The Government has announced it will set up an Office for Unconventional Gas to provide a single point of contact for investors and streamline the regulatory process.

During his Autumn Statement, Chancellor George Osborne said the coalition would consult on the tax regime for shale gas. He said certainty had been provided for investors in renewables and gas, by setting funding limits on the Levy Control Framework up to 2020. Support is set to be capped at £7.6bn per year, in real 2012 prices, by 2020-21 - more than triple the £2.35bn currently available in 2012-13.

The Chancellor's announcement fuels an expectation that fracking will be allowed to restart as early as March 2013.

Britain is believed to hold shale gas reserves worth £1.5trn. A 2010 British Geological Survey study estimated that there could be up to 150bn cubic meters of gas - or around two years of UK gas consumption - in the country.

'We are consulting on new tax incentives for shale gas and announcing the creation of a single office so that regulation is safe but simple,' he said in his half-yearly budget statement.

In 2011, the UK banned the highly controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" for shale gas, where water and chemicals are injected at high pressure into rock to unlock trapped gas, following two earthquakes near a fracking site near Blackpool.