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Shale gas wells in Britain will benefit from the lessons learned in the US industry and from improvements in productivity as fracking technology develops, a House of Lords committee has heard.
Giving evidence to the economic affairs select committee, Professor Richard Muller, professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, said American engineers were rapidly improving the multi-stage horizontal drilling technology used in fracking, and devising ways of recycling more of the water used in the process.
Production rates could increase significantly and fracking become safer and more efficient, he said. “Experts in the US believe that the efficiency of fracking is going to double in the next few years – and double again in the next 10 years. The cost of fracturing at great depths will go down because the methane, the natural gas that you get back, will increase. The UK has an enormous advantage in that you can now build on 15 years of horizontal drilling, multi-stage fracking in the US.
“So I believe it could progress very fast if the resources in the UK are as good as people hope.”
As part of his evidence to the Lords select committee examining the possible economic impact of shale gas extraction, Muller added that the use of plugs and flexible pipes meant that the effectiveness of multi-stage fracking could be improved at depths of up to 3km, where much more methane can be found. “It is like the gold rush,” he said. “This is the mother lode.”
Professor Robert Mair, head of civil and environmental engineering at Cambridge University, helped compile a report on shale gas produced for the government last year by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. He said that the chance of contamination from fracking was very low in the UK because the process would be undertaken at much greater depths than in the US.
“I’m optimistic the US experience has been invaluable in terms of the technological developments that are now taking place,” said Mair. “There are some really exciting developments to use saline water from deep aquifers being tried in the US.
“That would be a hugely important technological leap forward. There will be huge advances in the coming years where the fracturing fluids do not even involve water – they might be gels, carbon dioxide or foams.”