In a blow to Government attempts to attract investment to the controversial industry, Simon Henry, Shell’s chief financial officer, said it had already allocated more than $6bn (£3.8bn) to shale globally and was not going to exceed that sum.
“We have a successful and growing business in North America, we have great opportunities in China, Ukraine and Russia,” he said. “The UK has to compete directly with them and right now nobody even knows whether the gas will flow.”
“Do we want to be first in and be in the headlines every day in the UK? Well, your answer is: we are not,” he said.
To parse that into English for you.
There\’s too many screaming nutjobs out there for us to want to go through the pain and grief of doing what we know very well how to do.
Fortunately, we\’ve still got Cuadrilla…..
Does anyone know if there’s anything to this?
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/fracking_ourselves_to_death_in_pennsylvania_partner/
Based on the polemic it smells like bollocks but it’s hard to tell.
$3.6bn isn’t much. It’s certainly not big enough to suggest Shell are not still cautiously approaching the technique.
Also:
we have great opportunities in … Russia
Shell have been saying that for over a decade now. Between them and BP, it’s harder to tell who is the slower learner insofar as Russia is concerned.
Their main point stands, though.
Re the Salon article.
When the writer starts by talking about radiation pollution in the Marshall Islands & segues to fracking in Pennsylvania…. There’s a good literary description of the technique. Bullshit shoveling.
Tim
The correct translation is:
“If it exists and it is worthwhile, we will come in and buy up the little guys”
This is SOP
A little tale of simple Northern folk for you. Sainsburys wished to invest £50million in my corner of Merseyside, Crosby, creating 100 new jobs by building a new store. Cue total outrage from local Marxist worthies and our MP, Bill Esterson. Sainsburys endures a hate campaign. Including its staff being verbally abused in its own store. Planning permission gets refused after a hate mob turns up to the planning cttee meeting.
The campaign group proceeds to lay out its conditions for accepting Sainsburys money. Bill Esterson subjects it to endless rhetoric about “Big Business” how it takes from thecommunity and so should give something back, how it puts profits before people etc.
Eventually Sainsburys has its registered-think. We are more trouble than we’re worth and it now has “other priorities”. Meanwhile I am told that otherbusinesses
Oh dear, oh dear. you’ve caught the American “parse” disease. What did they teach you at Downside?
Matthew L
Given the huge number of wells that are being drilled, it is almost inevitable that some companies will cut corners. However the image of everything being completely out of control is almost definitely wrong.
Note how the environmentalists have blamed Shale gas for a large number of problems that were later shown not to be true. Rather than giving up, they change their story and carry on. Therefore it is prudent to take everything they say with a pinch of salt.
The first story, concerns a worker who works with dangerous chemicals, and has not been given the right protective clothing / equipment. I am sure that if true, his employer has already broken the law. We don’t ban other dangerous activities, we just insist on methods of risk reduction.
The biggest risk with gas production the water that comes back out of the well. If treatment is handled properly then toxic chemicals are not going to escape. This is a relatively easy thing to monitor, in my opinion.
Now what does that remind me of?
Ah yes: Global warming.
Thanks for the clarification, Serf. If anyone is feeling particularly bored they could go here and try to clear up the misconceptions:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/05/02/frack-should-be-the-new-obscenity/
I find it deeply irritating that people can be rational atheists and skeptics on scientific matters, but then completely mimic the logic of creationists when thinking about economics.
An example comment: “Fracking is a mechanism by the corporate intelligencia to keep energy prices artificially low so we can simultaneously avoid dealing with investing in alternative energy resources, conservation and delay dealing with global warming for as long as possible, probably until we heat things up till it gets to be 150 degrees in Texas in July, but even then the republithugs and liberturds will find excuses for ignoring the problem.”