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**Mega** · June 08, 2014, 05:03 AM

Re: More BAD news Limey scum!

Its gets better!!!!

Centrica holds off 'betting� on fracking

The British Gas owner says it is unlikely to bid for more UK fracking rights when they are offered in coming weeks

Typically in a licensing round a company must commit itself to a certain level of spending on exploratory work in order to be granted drilling rights. Photo: GETTY

By Emily Gosden

8:30PM BST 07 Jun 2014

40 Comments

Centrica has said it is unlikely to bid for more UK fracking rights when they are offered in coming weeks, underlining the uncertainty over whether shale gas extraction will prove to be viable.

The British Gas owner last year became the first major company to back the search for UK shale when it bought a 25pc stake in licences owned by Cuadrilla in the Bowland basin in Lancs, in a deal worth up to �160m.

Ministers are expected to launch the �14th onshore licensing round� by July, offering up drilling rights across 37,000 square miles of Britain.

But Mark Hanafin, Centrica�s head of upstream, said it would �probably not� bid for more access, suggesting it did not want to �bet� more money on shale before fracking had taken place to prove whether the gas could actually be extracted.

�My main focus is not on grabbing land, it�s on the Bowland shale,� he said. �Finding out if the UK has got this amazing resource or not � it might not.�

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Typically in a licensing round a company must commit itself to a certain level of spending on exploratory work in order to be granted drilling rights. Under the Cuadrilla deal, Centrica has already paid �40m for its stake and made the commitment
to spend �60m on exploration and appraisal and a potential further �60m on any development.

Cuadrilla and Centrica are at present seeking permits to drill at two sites in Lancs where they hope to be fracking next year.

�I�ve got a big commitment to spend in the next couple of years,� Mr Hanafin said. �We are going to drill these wells and find out if this is going to work. We are a big company, but how far do I want to bet on that? It is an exploration play, that�s what people don�t understand. Exploration plays either come up dry or wet.�

He suggested that the certainty of shale gas�s benefits to the UK had been overplayed by some.

�You have a spectrum of opinion from on the one hand '[Shale gas] is the answer to all of our energy problems�, to the other end where 'It�s the end of the world as we know it�. Both of those views are not very helpful,� he said.
Mr Hanafin said that no further geological assessments or seismic surveys could �tell us anything more than we know now, which is that there is a huge amount of gas in that shale�.

�The only thing you can do is drill into it, hydraulically fracture it, and see what happens to the flow rate. If it doesn�t flow very well then we are all having a very interesting and very emotional discussion about nothing,� he said. �If it flows well, then the country is going to have to decide what it wants to do with those resources.�

Ministers have high hopes of strong interest in the 14th licensing round after British Geological Survey studies showed vast gas resources across northern England and oil resources in the South.

� Royal Dutch Shell has asked headhunter Egon Zehnder to begin the search for a replacement for chairman Jorma Ollila, who is expected to stand down next year, according to Sky News.