The seventh part in our series in which Nick Grealy, of No Hot Air, tests the weight of some of the biggest arguments pitted against fracking.

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#7 – European shale is only a short term stopgap that will not provide energy security

Energy policy has become a political battleground with politicians trying to weigh up the public mood with regards to either energy prices or methods of production. Environmental impacts aside, there are those amongst the Shale camp who question whether it even provides a viable long-term energy source. 

This is especially the case in Europe, where sceptics claim there isn’t even enough gas deposits within Europe to merit fracking it. And while it’s certainly true that the biggest deposits have so far been found in China and the US, how much are European deposits predicted to be worth?

We hope to see the first concrete results of actual European resources sometime in 2012. But a number of independent reports predict that even conservative figures allow that the UK for example, would not need any LNG imports at all for several decades thanks to shale.

Similarly, predictions of Polish shale resources show a resource equal to over a hundred years at existing gas levels and several decades even accounting for a total substitution of coal with natural gas.

Poland, France, Germany and the Ukraine may well have substantial volumes of gas available to export throughout the EU or even beyond.

This post is part of our series: 12 myths surrounding shale gas production, by Nick Grealy. Download the ebook here >