Britain lacks any significant onshore infrastructure such as pipelines and processing facilities to handle a shale oil boom in the Home Counties. A study by the British Geological Survey of the “Weald” basin published this summer revealed that there were likely to be 4.4bn barrels of shale oil in the area, primarily beneath Surrey, Sussex and Kent. However, extracting this oil would be expensive when compared with the US due to the environmental considerations that will be imposed on drillers, experts say.