The EU is being used to put the brakes on shale

It is beginning to dawn on Westminster just how much shale Britain has. The Bowland Basin — which runs from Nottingham and Scarborough in the east to Wrexham and Blackpool in the west — will deliver, on a cautious estimate of how much of it can be recovered, the equivalent of 90 years of North Sea gas production.

This country is six to seven years away from seeing the full economic benefits of shale. But they will be substantial — the next election will be a good one to win.

However, there are still opponents of shale. The hyper-local ones have received considerable coverage recently, see David Blackburn’s very good piece about drilling for oil in Sussex. But there are also those trying to use the European Union to put the brakes on shale. As I report in the magazine this week, various environmental NGOs are trying to claim that ‘the development of unconventional gas within the EU runs counter to EU treaty obligations’. They