London, UK | — UK shale gas pioneer Cuadrilla Resources is to begin hydraulic fracturing at the first of its two horizontal shale gas wells at its Preston New Road site in Northwest England “in the next week,” the company said Friday.
Once the fracking starts, it will represent the first such activity in the UK since 2011.
The UK is increasingly dependent on gas imports, with Cuadrilla and its peers saying shale gas can go some way to reducing that dependence.
“The start of hydraulic fracturing is the final milestone in the journey to assessing the flow rates of gas from our Lancashire shale exploration wells,” Cuadrilla CEO Francis Egan said.
Egan said that once the fracking is underway and gas flowing from the well, it should be possible to have an initial assessment of how much gas is likely to be recoverable as soon as the first quarter of next year.
“This will allow us to make an assessment of the commercial viability and future of this exploration site,” Egan said.
SIX-MONTH TEST
The fracking process at Preston New Road is expected to take approximately three months to complete for both exploration wells and the flow rates will be tested over a period of six months.
Egan said the start of shale gas production in the UK “cannot come a moment too soon as we currently rely on imports for over 50% of the gas that we all need.”
Cuadrilla is almost synonymous with shale gas exploration and was the operator of the wells drilled in 2011 in Lancashire that famously triggered small earth tremors.
It began drilling the pilot vertical well into the Bowland shale rock at Preston New Road in August 2017 after years of delays and legal wrangling.
If the potential is realized from the fracking, Egan has said Cuadrilla could have as many as 28-30 wells at the site.
The British Geological Survey estimates that the Bowland Shale alone holds an estimated 1,329 Tcf (37.6 trillion cu m) of gas in place.
Even with a recovery rate of 10%, that would mean recoverable reserves of as much as 3.8 Tcm, enough to meet the UK’s current gas demand of some 80 Bcm/year for 47 years.
Egan said in March that the cold weather that month and the accompanying rare gas deficit warning issued by UK grid operator National Grid were evidence of the UK’s vulnerability to gas supply shocks.
GOVERNMENT SUPPORT
Despite the vast potential, regulatory bureaucracy and widespread public opposition has deterred shale gas exploration in the UK.
But the UK still remains one of only a few countries in Europe that allows shale gas exploration after a string of EU governments introduced bans or moratoriums on drilling in recent years.
The UK government remains supportive of shale gas developments, and in May set out plans to accelerate the drilling approval process for shale gas as part of a new push to exploit the country’s vast unconventional gas resources.
UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Greg Clark said recent decisions on shale exploration planning applications had been “disappointingly slow.”
Clark said the government expected local mineral planning authorities to give “great weight” to the benefit of shale gas production and the use of fracking.
Regulation around shale gas developments was previously complex with three regulators — the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive and the Oil and Gas Authority — all having responsibilities for regulation.
As a result, the government set up one single body — the Shale Environmental Regulator — which brought the regulators together “to act as one coherent face for the public, mineral planning authorities and industry.”
Platts.
