When will MPs wake up to Shale?

It’s just baffling. The House of Commons committee on energy has today published a report entitled “UK Energy Supply: Security or Independence?” with hardly a mention of the 200 trillion cubic feet of Shale gas recently found outside Blackpool. As Matt Ridley wrote recently in his definitive Spectator piece, these reserves – if exploited – are “enough to keep the entire British economy going for many decades. And it’s just the first field to have been drilled.”

It may well be that just a fifth of this are exploitable, but there is no mention of this potentially game-changing discovery in the committee’s report today. Instead, we are told that “is inevitable that the UK will become increasingly reliant on energy imports… New “smart” technology will provide opportunities for energy users to engage in demand side response measures,” – doubtless to the delight of the various companies who will have been lobbying for massive subsidies in this area.