ST. ANNES, ENGLAND — Just outside Blackpool, a town of faded cabarets and amusement rides on the Irish Sea, a drilling rig sits in a muddy farm field. The big white and yellow machine represents the latest attempt by Cuadrilla Resources to see if it can bring Northwest England the sort of shale gas revolution that has transformed the U.S. energy picture.

Cuadrilla’s chief executive, Francis Egan, who joined the company four months ago after a career spent in the international oil industry at giants like Marathon and BHP Billiton, says that Cuadrilla believes there is 200 trillion cubic feet of gas beneath the company’s 900-square-kilometer, or 348-square-mile, concession in the area.

“That is a huge amount of gas,” he says. Even if only 10 percent were extractable, it would be enough to fuel Britain’s current consumption for about seven years.

Britain is one of several European countries where experts think there could be commercially exploitable shale gas. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that there may be as much as 600 trillion cubic feet of recoverable shale gas in Europe, or about 40 years’ consumption.