Black Gold in White Rose Country?

By Sarah Freeman

Prospecting for oil in Britain will always have the hint of the April Fool about it.Historically, the job of discovering lucrative wells of black gold has been left to portly Americans and Middle Eastern sheikhs, but while as a nation we’ll never be suited to the 10 gallon hat, the rush for oil and gas has finally reached British shores.With the country facing a winter of soaring gas and electricity bills and petrol prices unlikely ever to return to those heady days of 90p a litre, fears for a full-blown fuel crisis have never been greater and the search for solutions is on.Yesterday, the Government did its bit by announcing a 910m package of measures, including free cavity loft insulation for pensioners, increased cold weather payments and some concessions on central heating. However, while politicians were raking through the details and wondering exactly how fuel companies had escaped a much-supported windfall tax, elsewhere the country’s prospectors were continuing their search for potentially lucrative fuel reserves.In May this year the Government awarded 97 new licenses for onshore exploration leading to a record number of prospectors now scouring sites in Yorkshire, East Midlands and Southern England. To put it into context, five years ago only eight licences were granted.”There has been a general increase in exploration throughout the world,” says Mark Abbot, managing director of Hampshire-based Egdon Resources, which has carried out explorations in Redcar, the North York Moors as well as a site near Bridlington. “While the cost of a barrel of oil has fallen from its July peak at $147 a barrel, it is still expensive and for the first time has meant even the smallest pockets of oil and gas have become commercially viable”Indigenous resources are becoming more important for security of supply and there is now interest all over the country. A typical UK oil field may only contain one million to 10 million barrels of oil, which is a fraction of what you’ll find in the fields of Saudi Arabia or even the North Sea, but if we find it, it’s quick and easy to put in small, low key production facilities and then tanker the oil out to the refineries.”Drilling onshore costs about a tenth of the 10m to 20m needed to drill an offshore exploration well and so even small reserves are profitable.”Necessity may be the mother of invention and with Energy Minister Malcolm Wick confirming what most of us already knew that the “era of cheap energy is well and truly dead” the need for sustainable fuel sources has never been greater.Just how much oil and gas lies beneath England’s green and pleasant lands remains to be seen, it’s not an entirely new frontier.During the First World War, drilling in the East Midlands proved oil vital to the war effort and the discovery of gas in the North Sea in the late 1960s allowed the UK to become largely self-sufficient.However, while those reserves may be declining, the swap to onshore reserves is complicated. While the old-fashioned idea of prospecting involved the monied and well-connected drilling boreholes wherever they fancied, today the industry is heavily regulated and the search, at least in this country, can feel like little more than sticking a pin in a map and hoping for the best.Many initial explorations draw a blank or like the results of a gas exploration well at Burton Agnes published last year show the reserves are currently too difficult to extract.”It’s an incredibly long process,” says Mark. “Just identifying a site and applying for the initial licence is massively time-consuming and that’s all before you start initial explorations. That’s how it should be, but I think there are a lot of misconceptions about the industry.”People have an image of fields and fields of nodding dogs, but that’s certainly not going to happen. An initial exploration normally only takes between five and six weeks and most of the current producing sites are on a such a small scale that most people would drive past them without knowing they were there.”We are not mavericks, we have to abide by the Town and Country Planning Act and we have a responsibility of looking after the environment which we take very seriously.”In Yorkshire, much of the emphasis has been on finding gas, in particular the coalbed methane which many believe could bridge a gap between traditional fuels and the search for new greener technologies.While methane and its explosive qualities was once the arch enemy of mining communities it is now possible to harness the gas to provide a source of local, cheaper power.Early explorations on the North York Moors in 2006 saw prospectors drilling through limestone and sandstone under Westerdale Moor. A few miles from Ralph’s Cross where a Canadian company discovered gas in 1966, Egdon Resources did discover signs of methane at two points up to 4,300ft below the surface.Situated in a National Park, commercial drilling remains unlikely, but it did raise the question of how to balance our energy needs with environmental concerns.”However, careful these companies are onshore gas and oil exploration is inevitably going to leave its mark on the landscape,” says Simon Bowens, regional campaign co- ordinator for the Yorkshire and Humber branch of Friends of the Earth. “It’s early days for onshore exploration in this country, but you only have to look at what’s happened in Canada to see the potential impact.”There wildlife habitats have been devastated and the delicate biodiversity balance has been totally upset. While the projects we are looking at over here are on a much smaller scale, it doesn’t address the fundamental issues of climate change and the pressing need to look to renewable energy.”It seems to be very much short-term thinking and if we are to avoid a fuel crisis we need to start thinking long-term and quick.”The stand-off between the exploration companies and environmental groups will no doubt continue, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the UK’s natural resources will have to be harnessed.Earlier this month a new flagship scheme was launched to encourage Yorkshire businesses to invest in the restoration of peatlands to reduce carbon emissions by thousands of tonnes each year. Moorlands in the Peak District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors store millions of tonnes of carbon, but following an aggressive policy of drainage in the 1950s, 60s and 70s to produce more grazing land, 381,000 tonnes of carbon the equivalent of the amount produced by Britain’s transport system is being lost each year. Unlike the search for domestic oil and gas, the scheme run by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has won universal support.”People are becoming increasingly committed to environmentally friendly technologies,” says Anthony Day, a former York accountant turned environmental consultant. “We have an energy crisis and while there are solutions like electric cars, new railway lines and thousands of wind turbines; none of these can become a reality in less than five years.”We can’t rely on existing oil supplies, so what we must do is plan for a very different future.”

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