Yes. There are very few
rigs available and many more personnel would need to be trained. This will take
years, and gives us the chance for mature reflection with clear, scientific
data.
There is a set of extremely useful
on-line tools for seeing on a monthly basis how many drilling rigs there
are in
the USA and around
the globe from Baker Hughes, who
have been keeping the tally for over 70 years. They are extremely accurate, and
used by investors to judge how active the industry is.
At the end of July 2013 (last week) there were 1776 rigs active in the USA,
of which 369 were drilling for gas as shown in the map below (oil in blue, gas
in red and geothermal in green).
The red dots near the Texas coast (top
map) represent drilling for shale gas in the Barnett shale, whereas those top
right are the Utica and Marcellus gas shales, which are shown in more detail in
the bottom map.
In the UK there was one, and we know
where that is - Balcombe!
That is fewer than most European
countries whether they have a shale gas moratorium or not.
There were 6 drilling for gas in
Poland, where there are known shale gas resources, and other resources, notably
in Argentina, where 21 of its 85 rigs are drilling for gas.
The effort, amounts of money and of
time required to build and staff sufficient rigs for significant exploration on
the UK mainland will be very large. A reasonable campaign of exploration will
take at least 5 years to put together.
When the other European countries
‘wake-up’ to shale gas there will be a huge competition for rigs and trained
personnel to man them, as well as scientists and technicians capable of
analysing their data.
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