North of Ireland to Lead the Way for the Republic on Shale

Tamboran Resources will kick off its Irish shale operations in the North of Ireland, the company’s Director of Environment & Community Affairs Tony Bazley has said.

Replying to Natural Gas Europe at the SMI Shale Gas Environmental Summit, Mr. Bazley said he hoped the company’s work in the North would inspire confidence in the Republic.

“The Republic will be able to look across the border, we hope, and see how well it’s been going there,” he said.

The need to inspire confidence in the Republic is a strong one, and an understandable one given the challenges Tamboran has faced so far. Mr. Bazley acknowledges too that, given the richness of the environment and the country’s history, the reaction is natural.

“There’s myths; there’s beautiful countryside,” he says. “Just the sort of place that, of course, people don’t want to see industry, so industry has to get it right.”

While the company has strived to be as open and transparent as it can throughout its operations in the whole of Ireland, scepticism, ill-feeling toward and distrust of the gas industry, as well as misperceptions of the shale process continue to linger.

It’s been an uphill battle for the Australian company. With prevailing anger about the handling of the Corrib gas project (which was the subject of critically well-received documentary The Pipe), and fears about the fracking process and its possible effects on the environment, Tamboran has its work cut out for it.

“We are fighting misinformation. Hugely. They've come up from Corrib in particular where Shell didn't do a great job explaining what they wanted to do—[that] held up the project for seven years.

“There’s a lot of misinformation in Gasland. We give out the film ourselves to people for them to see it, because I think if you look through it and are sensible you will see there is misinformation there. We do tell the truth; we do engage the communities. We've been going out into the communities right from the start.”

With the sort of reactions the company has faced in mind, it is now embarking on an unprecedented action, one which it hasn’t done so far in its history in Ireland—it is being consciously un-transparent, playing its cards close to its chest on a major decision.

“We are selecting the test drill pads right now which is why, for once in our career as a company here, we are a little bit less than transparent because there’s a lot of opposition to us in these areas.

We have already secured one area for drilling and we hope it’ll secure more areas for drilling. There is opposition and opposition, I’m afraid, does try to terrorise people into not dealing with companies. And this makes life quite difficult for us because we've built on transparency and we've gone for transparency and openness and talked with people and told them what’s going to happen right from the start.”

In fact, every other detail of the company’s plans for Ireland are on the table. The effect on the environment has been carefully thought about, from the chemical and technical effects to the visual aspects of the project.

“We have to be absolutely sure we get the wellhead construction right,” Mr. Bazley says vehemently. “Any wells that have had problems in the US have had problems with the wellheads—whether that was because the construction wasn't right or because the operator hasn't checked the cementation of the wells.”

He elaborates on how the company will be able to frack without using any chemicals to do so, a fact which the company has used as a huge selling point. As the company will only be drilling to a maximum of 1,500 metres, it will not be required to use any chemicals, he explains.

“At that level, we can cause the cracking—the cracking isn't caused by the chemicals—we can cause the cracking just by the simple pressure. We will have to increase the pressure of course by 10 to 15 per cent over the normal fracking level... By doing this, we can get away with using no chemicals.”

The process of using pressure rather than chemicals, he says, has been used to great success in Canada, with over 500 wells fracked this way to date.

Tamboran is also drawing on the Canadian experience to counteract the visual impact of shale gas, by masking the equipment under barns, but plans to improve on it. Pointing a photo such a building in Alberta, Mr. Bazley says:

“We don’t think they’ve done that very well because they’ve got pipes and things around the place. Those pipes could be hidden. We would like to think the typical Irish barn—the green one, the larger one—is what you will see around the countryside. We’re soundproofing because these pumps will be operating most of the time. We would like to see them as quiet sites that sit there. And this idea of having 1,500 big rigs across the country—no. There’s not likely to be more than three or four rigs drilling in any one place. After that, the sites become quiet.”

Besides these, the director says that the company will strive to ensure the groundwater formation is completely protected and that 3D seismic information will be acquired right at the beginning of operations to avoid any earthquake activity such as that seen with Cuadrilla Resources in England last year. The company will also water-jets to make perforations in the laterals rather than charges.

Its aim, he says, is to exceed the most rigorous standards imposed on it, and will wait patiently while these regulations are devised. These regulations notwithstanding, the company plans to begin production by 2017.

So is shale just prolonging the decline of gas in the face of renewables or does it still have a role? For the moment it does, he says.

“We feel it’s a logical fuel to bridge the tide for the future.” While he too would like to see renewables play a greater role in energy, that is not likely to become a reality for quite some time in his estimation. The energy market’s looking at a “a 20-,30-, 40-, 50-year period” before that happens, he says.

Currently, he says, the North of Ireland is ahead of the Republic on regulation, and he expects operations to begin there first.

“Northern Ireland is actually much more better organised for this because it’s part of the UK which has been used to oil and gas being developed for many years.

“There’s an EPA study being done in the Republic which we are having to wait for. We don’t want to rush that. We want them to take their time because we want them to get it right. As we know, the regulators in Northern Ireland will get it right as already they’re developing boards who are overseeing our work. We want the maximum regulation on this. We want them to be quite happy with it. Otherwise, we don’t want that to go ahead. We want actually to do better than the regulators want.”

With the regulation in place, the company will begin its operations first on the Northern side of the country.

“But we will go ahead in the North of Ireland probably about 12 months ahead of the Republic of Ireland... drilling probably [will begin] in 2014 in the North of Ireland.”

Until then, it plans to keep open a dialogue with the government, communities, and others, including those in favour of it and against it. He says the company will be sending out its environmental impact assessment to anyone who’s interested within the next two months, including to its detractors. A socio-environmental impact assessment, which is expected to be started in July, will take 12 months.

Operations in the North will be quick and extensive.

“We see in Northern Ireland, which is where we’ll be moving ahead fastest, we see something like 1,500 wells drilled over a period of 15 years.”

With a lot of public confidence in the Republic riding high on the North, the company cannot afford to err.

“We have to get this right environmentally,” Tony Bazley says.