Giant gas field discovered under UK that 'could fuel the country for a decade'
14 February 2025, 00:28 | Updated: 14 February 2025, 00:48
A giant gas field has been discovered under Lincolnshire which could fuel the UK for a decade, an energy company has claimed.
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Egdon Resources, the company behind the discovery, will formally announce the findings about at a conference later this month.
The company said the gas field, which has been discovered near the town of Gainsborough, would boost the British economy by over £100 billion, reduce reliance on energy imports and create tens of thousands of jobs.
Consultants Deloitte, who were hired by Egdon to analyse the results of its test drilling, said that exploiting the Gainsborough Trough field would have considerably less environmental impact than importing an equivalent amount of gas from abroad.
The newly discovered gas field contains about 480 billion cubic metres of gas, which is about seven times as much as the UK consumes in a year.
As British gas consumption is likely to decline in future, this is projected to cover the country's gas needs for a decade.
But despite the advertised economic benefits, it would likely spark a new row as the gas would need to be extracted via fracking - which Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and many others in Labour and the UK oppose.
Fracking, a method of extracting oil and natural gas from deep underground, is behind the boom in US oil and gas drilling over the past decade, and is said to have given the country much greater energy security.
Critics say that fracking distracts from net zero goals and can create earth tremors.
The UK, which is committed to net zero by 2030, has among the highest energy bills in the developed world - impacting both households and businesses, including energy-intensive heavy industry.
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Britain used to rely on its North Sea gas fields, but these are in decline. The UK now imports over half of its natural gas from abroad, including from Norway, the US and Qatar.
The Gainsborough Trough field is largely under lightly populated rural area of Lincolnshire, although it also extends north-west towards Doncaster and Sheffield.
Mark Abbott, Egdon's chief executive, said that the test results from the Gainsborough Trough "compare favourably with US commercial shale operations and are potentially world class.
He added: "We could access all that energy from drilling pads on the ground above, each roughly the size of one or two football fields.
"The land take would be far smaller than for solar farms and the energy produced would be far greater.”
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A government spokesperson appeared to play down the chance of the field being developed, saying: “We intend to ban fracking for good and make Britain a clean energy superpower to protect current and future generations."
They added: "The biggest risk to our energy security is staying dependent on fossil fuel markets and only by sprinting to clean power by 2030 can the UK take back control of its energy and protect both family and national finances from price spikes.”
