Clause 38 - Petroleum and geothermal energy: right to use deep-level land

Part of Infrastructure Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 10:00 am on 13 January 2015.

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Photo of Alan Whitehead Alan Whitehead Labour, Southampton, Test 10:00, 13 January 2015

Amendment 36 proposes to alter the level below which there should be undisputed and unrestricted access to underground drilling rights—under anybody’s land, whether or not they have given permission for that drilling to take place—from 300 metres to 1,000 metres. There are some prudent and straightforward reasons for suggesting that change. I believe the Committee will want to consider them carefully and conclude that it is the safe and correct thing to do in moving to a regime, if that is what the Committee wants to do, of enabling unrestricted access for drilling that would result in fracking and the production of gas.

Where does the 300-metre limit in the clause come from? It appears to come from nowhere. The consultation paper on underground drilling access, which was produced by the Department in May last year, has this explanation: “This underground access”— that is, the unrestricted access—

“would only apply to companies seeking to extract energy (in the form of petroleum or naturally-occurring heat) from land below 300m. It is important to note that fracturing would not take place at 300m; it would be much deeper—usually over a mile down. 300 metres has been chosen as the landowner is very unlikely to have any use of the land below this level and below this depth the vertical drill may need to start changing direction.”

It is suggested that the landowner might have some residual thought for the use of the land above 300 metres, but below that, it is extremely unlikely that they would. That is the logic that governs the suggestion in the consultation paper.

Of course, there are a number of other considerations that are also important in deciding at what metreage unrestricted access might be available. There is the question whether it really is the case that drilling, as the consultation paper suggests, would always be much deeper, usually at over a mile down. It is usually the case that such drilling—that is, the lateral drilling for fracking—would be much deeper. However, it is not always the case, and certainly has not been the case in, for example, the United States, that horizontal fracking drilling has always taken place at over a mile or so underneath the land. Indeed, in a number of instances in the United States, horizontal drilling has taken place at much shallower  depths of 600 metres or less. In more than one documented case in the United States where shale gas fracking has taken place at that sort of level, it appears that there is a distinct possibility that the fracking itself—that is, the fractures that are induced in the rock—can fracture as far as penetrating aquifers and underground water supplies.

I do not say that to the Committee as a tendentious statement, but to report a study that was recently published in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology by researchers from Durham university and a number of other places. They looked at the question of how far the artificial fracturing of rock could travel from a horizontal fracking well, and concluded that it was very unlikely that fracking depths of 2 kilometres to 3 kilometres below the surface would lead to contamination of shallower aquifers that lie above the gas resources. They concluded that the chance of a fracture extending more than 600 metres upwards was very low and that the probability of fractures of more than 350 metres was 1%. Nevertheless, they concluded from a vast database of the fracturing effects of a range of horizontal drilling operations across the world that that circumstance was by no means impossible; the risk was by no means negligible; and there was a not insignificant possibility that fracturing could extend at least 350 metres and possibly as far as 600 to 750 metres upwards. Indeed, some natural fractures in rocks have been documented at well over one kilometre. The geology of the UK is considerably fractured, to a far greater extent than for a number of basins used for fracking in the United States. It is possible that such substantial natural fractures exist in rocks in the UK in addition to those that might be created by the fracking process.

We can reasonably conclude—not from my advocacy but from this extensive study—that if fracturing of rocks for extraction is undertaken less than 600 metres from water supplies, which includes shallow-lying aquifers as well as sub-surface water, there is a real possibility that over the course of time the fracturing process could lead to contamination of those water supplies. In extreme instances, it can even penetrate relatively close to the surface. That leaves the clause in some difficulty, as the proposed 300-metre level has been invented purely because of an assumed lack of use of the land by the landowner; it is not a scientific analysis of what the process of fracking might produce at those depths under the surface.

That seems to be a considerable omission in the thinking that has gone into how this level might be determined. Once this permission has been given—and for a number of reasons I am very concerned about the overall question of how the permissions may roll out—there is nothing whatsoever stopping anybody drilling at levels immediately under 300 metres, even if it is normally suggested that drilling may take place at much greater depths. It may turn out to be the case that no one in the UK will drill at depths between 300 and 1,000 metres, because the shales simply will not exist at those depths. However, we do not know that for certain, because there is still a great deal more work to be done to prove where those shales are, whether they are productive and how they might play a role in the overall development of fracked gas and the industry that goes with it. Quite simply, it would be very imprudent to give an assurance that people on the surface, below which those horizontal fracking activities may take place, will be safe from the effects of fracking on land, the rights to which have been given away by this Bill.

If fracking always takes place a mile underground, there should be no objection whatsoever to having a limit of 1,000 metres on land with has automatic access. The reservation of the area between 300 metres and 1,000 metres for a further process might be determined, if necessary, by the courts, which would decide whether there should be access at that particular point.

I need to emphasise that this is a one-stop measure. Once we have given away the rights to that sub-surface land, there is no going back. If we give away the rights to that land—with extremely inadequate arguments about the level at which it should be given away remaining in the Bill—I suggest that we might well live to regret that. We do not want to do that in passing the Bill.