The low limit was intended to stop British fracking ever getting off the ground. In America it is 4.0, hundreds of times greater on a logarithmic scale. 

Cuadrilla’s Francis Egan said he has been ordered to fill his successful wells with concrete and shut everything down. He could revive the project quickly if the Government were to lift the earthquake ceiling to 1.5 and rush through planning consent for fracking and drilling. “We could be ready to rock and roll with two wells within six months, and another two within 12 months,” he told me. 

That would feed usable gas straight into a mains pipeline close by, in time for the coming winter. Mr Egan said he could produce a quarter trillion bcf (billions of cubic feet) from 40 wells based on a single four-acre site.

There is enough gas in the Bowland as a whole to displace UK imports entirely and to plug much of Germany’s gas deficit over the next decade. It would change the map of gas supply in Europe – while ‘levelling up’ with Northern jobs for good measure.  

There is a valid argument for letting Cuadrilla, Ineos, and others, give it a go, to see what really lies in the Bowland. If necessary, the Government should put up co-funding, since it has driven away private investors. “I don’t think we would object if the Government took a 50pc stake,” said Mr Egan.

I have not made up my mind but the fracking debate should be reopened. If the German Greens can swallow nuclear reactors for the immediate cause of Western democracy, who can baulk at compromise?  We are at war.