Photo of Lough Allen and Corry Island by Andreas F Borchet.
Ireland’s Natural Gas
Margaret Franklin writes that decisions about developing our natural resorces should be based on sound scientific findings and not on scaremongering.
A FrAcking Problem
he discovery of natural gas off Kinsale Head in the 1970s ushered in a new era of economic activity in this country. For years, the gas provided a valuable source of hydrogen for the production of ammonia by Nitrogen Eireann Teoranta (NET), which allowed our indigenous fertilizer industry to flourish. The other raw material for ammonia, NH3 is nitrogen, which is always readily available from the air. Some of the ammonia was transported to Arklow, where it was made into nitric acid (HNO3). When ammonia is neutralised with nitric acid, we get ammonium nitrate, which is extremely soluble in water and is an excellent fertilizer. Sadly, for an agricultural country, we now import all of our nitrogenous fertilizer. Kinsale gas was also used for power generation, while a natural gas pipeline was laid to bring the gas to Dublin and other towns around the country, for domestic use. Now that the Kinsale field is almost exhausted, the gas pipeline network is used to distribute gas imported through the two interconnecters from Scotland. When the Corrib Gas field was discovered off the Mayo coast, it seemed we had found another source of natural gas, to replace the Kinsale gas.
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Natural gas lying below in the Carboniferous basins of Clare and the Northwest may yet be used to top up Ireland’s grid.
Unfortunately, a decade later, this gas is not yet flowing through the distribution network. The project has been dogged by controversy, as the local residents were not consulted about the route of the pipeline and neither the Government nor the company concerned succeeded in allaying the fears of the people of west Mayo regarding the safety and environmental risks posed by bringing the gas ashore. Let us hope that lessons have been learned and that a similar controversy will not prevent our inshore gas resources from being developed. Earlier this year, licences were awarded to three companies to explore for commercial gas in the Northwest Carboniferous Basin (more commonly known as the Lough Allen basin) and the Clare basin. The Lough Allen Basin is a huge area of 8,000 square kilometres, extending through part of Cavan, Donegal, Fermanagh, Leitrim, Mayo, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo and Tyrone. The Clare basin includes
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 48 Page 15
parts of counties Clare, Cork, Kerry and Limerick. Two companies have been granted licences for the Lough Allen basin; the Australian company Tamboran Resources and the Irish Lough Allen Natural Gas Company. Enegi Oil Plc was awarded the licence to begin exploration in the Clare Basin. These licences allow the companies to undertake shallow drilling and to carry out technical studies ro ascertain whether it is commercially viable to extract the gas. The licenses are for a two year period only and are subject to agreed work programmes, which include geological and geophysical studies. If these initial studies prove successful, the companies will have first option to apply for a more expensive exploration licence, which would bring them a step closer to extracting the gas. At this stage, the actual extaction of the gas is some years away. It has already been established that there is gas in the Lough Allen Basin. Exploration in this region started in the 1960s and twelve vertical wells were drilled in the licensed area between 1960 and 2001. Every well yielded gas, but at the time, it was deemed uneconomic to extract it. However, with rising oil prices and the increasing use of natural gas