Fracking Update: A New Phase Of The Struggle Beginning

As the frack­ing indus­try mar­shals its forces for inten­si­fied assault on com­mu­ni­ties across the British Isles, here is a look at the cur­rent state of the threat across the coun­try and what the indus­try is plan­ning in the com­ing months.

How we got here

The last decade has seen an explo­sion in oil and gas drilling as con­ven­tion­al, easy to extract, hydro­car­bons have become hard­er to find and the sys­tem has been forced to resort to new more aggres­sive extrac­tion tech­niques. While oil prices are cur­rent­ly well below their 2008 peak, and new drilling has been stalled in many places, this hasn’t stopped prepa­ra­tions for con­tin­ued expan­sion once prices rise again. The indus­try is busy gath­er­ing geo­log­i­cal data with the inten­tion of secur­ing fur­ther invest­ment, and with oil prices now creep­ing upwards are prepar­ing for anoth­er boom peri­od, with its atten­dant wave of eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion.

Seri­ous attempts to push frack­ing in this coun­try began (most­ly under the radar) around the 2007/2008 peak in oil prices, as var­i­ous com­pa­nies saw a chance for a quick buck. The fall­out of Cuadrilla’s infa­mous earth­quakes at Preese Hall in Lan­cashire in 2011, and the com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance which has mobilised since then, has seri­ous­ly affect­ed the frack­ing indus­try’s prospects. Since 2011 drilling of onshore explo­ration wells in the UK has fall­en by two thirds and that shows no sign of chang­ing in the near future. How­ev­er, while many com­pa­nies have pulled out, and oth­ers tak­ing a back seat for now, a hard core are slog­ging for­ward.

Uncon­ven­tion­al oil and gas extrac­tion, col­lo­qui­al­ly referred to as frack­ing, cov­ers a broad range of more extreme hydro­car­bon extrac­tion meth­ods tar­get­ing rel­a­tive­ly imper­me­able rock for­ma­tions. This includes shale gas, tight/shale oil, tight gas, coalbed methane (CBM) and under­ground coal gasi­fi­ca­tion (UCG). While these meth­ods dif­fer great­ly in tech­ni­cal details, they are all dri­ven by sim­i­lar pres­sures and have sim­i­lar­ly intense impacts. Over the last decade or so we have seen sig­nif­i­cant attempts to push for­ward all these meth­ods, but in the face of grow­ing resis­tance and unsta­ble prices the more spec­u­la­tive or less prof­itable meth­ods, UCG and CBM, have been depri­ori­tised.

But a new 14th onshore licens­ing round in 2014/2015 saw whole new swathes of the coun­try licensed, with Ineos alone acquir­ing over a 1 mil­lion acres. With around 10 mil­lion of acres of the UK now licensed, com­mu­ni­ties are under threat from the indus­try like nev­er before. Full-scale frack­ing in these areas would mean the drilling of many thou­sands of wells, at den­si­ties of eight wells per square mile or more, plus oth­er frack­ing infra­struc­ture like pipelines, com­pres­sor sta­tions, pro­cess­ing plants and waste dis­pos­al facil­i­ties carv­ing up the coun­try­side. This would result in a host of severe impacts includ­ing water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, air pol­lu­tion, mas­sive amounts of toxic/radioactive waste and car­nage on rur­al roads from the mas­sive amounts of truck traf­fic.

