A Place to Stand

     Deliberately lying to Parliament used to be a career ending matter. No longer.
     Perhaps equally important is the way this has gone virtually unreported by the traditional media, only on the blogsphere has it been covered.

     This is what Mr Davey told Parliament 

Graham Stringer - Will not the biggest impact on reducing domestic energy bills be achieved by bringing shale gas online as quickly as possible?

Mr Davey: I do not think so. We had a seminar at No. 10 recently, which the Prime Minister participated in, along with myself and the Business Secretary. We heard from experts in the shale gas industry who had been working in America and looking at the major opportunities in places such as Ukraine and China. They were clear that it would take some time for shale gas to be exploited in the UK. They were also clear that we needed strong regulation to proceed and that the shale gas reserves in this country are not quite as large as some people have been speculating.

  There were also "leaks" to various papers saying that these leading companies in the industry had said the the assessments by the leading companies in the industry of how much gas was there were untrue and how they had insisted they needed much more government regulation to prevent them working. Ed Davey himself also appeared on the BBC to say the same as had been briefed to the papers. Naturally, it being the BBC, he wasn't asked any difficult questions.

     But who were these shale gas industry experts who had said this. No Hot Air did report

who was present at this meeting?
"The Prime Minister convened the Downing Street summit to hear from companies including Shell, Centrica and Schlumberger"

Centrica of course has a huge vested interest in locking people into high gas price fears, scamming the government out of nuclear funds and getting a good price for when they eventually sell themselves to Gazprom. A reality of low gas prices makes Centrica stock look way overpriced.

As for the mention of Shell, the meeting would sound more convincing if it also included BP,Exxon Mobiil, ConocoPhillips,Chevron, Marathon, BP, Statoil, Eni, and Total. Where were they? Besides, the story of shale is that it has been the product of small companies. It's natural to trust multi-nationals, but those very companies had a lengthy history in the US of dismissing shale as some kind of fad that would never work. Until, that is, they were forced to spend billions on buying companies. It makes economic sense for Centrica or Shell to dismiss the economic impact of UK shale for an obvious reason: They are trying to negotiate a lower price.

But of course the main absence, which can't be confirmed, would appear to be that of the people who actually look for shale gas: Cuadrilla, Igas and Dart Energy among others. Let's recall recent revelations from the last two, as well as Cuadrilla not only defending their 200TCF estimate but now publicly declaring it conservative.

  So it looks like Davey has been talking not to the leading companies in "the shale gas industry" but to the leading companies in the competing gas industry, mainly multinationals. Astonishingly enough they want government to strangle their competitor, at birth, in government red tape. But that is not what he said. He told Parliament that it was the industry itself that wanted the strangulation - the exact and total, opposite of the truth.

   History is replete with examples of established traders wanting the government to prevent competition It is not uncommon for government to let themselves be bribed into doing so. In bribing ministers growing companies are at a disadvantage because they haven't yet grown rich enough to do much of it.

   This is why it has always been a liberal principle that government should allow economic freedom. The concept of a corporate state, where all the big companies, unions etc, divvied up the national cake and prevented competitors arising was part of the foundation of fascism - a philosophy diametrically opposed to liberalism.

    Ed Davey deliberately lied to Parliament to deliberately promote fascist principles and to oppose the founding principles of liberalism.

    Them, No Hot Air went out and did what no traditional journalist had thought of. He went and asked Caudrilla, the real leading "expert in the shale gas industry" who said 

No, we were not invited. Nor were we consulted about potential shale gas production in the future. I was surprised to see negative statements from people who have never seen our core data or open hole log data. They may consider getting their facts in line next time since this is such an important issue to the country.

  No question - Davey is a liar who, in any previous era, would have been out on his ear.

  His LibDem predecessor Chris Huhne, coincidentally now facing trial for lying, had previously told his party that he intended to strangle the shale gas industry to prevent it competing with windmills since, even with the current outrageous subsidy he recognised it would be no competition.

  By involving the PM's name this looks very much like a LibDem attempt to put Cameron on the record as being complicit in this lie, or at least not repudiating it, which would mean he would have to support LibDem policy of extravagantly expensive power and consequent permanent recession.
    This matters because it is shale gas alone, which has brought the US out of recession, as cheap energy always does. This graph from Bishop Hill




   Whether there are any circumstances under which a LibDem minister should not be assumed to be lying , or indeed has interest in getting Britain out of recession, depends on whether his party calls him on the lie.

  Then whether any Conservative minister can be more trusted or is more interested in Britain's wellbeing depends on whether the rest of the government act.

  Since John Redwood decided not to allow this comment of mine the chances do not look good.

Your comment is awaiting moderation.
On Ed Davey’s claim, to Parliament, to the media and through a number of unoficial leaks, that at a meeting with the shale gas industry leaders they told him and Mr Cameron that their estimates of the amount if gas were false and that they needed much more government regulation.

It definitely seems that, while not suggesting that it represents anything other than the highest standard standard of hionesty to which he and his party ever aspire, it was a total and deliberate lie. We still don’t know what was actually said but we do know that the industry leader was definitely not present, or even invited.

“a comment from Cuadrilla Resources, the company that is at the forefront of efforts to develop a shale gas industry in the UK.

No, we were not invited. Nor were we consulted about potential shale gas production in the future. I was surprised to see negative statements from people who have never seen our core data or open hole log data. They may consider getting their facts in line next time since this is such an important issue to the country.”

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/5/21/cuadrilla-were-not-at-no-10-seminar.html
Ed Davey has lied to Parliament and if that is in any way wrong these days must resign. While he was simply carrying out Luddim policy of strangling the shale gas industry and anything else that might get us out of recesion, he has lied and thus if his own party wishes to claim any trace of honesty, they must lead the call for him to go.

  And then, as Tim Worstall points out, whether the amounts of gas are sufficient to exploit or not is simply not the sort of decision a government committed to economic freedom would want to make or indeed which almost any government could ever be comptent to make. That is why markets exist.