The United Kingdom is the only major European country showing meaningful support for shale gas developments, according to an analyst at GlobalData, an international research and consultancy firm.
Hopes of developing large-scale shale resources in Europe have faded as regulatory measures have made hydraulic fracturing less feasible. Some countries – Germany, Romania and Bulgaria – have placed moratoriums on fracking, while there is little appetite in France.
Unfavourable geology and sustained low gas prices have also challenged project economics.
Erik Lambert, GlobalData’s upstream fiscal analyst, says that exploration activity in Europe plummeted throughout last year and this year as domestic regulations curbed the growth of the nascent industry.
He says the UK government is the only one in Europe that has shown serious backing for shale.
“Although prospects for developing large-scale resources can generally be described as highly improbable across Europe, the UK’s less-stringent regulations and commercial interest in shale resources coincide to make extraction more likely.”
Mr Lambert cited a recent pledge by the local government secretary Greg Clark to would determine the result of the energy firm Cuadrilla’s appeals against blocked exploration planning permission in Lancashire, as well as the UK chancellor, or finance minister, George Osborne’s confirmation in his 2015 autumn statement of the planned creation of a shale wealth fund, which would benefit communities affected by shale gas development.
Nevertheless, even in the UK where support at the highest levels is tangible, energy companies still face local opposition and high well costs.
Environmentalists question the wisdom of the government’s policy on fracking.
“The government is ignoring evidence of the risks and the wishes of local communities, by weakening regulation and opening up more of the country to fracking,” Rose Dickinson of Friends of the Earth told the BBC.
“Spreading the fracking threat to new areas will only increase opposition to it. Despite having had licences for years, the industry still hasn’t been able to persuade anyone to give fracking the go-ahead.”
Mr Lambert acknowledges the outlook for fracking in the UK is far from certain.
“Describing shale production within the UK as unproblematic would be misguided,” he says.
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