Fracking Protest Camp Set Up to Protect Horse Hill, UK

Horse Hill Devel­op­ments has been drilling at the Horse Hill site since the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber with a promise to cam­paign­ers that it would not be frack­ing there, but Frack Free Sur­rey fear the com­pa­ny is test­ing the ground for future projects in the Weald.

The com­pa­ny does not cur­rent­ly have a license to frack, but stat­ed on Sep­tem­ber 18 that “the infor­ma­tion gained through these activ­i­ties will pro­vide valu­able insights into the tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty of uncon­ven­tion­al devel­op­ment else­where in the Weald Basin”.

More than 80 peo­ple attend­ed a meet­ing held by Red­hill Greens and Frack Free Sur­rey on Mon­day (Octo­ber 13), to dis­cuss the drilling and the pos­si­ble threat of frack­ing across the weald.

 

 

Rob Bas­to, from Frack Free Sur­rey, said:“If frack­ing goes ahead in the area it could result in thou­sands of wells in the south-east with dis­as­trous con­se­quences – for our local envi­ron­ment and the glob­al cli­mate. We are utter­ly opposed to any new fos­sil fuel devel­op­ment in our area.”

Bren­da Pol­lack, from Friends of the Earth, said cam­paign­ers are con­cerned as many com­pa­nies are now “sala­mi slic­ing” their appli­ca­tions, in order to have a greater chance of suc­cess. Explorato­ry licences are grant­ed in the first stage, which means a frack­ing licence can be eas­i­er to get once indus­tri­al work has already tak­en place on the land.

But Ms Pol­lack said cam­paign­ers were keen not to scare mon­ger.

She said: “We are con­cerned that ulti­mate­ly the com­pa­ny wants to extract shale oil. The site is in the Weald Basin – an area known to con­tain oil trapped in shale rock. While they may be using con­ven­tion­al tech­niques at this test­ing phase, there is every rea­son to believe it could lead to frack­ing.

“Chas­ing dif­fi­cult to reach fos­sil fuels is not the answer to our ener­gy prob­lems. Sur­rey should be invest­ing in clean­er renew­able ener­gy projects to help reduce the impacts of cli­mate change.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cam­paign­ers have set up camp at the Horse Hill site near Hor­ley

Ms Pol­lack said many peo­ple are con­cerned as Mag­el­lan Petro­le­um

Cor­po­ra­tion, who have a 35% stake in Horse Hill Devel­op­ments, are also part­nered with Cel­tique Ener­gy who recent­ly had an appli­ca­tion turned down to drill at Nine Acre Copse in Fern­hurst.

In Sep­tem­ber, Scott Bradley, chief exec­u­tive of Horse Hill Devel­op­ments Lim­it­ed, said: “We are delight­ed with the progress being made and the drilling per­for­mance to date. We now look for­ward to the next phase of this con­ven­tion­al project and await our tar­get eval­u­a­tion results eager­ly.”