Politics of Fracking

In this blog I am going to discuss the extremely complicated politics involved in fracking for natural gas. I do not know a lot about politics in general (it’s always seemed extremely dull to me) so please excuse me if I get anything wrong and feel free to correct me!

The politics involved in fracking make the topic more of a business decision rather than environmental, David Cameron has even been noted to describe it as ‘political not scientific’. Fracking has become a very controversial topic that nobody can seem to agree on and the politics gets even more complicated as it differs on global, national and regional scales. This is because the impacts and benefits of this alternative energy source vary with location. For example, some locations have reported earthquakes caused by fracking, others haven’t. Some locations have reported flammable tap water caused by fracking contaminating groundwater, others haven’t. Other locations have been home to fracking sites for years with no adverse health or environmental impacts. In terms of the UK some aspects of fracking are addressed by the European Union (such as water quality), some by the UK government (licensing and taxation), and some by local authorities (planning permissions) (Cairney et al.,2015). It is a collection of decisions made on multiple levels. In the US it acts in a similar way, federal, state and regional politics on fracking dramatically differ most often depending on public opinion. For example, fracking is now banned in New York State but is widespread and heavily supported in the neighbouring state of Pennsylvania.

Politics on fracking began in the mid-20^th century when the value of natural gas became apparent and policy makers made it illegal to ‘flare’ or ‘waste’ any natural gas extracted from subterranean sources as was often the case in oil wells (Davis, 2012).  It is from this point on that natural gas was considered a new cheaper and potentially less harmful energy source that could dramatically increase a countries economic/energy security and it had to be explored. For this to happen energy policies already in place had to be revisited and amended in order to allow exploration of shale gas reserves. Consumers drive this change and have made fracking permanent in the US due to the high demand for energy which shale gas meets efficiently and inexpensively. Natural gas now accounts for over ¼ of energy consumption in the US and this is expected to rise to ½ by 2035 (Davis, 2012) 

The UK political system has a well-known reputation for top-down policymaking and the government has made it very clear that they are going all out for shale gas, despite it being a very new concept here, in an attempt to dramatically escalate the countries energy security (Cairney et al., 2015). This seems to be the main goal as fracking has many economic benefits which are more relevant to policy makers than any environmental impacts. It is often described as a ‘tentative pro-fracking policy’ as the DECC has yet to make a firm decision on the economic viability of fracking in this country. Hence, the government giving Cuadrilla and other drilling companies’ permission to explore for shale gas as there is no commercial fracking of yet in the UK (Beebeejaun, 2013). At the moment the government is entitled to take 2/3 of the profits through taxes, but current talks are attempting to reduce this to 30% (Beebeejaun, 2013). It is likely that reducing this will allow the public to see that fracking in the UK is not just going to benefit the government and profits can then be spent on making the energy greener.