Fracking on trial — again!

The safe­ty of frack­ing will be chal­lenged at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court today, as 3 peo­ple go on tri­al fol­low­ing a protest at Cuadrilla’s Hes­keth Bank site, Lan­cashire, in Decem­ber last year. (1) The tri­al is expect­ed to last until Thurs­day.

 

The safe­ty of frack­ing will be chal­lenged at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court today, as 3 peo­ple go on tri­al fol­low­ing a protest at Cuadrilla’s Hes­keth Bank site, Lan­cashire, in Decem­ber last year. (1) The tri­al is expect­ed to last until Thurs­day.

 

On 1 Decem­ber 2011, pro­tes­tors from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide occu­pied the test drilling rig, shut­ting it down for 13 hours. (2) (3)

Hydraulic frac­tur­ing is a method of extract­ing gas in shale rock. Huge amounts of water mixed with tox­ic chem­i­cals are forced into the ground at high pres­sure, a large pro­por­tion of which are nev­er recov­ered. This flu­id also leach­es arsenic out of rocks, cre­at­ing a dan­ger­ous cock­tail that’s dif­fi­cult to dis­pose of. In the Unit­ed States numer­ous spills of these flu­ids have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed irri­ga­tion water, affect­ing food sup­plies, and the health of sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. (4) (5) (6)

Rachel Green­wood from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide said: “Once frack­ing takes place con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of land and water, and the dev­as­ta­tion of local ecosys­tems, is inevitable. You can­not do it safe­ly, and reg­u­la­tion of frack­ing is total­ly inef­fec­tive. Cuadrilla were able to con­tin­ue drilling after their plan­ning per­mis­sion had expired. If frack­ing is allowed to go ahead in Lan­cashire it could hap­pen through­out the UK.”

There are twelve licens­es to frack for shale gas in the UK, five of which are held by Cuadrilla resources in Lan­cashire. (7)

Cuadrilla’s activ­i­ties are opposed both by local groups (8) (9) and cli­mate cam­paign­ers. On 10th July 2012, three peo­ple were found guilty of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass fol­low­ing an occu­pa­tion of the Cuadrilla Resources test drilling site at Banks. (10) On 18 June, 20 peo­ple block­ad­ed Cuadrilla Resource’s drilling rig at PR Marriot’s com­pound in Chester­field, lock­ing them­selves to the gates to pre­vent the rig from being moved to Cuadrilla’s site in Lan­cashire. (11)

UK Methane recent­ly announced their inten­tion to apply for plan­ning per­mis­sion to drill a Coal Bed Methane bore­hole in Keyn­sham, Bris­tol. (12)

Coal Bed Methane involves drilling into coal seams to extract gas in a sim­i­lar man­ner to frack­ing. A wide vari­ety of tech­niques are used depend­ing on the nature of the coal seam. If the seam is per­me­able enough, pump­ing water out of the seam will be enough to start gas flow­ing from the well, but if not, some sort of stim­u­la­tion will be need­ed. Often this is hydraulic frac­tur­ing.

Because the coal seams tend to be rel­a­tive­ly close to the sur­face, and because such large quan­ti­ties of water are pumped out of the coal seam (water that has been mari­nad­ing in coal for thou­sands of years), prob­lems with water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and leak­ing methane tend to occur regard­less of whether frack­ing is per­formed. (13)

There is cur­rent­ly plan­ning per­mis­sion for around 60 Coal Bed Methane wells in Britain. (14)

Notes for edi­tors

1. Two of the defen­dants are charged with aggra­vat­ed tres­pass (sec­tion 68 Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act 1994). The oth­er is charged with an offence under sec­tion 69 Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act 1994, which is fail­ing to leave land as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble when direct­ed to do so by the senior offi­cer at the scene.

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2011/dec/01/fracking-lancashire-hesketh-bank-cuadrilla

3. Pho­tos of the action are avail­able at: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/71113300@N08/

4. ‘Cracks in the Façade: EPA Traced Pol­lu­tion of Under­ground Water Sup­ply to Hydraulic Frac­tur­ing’ (Aug 2011 – EWG)
http://static.ewg.org/reports/2011/fracking/cracks_in_the_facade.pdf

5. ‘Methane con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of drink­ing water accom­pa­ny­ing gas-well drilling and hydraulic frac­tur­ing’ (May 2011 – Duke)
http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/cgc/pnas2011.pdf

6.‘Shale gas: a pro­vi­sion­al assess­ment of cli­mate change and envi­ron­men­tal impacts’ (Jan 2011 – Tyn­dall Cen­tre)
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/sites/default/files/coop_shale_gas_report_final_200111.pdf

7. http://frack-off.org.uk/new-homepage/bad-guys/locations/

8. Res­i­dents Action on Fylde Frack­ing: http://stopfyldefracking.org.uk/

9. Rib­ble Estu­ary Against Frack­ing: http://reafg.blogspot.co.uk/

10. The defence was sup­port­ed by a num­ber of wit­ness­es, includ­ing aca­d­e­mics from the UK and US and mem­bers of the local com­mu­ni­ty, who tes­ti­fied regard­ing the con­se­quences of shale gas extrac­tion, in terms of cli­mate change, water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, earth­quakes and severe health effects. For more infor­ma­tion see: http://frackingontrial.org/

11. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/jun/18/fracking-protest-chesterfield-cuadrilla-hesketh-bank

12. UK Methane have con­tact­ed Tran­si­tion Keyn­sham to announce that they will apply for plan­ning per­mis­sion to drill a Coal Bed Methane bore­hole in Keyn­sham: http://www.frackfreesomerset.org

13. http://frack-off.org.uk/coal-bed-methane-the-evil-twin-of-shale-gas/

14. http://frack-off.org.uk/bad-guys/locations/

For more infor­ma­tion see:
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.frackfreesomerset.org
www.frack-off.org.uk
www.frackingontrial.org