EU Looks to Introduce Regulations in Order to Control UK's Fracking Plans

Last week the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced that the UK government would off tax breaks to fracking firms and set up a new regulator just for the unconventional natural gas sector, all as part of the new energy policies.

The energy secretary Ed Davey is also expected to lift all fracking restrictions that were placed on a site in Lancashire earlier in the year after several earthquakes were reported in the area.

This new ‘dash for gas’ has Europe worried, and therefore Brussels has called to set some central regulations in order to control the growing shale gas industry. The worry being that, as a rookie in the industry, the UK cannot be confident that it understands the full scale of health and environmental consequences

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Jo Leinan, a member of the German SPD, explained to the EP that “there are basically only two countries where the government is behind using it. It is Poland and it is Great Britain, and Poland has not gone very fast. Then in Great Britain they give green light for industrial exploitation but they have to know what they are doing. I don't know if they can be so sure and clear about what they are doing.”

On the whole EU members are wary of fracking, with recent EC reports listing ground- and surface-water contamination, noxious air emissions, risks to biodiversity, and noise pollution as just some of the negative side effects.

By. Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com