Seeking the License for London Local Energy to Go Underground

London Local Energy (LLE) has applied for an onshore exploration license in the latest license round. Each of blocks involved is 100 square kilometers or 24,710 acres. The 14th round closed on October 28 and applications are currently being processed. It would be presumptuous to second guess the decision, but not too premature of us to offer some details.

A key failure of UK shale gas has been the interminable delay in accessing geological data via exploration in an expeditious way. This uncertainty hangs not only over onshore gas and oil, it also adds unnecessary risk to the renewables sector. LLE has no doubt wind and solar will thrive in the coming years, but their development will be accelerated if the reality – one way or the other – of UK shale potential is revealed. The greatest issue has been public acceptance. If LLE can jump start the process by even a few months by revealing our plans this early, it will shorten the post-license process. If we are unsuccessful, maybe we make the debate easier for others.

LLE, and here we talk of myself and others who will be revealed in the event of a successful application, have been pleasantly surprised at the enthusiasm and support received since the round closed. The first thing people ask is whether we are we crazy. Ten minutes later they ask how they can help. What was once called unconventional gas is innovative and counterintuitive by definition. Just like LLE. We aim to make London an example for the many other urban areas in the world lucky enough to have oil and gas resources beneath them.

LLE’s geological advisors included a lengthy technical document as part of our application to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). We think the rocks under London have more promise than many believe. This century’s geological history from North America, Argentina, Australia and China is clear: Some of the least likely “conventional” candidates for shale gas and oil end up being the most productive. We have geologists, geophysicists and geochemists on our team.

Most of all, we’d love a geo-telepathist. But in the meantime, we’ll need to explore before we can talk about production. Before that stage, we can build excitement about the way we think different: Producing oil and gas from under consumers in an urban setting is a new way of thinking about sustainable energy.

The Miracle of Shale – Horizontal Drilling

The number one misperception among many in the UK is to think shale takes up a lot of space. The true miracle of shale is not only modern high-volume hydraulic fracturing, but combining it with horizontal drilling. I’ve shown this billboard from the US to illustrate the point before:

The LLE plan depends on using as little space as possible. London is crowded and land is expensive. Gas and oil simply would never work with the old paradigm of multiple single wells. That goes a long way to explaining why it was never tried, and explains why only two oil wells have ever even been drilled in London. Both hit oil and gas.

That’s an encouraging 100% hit rate that we think modern geological and petroleum engineering science can only improve. London’s greatest resource is the intellectual capital of it’s people, especially that contained in our world class universities and global financial industry. With their help, we can do something. Something wonderful.

London is not only prospective, but it has several advantages. For one, London is going to depend on natural gas for a long time to come. If we discover any natural gas, LLE has the great attraction of being able to monetise Londoners’ gas almost immediately. As Crown property it is after all, everyone’s gas and we hope to have enough to give several tens of million of tax revenue back to the 62% majority shareholder – Londoners and other UK citizens themselves – as soon as technically and politically possible.

The Greatest City in the World

London is the greatest city in the world. It’s also my home and I’ve often been asked whether I would like fracking under my backyard. Like almost every Londoner, my back yard isn’t big enough to support a lawn mower, let alone a well pad, but this huge city has many suitable locations and LLE is concentrating on two areas. For the sake of space, I’ll talk about two of the three blocks applied for, Ordnance Survey map squares TQ18 and TQ28 in North, West and Central London

LLE also applied for block TQ26, which starts about a kilometre east of my home in Kingston-upon-Thames. Whether I am blessed with shale actually under my back yard is a question for another day, but all of London is my home and my backyard. I’m not worrying about the water, I know exactly what chemicals will be used and try not to inadvertently swallow any at my local (gas heated) swimming pool, and I’m certainly not worried about earthquakes. Was that a seismic event or was that the Bakerloo Line?

Putting a production well pad into five acres of a location like the 2500 acre Park Royal Industrial Estate or similar isn’t going to cause any more noise and trucks than most of the existing tenants. With luck, we may be able to drain under the entire 200 SQKM area of the above license area from a single location. We’ll then sell the gas into a market expected to remain north of $6MMBTU at a worst case scenario through existing pipeline networks. We could even reduce trucks, noise and pollution from several existing industrial uses. We’ll almost certainly pay more taxes. What local and national governments do with them is their role, but we’d advise ring fencing at least half for renewable investments.

London Local Energy Will Be No Threat to Renewables

We’ve already had offers of exciting cutting edge technology to reduce water, traffic, noise and emissions. We’ve been presented with ideas from some of the many forward thinking green think tanks in London as to how we can leverage renewables even during the exploratory phase of drilling boreholes to discover geologic data.

There are over 8 million people in London. So far less than a thousand have signed a petition set up against us, and many may be from nowhere near us. In some parts of the world, shale gas is treated as the most exciting (and scary) thing to hit town since sliced bread. In the vibrant world city of London, we aim to just get on with it. Londoners have enough to worry about and we don’t plan to add to their problems.

Using the resources from beneath our feet reduces CO2 lost in transporting gas from even the North Sea, let alone points east or LNG imports. It’s our backyard and we want to go way beyond doing no harm. We want to do good for the planet and make London an even better place.

And what a great place London is. There’s a reason over 2,000 people a week from every corner of the planet move to London: cities have a buzz and London has the biggest buzz in Europe. I like the countryside, but I’ve never been interested in living there. People make a place and I am already overwhelmed by the creativity and forward thinking involved in the offers of support LLE has received.

Cities, as any environmental scientist knows, are far more energy efficient than the countryside. The countryside does play a vital role, but Londoners can protect rural areas by responsibly using the energy under our own feet instead of disrupting the countryside with power lines, pipelines, windmills or solar farms, selfishly displacing our energy problem on to someone else.

A big mistake in the UK shale debate so far is how the industry has needed to become too defensive. LLE is proud of the natural gas industry and will apologise to no person about our great product. We will pro-actively address anyone’s fears and concerns, and energy issues, directly with consumers/citizens. We are as Green as anyone measured by the cuts of CO2 we can deliver, and refuse to be painted as caricatures by those who use fossil fuels every day to fight them. Living in London is hard enough. We want to make it even better.

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