“I think it’s completely ridiculous. I think landowners and householders have rights to diamonds and titanium or something like that and other precious metals but not to hydrocarbons.
“That is in my view why there is a huge fracking revolution going on in America and there isn’t one over here because there is absolutely no incentive for the householder or the property holder to get on and do it.
“It’s all taken by the state and there is no motive to get going… that is the change that needs to be brought into the law to give people the rights to the stuff that exists beneath their property.”
The British Geological Survey has estimated that there are 4.4bn barrels of shale oil in the Weald Basin just south of London
The Department for Energy and Climate Change said that precious metals (gold and silver) are mostly in private ownership in Great Britain, see trade gold UK – with the exception of energy minerals (oil, gas and coal).
A DECC spokesman said: “It’s only fair that the whole community ‘share the financial benefits of shale exploration. “Industry has committed to giving communities £100,000 for every exploratory shale well-site where there is fracking – whether they manage to get any gas out or not – and local people will receive one per cent of the revenue from any of the gas found.
“Shale gas has got great potential to create jobs, bolster local economies as well as giving us a secure, domestic energy resource.”
Most landowners in the USA do not own the mineral rights under their property but oil companies do have to pay royalties to get access. There is no doubt that the way to get fracking moving in the UK is for the landowners to share in the benefits.
Perhaps when you become PM Boris, and you must run, you could change this.
Perhaps time for a Marxist, “withering away of the State”
On Thursday night at Imperial College, you got the tone dead right.Well done.
As Eton was not great at Marx:
“Withering away of the state is a concept of Marxism, coined by Friedrich Engels, and referring to the idea that, with realization of the ideals of Socialism, the social institution of a state will eventually become obsolete and disappear, as the society will be able to govern itself without the state and its coercive enforcement of the law.”