BGS Energy Portal

The UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington FRS, asked the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering to review the scientific and engineering evidence and consider whether the risks associated with hydraulic fracturing (often termed ‘fracking’) as a means to extract shale gas could be managed effectively in the UK. This review recognised that NERC should play a key role in researching this topic.The BGS energy portal, and specifically the stress data within, is a response to this request. National-scale, publically available data related to underground stress regime in the UK was previously available only as hard-copy. The provision of this dataset in digital form is a starting point in the provision of environmental data that will provide an aid to the exploration of shale gas; it also has applications in a wide range of other applied activities including the design of underground gas storage schemes and other major subsurface infrastructure