Chris Cornelius, the geologist who founded Cuadrilla Resources, which drilled the UK’s first modern hydraulic fracturing wells in Lancashire, told the Guardian he believes the government’s support for this is just a “political gesture”. “I don’t think there is any chance of fracking in the UK in the near future.” He said that when Cuadrilla operated here, it discovered that the UK’s geology was unsuitable for large-scale fracking operations. “No sane investors” would take the risk of starting major projects here, he said. “It’s very challenging geology, compared to North America [where fracking is a major industry].” Unlike gas-bearing shale deposits in the US, the UK shale resource is “heavily faulted and compartmentalised”, making it much more difficult to exploit at any scale. Prime Minister Liz Truss has made it clear she supports fracking and will lift the moratorium in place from 2019, although it remains to be seen where and how the sites will be licensed. He said he hopes to see gas from fracked locations as soon as six months from now. But Cornelius said it “won’t happen.” Truss’ decision to give the green light to fracking is “not going to have an impact” on the UK’s energy supply, he told the Guardian. “It makes good noises, but I can’t see anything happening,” he said. In the longer term, he said it was possible there would be some local businesses, but they would be small and unable to make a significant contribution to the UK’s energy needs. “It’s never going to scale, because the cost of capital is a huge issue,” he said. Writing in today’s Guardian, Cornelius and his former colleague Mark Linder, who handled public affairs for Cuadrilla in its early days, said the UK was over-regulated, having “singled out the energy sector for regulations that hinder normal operations in agriculture and other industries’. However, Cornelius said this was unlikely to change and that frackers would not have the “social license” to operate. Founded in 2007, Cuadrilla was the first company to use modern hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technology in the UK in dense shales, first at a site in Lancashire in 2011 and continuing until 2018. they are blasted with a mixture of sand, water and chemicals to create cracks through which the gas can escape, to be siphoned to the surface. Cuadrilla CEO Francis Egan. The company has spent “hundreds of millions of pounds” trying to launch a fracking business. Photo: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian But Cuadrilla quickly ran into problems, including failing to report damage to an exploratory well, and as public awareness of fracking grew, protests began at sites and potential sites. In 2018, a 1.5-magnitude earthquake at its site near Blackpool caused fracking to stop. In February this year, the company said its wells – the only two to be drilled horizontally and hydraulically fractured in the UK – would be “plugged and abandoned”, in line with the regulator’s instructions. Cornelius resigned from Cuadrilla in 2014 after Lord Browne, the former head of oil company BP, took over as chairman. Browne left in 2015. The company declined an opportunity to comment on Cornelius’ views. Cuadrilla has spent “hundreds of millions of pounds”, according to its chief executive, Francis Egan, in its efforts to launch a fracking operation. However, the company never produced gas for sale. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Egan welcomed the announcement this month that the moratorium would be lifted, but the company has yet to say whether it will plug wells. Cornelius, an academic geologist, remains a staunch defender of fracking – “it’s been used safely all over the world, in the US, without problems” – and shale gas, but said the UK’s geology and the densely populated nature of the British countryside made it impossible to build a commercially viable fracking business here. For Truss to promote fracking was “primarily a political decision – we need to see them doing something,” Cornelius said. “It doesn’t make economic sense. I don’t think sane people put money into it.” He added: “It’s a sad situation. It’s a disappointment. There was an opportunity 10 years ago to see this [fracking] logically, but that opportunity is now gone. It was worth seeing then, but now it’s impractical.” Writing in today’s Guardian, Cornelius and Linder call for investment in key technologies they say are more likely to produce energy than fracking, including geothermal and tidal power. Cornelius, which in 2014 also tried to start fracking under the Irish Sea with a project known as Nebula, which never came on stream, is part of a geothermal consortium called Triassic Power, which is evaluating the possibility of using of hot water found underground in certain geological formations in the UK as a source of energy. He has no business interest in tidal power.
