Classical Gas

Though this be madness, yet there's method in it;

Andrew Austin said IGas, which produces oil and gas onshore in the UK and is planning to start shale exploration this summer, currently paid about £2.1m a year in business rates [taxes, Yanks]. This money should be spent entirely by local councils instead of administered centrally, he said.

Mr Austin also said that planning permission for conventional oil and gas drilling onshore in the UK had become more difficult due to the controversy around shale gas, which is extracted by fracking.

....Mr Austin, speaking in London at a debate on the future of shale gas in Britain, said that IGas already paid hundreds of thousands of pounds every year into independently-administered community funds which contributed “directly, parish by parish”, to the communities in which it operates.

But he called on government for further reform so that local councils retained the entire take of the business rates paid by fracking firms....

Companies could then “go back to that community and say, as a consequence of shale gas development in this area... there are more bobbies on the beat, more teachers in the local primary school. That makes a difference,” he said.