Frack Off: Activists Blockade Fracking Drill

Update: it has now end­ed — a suc­cess­ful 7 hour occu­pa­tion on the gates and no arrests

18.6.2012

Anti-frack­ing group, Frack Off, is blockad­ing the site of Cuadrilla Resource’s drilling rig. Twen­ty peo­ple descend­ed on the site at 5am and are blockad­ing the entrance. The site is owned by PR Mar­riot who is Cuadrilla’s lead drilling con­trac­tors.

The action is stop­ping work on the drill which is being worked on in prepa­ra­tion for more frack­ing explo­ration in Lan­cashire. Frack Off is high­light­ing the threat posed by the tidal wave of extreme ener­gy extrac­tion meth­ods that are being pushed by the gov­ern­ment and a num­ber of most­ly US and Aus­tralian com­pa­nies. The action is the begin­ning of a con­cert­ed cam­paign by peo­ple across the coun­try to stop the intro­duc­tion of these dan­ger­ous prac­tices before it is too late.

Despite the mount­ing evi­dence from the Unit­ed States that the exploita­tion of uncon­ven­tion­al fos­sil fuels such as shale gas and coal bed methane (CBM) threat­ens to poi­son the envi­ron­ment, fur­ther desta­bilise the cli­mate and is impli­cat­ed in ris­ing toll on human health includ­ing increas­ing can­cer rates, cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ments are doing all they can to push through the intro­duc­tion of these new ener­gy extrac­tion meth­ods in the face of grow­ing pub­lic oppo­si­tion.

Last month the Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change Min­is­ter Gre­go­ry Bark­er announced in par­lia­ment that the “Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to seek full eco­nom­ic recov­ery of UK hydro­car­bon resources, both con­ven­tion­al and uncon­ven­tion­al”, a posi­tion which amounts to a dec­la­ra­tion of war on the peo­ple and envi­ron­ment of the British Isles. Full eco­nom­ic recov­ery will involve coat­ing the coun­try­side with drilling sites and pipelines while poi­son­ing the air and water and the emis­sion of vast quan­ti­ties or car­bon diox­ide into the atmos­phere.

The main jus­ti­fi­ca­tion used for the need for this destruc­tive course of action is that we face an ener­gy cri­sis and need this gas to “keep the lights on”. In real­i­ty uncon­ven­tion­al fos­sil fuels are very expen­sive to extract and the amount that could be extract­ed is a small frac­tion of the gas from the North Sea that we have squan­dered over the last 40 years. The choice we face is between con­tin­u­ing to feed our addic­tion to increas­ing expen­sive and dan­ger­ous fos­sil fuels or putting a stop to the vicious eco­nom­ic sys­tem that requires them.

There is a gap­ing dis­con­nect between the green rhetoric that is thrown around by gov­ern­ments and cor­po­ra­tions alike and the dirty, dan­ger­ous and impov­er­ished future that they are actu­al­ly advo­cat­ing in their quest for a quick buck. This pri­ori­tis­ing of cor­po­rate greed over the inter­ests of peo­ple and ecosys­tems while pre­tend­ing to care about them, has no bet­ter poster child than the Rio+20 Earth Sum­mit that starts on Wednes­day.

Twen­ty years after world lead­ers met in Rio de Janeiro and promised to address the envi­ron­men­tal and social prob­lems afflict­ing the plan­et they will meet again, to promise, again, to do some­thing about the now even worse prob­lems we face. As with twen­ty years ago they have no inten­tion of actu­al­ly doing any­thing that would put a check on the sys­tem of cor­po­rate exploita­tion that is destroy­ing the ecosys­tems we rely on. This is why ordi­nary peo­ple must take a stand to stop the destruc­tion if any­thing is every going to change.

For more info have a look at:

Twit­ter: www.twitter.com/frack_off
Face­book: www.facebook.com/frackoffuk
Web­site: www.frack-off.org
Pic­tures:  http://s.coop/pzid