Green and pleasant land might be at forefront of gas ambitions

Rural England is home to many potential shale gas operations.

Best known for its bucolic scenery - the chocolate-box villages of the South Downs - and for its genteel seaside towns, the English county of Sussex is an unlikely location for an oil boom.

But the village of Balcombe, not far from Gatwick Airport, is the site of new exploratory drills by Cuadrilla, the only company in the UK to have so far drilled for shale gas.

Cuadrilla plans to drill a 914 metre vertical well and a 762 metre horizontal bore to the south of Balcombe, near Haywards Heath, this month.

Although it says there will be no fracking involved in its eight week exploration local residents are not happy. Posters reading "Frack Free Zone" and "Balcombe Is Not For Shale" adorn village lamp posts. Frack Free Sussex, a local campaign group, says its concerns are not just about the exploration wells - but about what might leak into the water table and the atmosphere. Fracking was stopped for 18 months in 2011 after Cuadrilla reported that it was "highly probable" the process caused minor earthquakes near Blackpool.

"If Cuadrilla finds oil or gas, a series of extensive technical, environmental and public consultations would take place before any further decisions are made," says the company, which is chaired by Lord Browne, a former chief executive of BP.

"Although this summer's work will be unobtrusive, we're fully aware that local people will have many questions about our plans and we'll do our best to answer all of them," says Francis Egan, Cuadrilla's chief executive.

Another new shale gas frontier has opened up in Lincolnshire, also a predominantly rural county. Edgon Resources, an AIM-quoted explorer, has announced it believes there are 16 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in the area. If all the gas is recovered, it would be equivalent to 12 years' worth of North Sea production.

Egdon has bought a new licence for a block south of Scunthorpe. It already holds stakes in two neighbouring sites in Lincolnshire and, if its estimates are correct, it will put the region on the shale gas map.

The UK treasury is hoping to have new guidelines in place this summer on how communities sitting on reserves of shale gas should be compensated for the disruption and nuisance of extraction. There have been suggestions they could receive payments in kind for new facilities or infrastructure, similar to the planning gain payments made when developers obtain planning permission.

Reduced household energy bills, for the communities affected could also be on offer to try to convince residents to allow the drilling and extraction of gas.

The House of Commons energy select committee has said communities affected by shale gas projects "should expect to receive, and share in, some of the benefits of development".

Britain's need for gas imports has grown from 14 per cent of annual consumption in 2000 to nearly half in 2011. It is forecast to import three quarters of gas supplies by 2030, but if the country is proven to have substantial shale gas reserves, extracting them could bring imports down to less than 37 per cent of its needs, according to the Cuadrilla report.