LONDON: Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron has given his unequivocal backing to the divisive “fracking” process used to extract shale gas from rocks, risking angering his party’s supporters from more rural areas.

Britain is thought to have major shale gas reserves which could help reverse a rising dependency on energy imports, but the energy industry is having to tread carefully to reassure a skeptical public and vocal environmental lobby.

Fracking for shale gas could help reduce energy bills, create jobs and provide extra funds for communities where the resource is found, Cameron wrote in an editorial in Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.

“If we don’t back this technology, we will miss a massive opportunity to help families with their bills and make our country more competitive,” the leader of the governing Conservative Party wrote.

Hydraulic fracturing or fracking retrieves gas and oil trapped in tight layered rock formations by injecting high-pressure water, sand and chemicals.

Critics say it can trigger small earthquakes, pollute the water supply and spoil pristine parts of the countryside.

Protesters have been active at one drilling site in Balcombe, West Sussex, in a constituency in the Conservative party’s traditional southern heartland.

Cameron said he supported fracking in both the north and south of the country, dismissing recent suggestions by a lawmaker that the process could be confined to less populous and remote areas in the north.

Cameron argued fracking was safe and, if it was properly regulated, there was no evidence it would contaminate water supplies or cause environmental damage.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said earlier that North America’s shale boom is insulating the world from steep oil price spikes as several OPEC members struggle to maintain production due to unrest and infrastructure problems.

The agency, which consults developed nations on energy policies, said: “Right now, OPEC’s main challenge seems to be less future demand softness than practical difficulties in bringing production to market.”

OPEC supply outages helped send benchmark Brent oil futures up $4 a barrel month-on-month to a four-month high of $107.43 in July.

By contrast, non-OPEC supplies increased by 570,000 bpd in July to 54.9 million bpd, the IEA said, with North America providing around 40 percent of the growth.

OPEC also said output from rival producers had risen rapidly last month, though by a more modest 170,000 bpd, while the group’s own supply had fallen.

“Canada, rather than the US, was responsible for most of this increase,” the IEA said, adding that strong growth in North America is expected to lift total non-OPEC supply to as much as 55.4 million in the fourth quarter.

That will help meet global oil demand, with demand growth expected to accelerate in 2014 to 1.1 million bpd, compared with 0.9 million bpd in 2013.