BRITISH FRACKING: Stephen Green linked to this article this morning. I link again with reason. Almost two years ago I attended a forum on fracking. It was held in Texas. One of panelists made a couple of comments about restrictions on fracking outside the US. During Q&A a man in the audience rose and said potential shale gas fields in Britain were still being evaluated to determine if they had sufficient gas to justify “fracking” them. There had been problems with some fracking operations. However, he believed many British citizens thought tapping the gas was a good idea. He had a British accent. I approached him after the program concluded. He said there were people in Britain totally opposed to fracking but energy independence is a good thing. Many British citizens thought that, too. He had only expressed his opinion. Turns out he had an informed opinion. There had been problems in Britain. As the BBC article notes, fracking was temporarily banned. There is opposition. Wales has natural gas fields but just how large they are remains to be determined. (This report is a bit dated but lays out the possibilities.) However, the Welsh government opposes fracking and per the BBC article the UK government has devolved “fracking licences to the Welsh Government…”