| Francis Egan, the chief executive of Britain’s Australian-owned fracking company Cuadrilla, was racing for a train whenHe was on his way to London, to talk to an increasingly attentive collection of MPs and officials about his mothballed shale gas project in the northern English county of Lancashire.
“Shale is much quicker to get up and running than an offshore oilfield,” says Peter Lilley, a former Conservative minister and member of the House of Lords. “Theoretically we could get it up and running in about a year.” Under pressure to find ways to contain energy costs and eradicate reliance on sketchy suppliers like Russia, Johnson last week caved in and agreed to revisit the fracking question.But Egan still has his work cut out: Johnson’s endorsement was far from full-throated, and the cabinet debate will be lively.
Fracking supposedly has the support of leadership aspirant Liz Truss, who is foreign secretary, and the Brexit minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg. But standing in their way is Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng. “More wells need to be drilled,” Egan admits. “We’ve been operating with one hand, sometimes two hands, tied behind our back. There is work to be done, but all I can say is the initial results show that this has huge potential.”The fracking debate will pit one influential group of Conservatives against another, which typically means Johnson has to pick one side or the other – not something he always does with relish or conviction.
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