UK.
The watchdog has twice warned in recent months that the amount of spare power is shrinking, partly due to some gas generators being taken out of service.
Hmmm. Dunno about your maths but to me “25 years’ gas supply” + “gas generators taken out of service” = WTF?
This story is fundamentally part of the huge turn that industrial civilisation is making. The turn away from almost endless energy from plentiful, cheap fossil sources.
In terms of our civilisation’s needs, fracking is a desperate measure. The US ‘shale revolution’ is already beginning to roll over because they can’t afford to punch new wells fast enough to keep output growing and new investment rolling in. They’re closing in on the point where the Ponzi pops.
Ugly veinous pinchushion
Even if the vales and dales of northern England end up thickly spotted with frack pads and service roads like an ugly, veinous pincushion (which they will in order to extract meaningful amounts of gas), fracking’s impact on the UK’s economic trajectory will be useful but far less dramatic than the government’s spinners would like us to believe.
QuadRanting 