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According to the Daily Telegraph, the chief executive of Centrica, the company that owns British Gas, Mr Sam Laidlaw, said at Davos that hopes were misplaced that development of shale gas deposits in Britain would be a miracle solution to the country's declining North Sea oil production, and "a game-changer" for the British economy. This was in marked contrast to the United States, where the recovery of shale gas has lowered energy costs to US manufacturers and turned the country into a net exporter of energy. Mr Laidlaw cited several reasons for his pessimism; for example the environmentalist opposition to shale gas extraction, the density of the population in the gas-bearing area, the lack of infrastructure to distribute the gas and the absence of political will to overcome...