British Prime Minister David Cameron has called on European leaders to press ahead with fracking after seeing off the threat of new EU restrictions on the industry. He urged European companies to start fracking in earnest after EU officials confirmed that there would be no new legislation. Speaking in Brussels yesterday, Mr Cameron said that the Commission’s decision marked a “good result. We’ve got to follow through on that and now make sure that this industry can really go ahead,” he said. --Michael Savage,
The Times, 21 December 2013
EU governments on Friday endorsed an outline deal on new rules to assess the impact on the environment of projects such as oil and gas exploration, after removing references to shale gas that had blocked agreement. British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso this month laying out his arguments against new rules for shale gas. The parliament had called for mandatory shale gas impact assessments, but EU diplomats said negotiations between representatives of the Parliament, the Commission, the EU executive, and member states had been blocked until that requirement was dropped. --
Reuters, 21 December 2013
David Cameron’s plan for a new fossil fuel bonanza from “fracking” underground gas reserves is under threat from draconian environmental laws being drafted in Brussels. The European Commission has been drawing up proposals for a new framework directive, which could take years to negotiate, in order to regulate the pollution risks of “unconventional” fuels, including shale gas. Conservatives want to persuade the EU to allow Britain to “take the risk” of exploring whether shale gas reserves buried underground can be safely and viably extracted through fracking. Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, has hosted a series of private dinners in Brussels in an attempt to persuade ministers from other EU countries to back Britain’s case. Mr Paterson returned from his latest dinner meeting of pro-fracking ministers on Friday. He was in Brussels attending a summit of environment ministers and hosted the talks on Thursday evening after the formal business of the day had concluded. He is understood to have won the support of countries including the Netherlands, Romania and Poland. --Tim Ross,
The Daily Telegraph, 15 December 2013
Europe’s “backfiring” climate and energy policies are adding to high natural gas costs and holding back Dow Chemical’s investment in the region, said the company’s director of global climate change policy. European Union proposals to limit the amount of free emission permits in its cap-and-trade program boost industry costs, and are one reason Dow and other chemical makers limited refining capacity expansion in the region for the past 12 years, Russel Mills said. European gas prices are already relatively high, with the cost of the fuel in the UK more than twice the level in the US. BASF in Germany, India’s Tata Chemicals and Lotte Chemical of South Korea shut plants in Britain this year. --Mathew Carr,
Bloomberg, 20 December 2013