Fracking Frontlines

While every area which has been licensed is under some sort of threat and many unli­censed areas could be licensed in the future, the threat is more imme­di­ate in some areas than oth­ers. Even peo­ple not liv­ing in these areas should be extreme­ly con­cerned, as any new frack­ing foothold pro­vides a spring board from which it could spread to oth­er areas. These are some of the most impor­tant cur­rent front lines in the fight against frack­ing:

Lancashire – Cuadrilla Resources

(Shale Gas) Frack­ing com­pa­ny Cuadrilla has tak­en the best part of 7 years to get back to where it was, fol­low­ing the 2011 earth­quakes it caused in Lanac­shire and the sub­se­quent explo­sion of resis­tance to frack­ing. It has know drilled 2 of an orig­nal­ly 4 planned wells at its Pre­ston New Road (PNR) appraisal site, while its oth­er new site at Roseacre Wood is hav­ing its plan­ning refusal appealed in cen­tral gov­ern­ment. A year and a half into activ­i­ty at PNR the ongo­ing resis­tance is clear­ly tak­ing its toll. Cuadrilla appears to be about 6 months behind its orig­i­nal time­line, even after hav­ing qui­et­ly scaled back its plans to two instead of the ini­tial four wells. Numer­ous con­trac­tors have dropped out of the project as resis­tance has spread to var­i­ous sup­port sites. Cuadrilla is cur­rent­ly wind­ing down its drilling oper­a­tion and plan­ning to remove the drilling rig from the site and bring on its frac pump set, and start hydraulic frac­tur­ing of the 2 wells. This new phase of activ­i­ty, with increased flows of trucks equip­ment, chem­i­cals, frac sand and waste, presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to inflict fur­ther delays to the project, at great addi­tion­al cost to Cuadrilla.

Sussex/Surrey – UKOG, Angus etc.

(Tight/Shale Oil) The threat of tight (shale) oil extrac­tion in the Weald (between the South and North Downs) in Sus­sex and Sur­rey is now becom­ing crit­i­cal. With frack­ing com­pa­nies UK Oil & Gas Invest­ments (UKOG) and Angus Ener­gy act­ing as its main cheer­leader, a series of wells have been drilled and test­ed at Horse Hill and Brock­ham in Sur­rey and Broad­ford Bridge in West Sus­sex. More tight oil tests are planned at these sites over the com­ing months, as well as at Bal­combe where Angus has tak­en over as oper­a­tor of the site from Cuadrilla. New wells are also planned at Lei­th Hill and at 2 undis­closed sites in Surrey/West Sus­sex. All this is tar­get­ing tight oil in lime­stone (micrite) lay­ers with­in the Kim­meridge Clay shale, which would require
drilling thou­sands of wells to exploit. The Brock­ham site which has an exist­ing plan­ning per­mis­sion for pro­duc­tion is par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ry­ing.

North Yorkshire – Third Energy, Ineos etc.

(Tight/Shale Gas) In North York­shire, as in Lan­cashire, the Bow­land Shale (or tight sand­stone for­ma­tions with­in it) are the pri­ma­ry tar­get, and com­pa­nies are scram­bling to try to exploit it. Cuadrilla and INEOS have recent­ly acquired licences in the area, but an exist­ing licence hold­er Third Ener­gy has a head start, with plan­ning per­mis­sion for a hydraulic frac­tur­ing test on its Kir­by Mis­per­ton well. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny is in some fina­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and this has so far stopped it from sat­is­fy­ing cer­tain finan­cial con­di­tions attached to get the final hydraulic frac­tur­ing per­mis­sions from the Oil & Gas Author­i­ty. Ineos are also busy try­ing to organ­ise a seis­mic sur­vey in their North York­shire licence areas, but are run­ning into sig­nif­i­cant resis­tance from local peo­ple.

East Midlands – Ineos & IGas Energy

(Shale Gas) A major frack­ing push is also under­way in North Not­ting­hamshire where IGas Ener­gy (with the finan­cial back­ing of Ineos) is threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ties in Bas­set­law, and has con­struct­ed 2 sites at Springs Road in Mis­son and Tin­ker Lane near Blyth, and has plans to start drilling in the com­ing months. Mean­while, Ineos has also has licences in the area and has iden­ti­fied 3 test site (Marsh Lane, Harthill and Woddsetts), although only Harthill has man­aged to obtain plan­ning per­mis­sion so far and a legal chal­lenge may delay the start of work there.

