Watermelons v the Shale Gas Miracle

By James Delingpole:

God knows we could all do with some good news right now. And as it happens, from Oop North near Blackpool this week, we had good news in spades.

Sure, it was known Britain was sitting on some pretty sizeable shale gas deposits. What hadn’t been announced before though, was just how sizeable.

An area in northwest England may contain 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, putting it in the same league as some of the vast shale-gas plays that have transformed the U.S. energy industry.

The figure for the area near Blackpool, released Wednesday by Cuadrilla Resources, a small oil-and-gas company with operations in England’s Bowland Shale, highlights the U.K.’s emerging position as a new frontier for unconventional gas exploration.

I said “good news” but that seriously understates the case. It may be the best thing to happen to the British economy since the discovery of North Sea oil and gas; possibly since the Industrial Revolution. Those who’ve been following the story closely such as Nick Grealy at the No Hot Air blog understand this perfectly well:

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