Abstract
Shale gas is conjectured to potentially improve the UK’s security of natural gas supply’s status by substituting up to half of natural imports by 2035. This paper explores the subsequent demands upon freshwater resources, the process of resource acquisition by operators and the prerequisite procedural of assessment. This is followed by a water management case study of Cuadrilla Resources, the leading shale gas operator in the UK before concluding comments.
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Notes
- 1.
May 2011. The first magnitude 2.3 ML shortly after Cuadrilla’s Preese Hall well in the Bowland Shale was hydraulically fractured. The second, a magnitude of 1.5 ML occurred on 27th May 2011 following renewed hydraulic fracturing of the same well.
- 2.
Shale Gas developments feature in Schedule 2 of the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017 (England)) should the site exceed 0.5 ha and therefore it is responsibility of the MPA to screen for significant environmental impact, unless they expect to extract in excess of 500 tonnes/day in which case they feature in Schedule 1 and an EIA is mandatory.
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Brown, J. (2020). The Assessment and Acquisition of Water Resources for Shale Gas Development in the UK. In: Buono, R., López Gunn, E., McKay, J., Staddon, C. (eds) Regulating Water Security in Unconventional Oil and Gas. Water Security in a New World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18342-4_7
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