Napoleon would approve of David Cameron – he’s lucky, and nowhere more so than over fracking.
A few years ago I met an elderly geologist at The Royal Society for Asian Affairs. He was still working freelance for exploration companies. I asked him about fracking, expecting either disapproval or prevarication. Wrong. He unhestitatingly said that it is a good thing and perfectly safe, so long as it is done in the right way, “carefully”, as he put it. His justification was that the Americans have made all the mistakes and we can learn from them.
As it happened, the coalition government left decisions on fracking to be made at a local level and, predictably, nothing much happened except a lot of protests. Now, the government has put its weight behind fracking and it seems likely that work will start soon. Where the luck comes in is that now oil prices are around $50. Had drilling started when it was above $100 the countryside would be littered with abandoned projects that proved uneconomic when oil prices halved; something like the half-built housing estates in Ireland a few years ago.
Starting now, only companies that can extract oil and gas profitably at these prices will apply for licences and I wish them luck.