Cheshire – Ineos & IGas Energy

(Shale Gas) – As with the East Mid­lands, IGas and Ineos are the main play­ers at present. IGas has plans to return and car­ry out addi­tion­al test­ing on the well it pre­vi­ous­ly drilled at Ellesmere Port and drill a new well on its Ince Marsh­es site, but ha so far been refused plan­ning per­mis­sion as both. As with the East Mid­lands, Ineos has plans for seis­mic sur­vey­ing across its new licence areas and this will reach Cheshire at some point. Ineos has also acquired a sub­stan­tial quan­ti­ty of frack­ing equip­ment (includ­ing five times as many frac pumps as Cuadrilla), asset-stripped from a Pol­ish frack­ing com­pa­ny and is stor­ing them at its Rock­sav­age chem­i­cal works in Run­corn.

Fracking Timeline

In the sec­ond half of 2018 the frack­ing indus­try is plan­ning a blitzkrieg of drilling and test­ing. Cuardilla’s much delayed and scaled-back plans at Pre­ston New Road (PNR) in Lan­cashire are just the most high-pro­file, and advanced, of these projects. Hydraulic frac­tur­ing on the wells at PNR could begin in Sep­tem­ber, but tight oil test­ing in Sussex/Surrey at Brock­ham, Horse Hill and Bal­combe over next few month could prove even more threat­en­ing. Tight oil has the poten­tial to move from explo­ration to pro­duc­tion much more quick­ly if not stopped, due to the low­er cost of the shal­low­er wells and abil­i­ty to tanker oil off site to a refi­nary with­out build­ing pipelines. The Brock­ham site which already has plan­ning per­mis­sion for pro­duc­tion, is par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ry­ing.

Attempts to start drilling at a num­ber of sites includ­ing Springs Road and Tin­ker Lane in Not­ting­hamshire, and Lei­th Hill in Sur­rey seem immi­nent, and Ineos’s site at Harthill in Rother­ham may not be far behind. Third Ener­gy’s frac­tur­ing tests at Kir­by Mis­per­ton are on hold for the moment, but a solu­tion to Third Ener­gy’s finan­cial prob­lems could change that very quick­ly. A num­ber of oth­er area of the coun­try are under less imme­di­ate lev­els of threat from plans for drilling and test­ing. Final­ly Ineos is push­ing hard to start its sec­ond round of seis­mic test­ing (after the East Mid­lands), in North York­shire, though it is increas­ing­ly hav­ing to resort to court action (includ­ing against the Nation­al Trust) in order to gain access to land.

Fracking Resistance

It’s not just geo­log­i­cal infor­ma­tion that the frack­ing indus­try is inter­est­ed in, “social data” on the eco­nom­ic risks asso­ci­at­ed with com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance is need­ed just as much. This is where the anti-frack­ing move­ment has been extreme­ly effec­tive up until now. The frack­ing indus­try is respond­ing by work­ing with gov­ern­ment to dis­man­tle some of the tools com­mu­ni­ties have used to delay these projects. There are plans to allow test wells to be drilled with­out plan­ning per­mis­sion and deci­sions on larg­er projects to be tak­en by cen­tral gov­ern­ment, bypass­ing more influ­ence­able coun­ty coun­cils.

The frack­ing fight is now mov­ing into a new phase where caus­ing phys­i­cal delays and ramp­ing up costs will hold the key to deter­ring future invest­ment in the indus­try. Fight­ing on numer­ous small fronts, the cur­rent­ly 300+ local anti-frack­ing groups have been delay­ing and ramp­ing up the costs of frack­ing projects, wear­ing down the oppo­si­tion and deter­ring the invest­ment on which the indus­try relies. After all these com­mu­ni­ties have lit­tle choice but to stand and fight. In the end this is a fight to the death, either the frack­ing com­pa­nies get to coat the coun­try in tens of thou­sands of wells or we dri­ve them in to bank­rupt­cy. There are no oth­er options.

For more infor­ma­tion see: frack-off.org.uk