LONDON — The British government, in an effort to stoke interest from energy companies in extracting fuels from shale rock, said on Thursday that it was offering licenses for oil and gas exploration on 159 tracts of land.

The government said that 75 percent of the licenses being offered related to areas thought to contain shale gas or oil. Most of the blocks are in Northwest and Northeast England, and are believed to have substantial shale potential.

“We need to get shale gas moving,” Britain’s energy minister, Andrea Leadsom, said in a statement on Thursday.

The major British oil companies, BP and Shell, have so far stayed clear of the hunt for shale gas in Britain, stating that they had little interest in wading into the environmental controversy over extracting the fuel, at least until it is demonstrated that there is enough shale gas to make it commercially attractive.