Anti-fracking protestors join occupation of Cuadrilla site

14 August 2014

14 August 2014

At mid­day today, pro­tes­tors from Reclaim the Pow­er set up camp at Pre­ston New Road, at frack­ing com­pa­ny Cuadrilla’s pro­posed drilling site. Approx­i­mate­ly 1000 atten­dees will stay for six days, to take direct action and share skills and knowl­edge. They do so in sup­port of the local community’s fight against Cuadrilla’s plans to drill for shale gas in Lancashire.[1]

Last year, the Reclaim the Pow­er camp shut down Cuadrilla’s oper­a­tions in Bal­combe, Sus­sex for a week. The com­pa­ny lat­er announced that they would not frack the site, and the Bal­combe com­mu­ni­ty has set up an ini­tia­tive to sup­ply their area with renew­able energy.[2]

In 2011, Black­pool expe­ri­enced earth­quakes caused by frack­ing. Han­nah Jones from Reclaim the Pow­er said:

“Black­pool is where the frack­ing indus­try start­ed in the UK, and this is where it has to stop. Besides the dam­age it can cause to water and air local­ly, fracked gas can be as bad for the cli­mate as coal. We need ener­gy that’s sus­tain­able, demo­c­ra­t­ic, and afford­able, instead of cor­po­rate con­trolled fos­sil fuels.”

Since August 7th, a group of Lan­cashire grand­moth­ers, moth­ers, and chil­dren have been occu­py­ing a field on Pre­ston New Road – one of Cuadrilla’s pro­posed drill sites. Local res­i­dents hand­ed in a record-break­ing 14,000 objec­tions to a coun­cil con­sul­ta­tion on Cuadrilla’s plans.[3] When asked why the local women are occu­py­ing the field, Tina Louise from Lan­cashire said,

“The shale gas indus­try and Cuadrilla in par­tic­u­lar have not act­ed hon­est­ly in their deal­ings with our com­mu­ni­ty and are not to be trust­ed with the health and well-being of our chil­dren. We do not want them here and so are gath­er­ing to make sure we are heard and we are call­ing oth­ers to help us ampli­fy this. As air and water do not rec­og­nize coun­ty bound­aries, the defence is for every­body in the UK.”

[1] Press pack with more detailed camp infor­ma­tion avail­able. [2] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/17/balcombe-fracking-energy-community-renewables [3]http://www.foe.co.uk/news/14000-people-call-frack-free-lancashire

How to get to the camp

Pro­gramme (includ­ing march on Sun­day, day of action on Mon­day)