“Extreme gas” project proposal gets heated response in Wells

A packed pub­lic meet­ing at Wells Town Hall on Tues­day night, gave a heat­ed response to the pro­pos­als by UK Methane to car­ry out test drilling for Coalbed Methane in Som­er­set.

Over a hun­dred peo­ple came to hear about the pro­pos­als from the devel­op­ers and protest groups in a bal­anced debate.  In the event, the devel­op­ers rep­re­sent­ed by Mr. Ger­wyn Williams of UK Methane pulled out just hours before the meet­ing start­ed leav­ing the floor to the oppo­si­tion.  The meet­ing was orga­nized by the alliance of groups under the umbrel­la of Frack Free Som­er­set.

Coalbed Methane is one of a num­ber of inter­re­lat­ed ‘extreme gas’ extrac­tion tech­nolo­gies (includ­ing frack­ing for shale gas, and under­ground coal gasi­fi­ca­tion). Coalbed Methane is a process for extract­ing gas from coal seams fair­ly close to the sur­face.

Som­er­set res­i­dents heard from speak­ers rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous oppo­si­tion groups includ­ing Tran­si­tion Keyn­sham, Frack Off, and Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide.

Lau­ra Cor­field from Tran­si­tion Keyn­sham detailed how UK Methane are about to sub­mit a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to car­ry out test drilling in the Hicks Gate area of Keyn­sham to Bath and North East Som­er­set Coun­cil.

She said:  “All Som­er­set res­i­dents should be con­cerned about these pro­pos­als and it is vital that they now lodge their objec­tions to UK Methane’s plan­ning appli­ca­tion.  If we don’t stop them now, we can expect drilling rigs all over Som­er­set, endan­ger­ing our water sup­plies and local envi­ron­ment.”

Edward Lloyd-Davies from the nation­al group ‘Frack Off’ relat­ed the mul­ti­ple prob­lems expe­ri­enced in the US and Aus­tralia where coalbed methane has been going on for some years.  These include methane escapes, con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of drink­ing water, huge quan­ti­ties of pro­duced water con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with tox­ic salts need­ing dis­pos­al and sub­si­dence.  He pro­duced esti­mates of the poten­tial extent of drilling in Som­er­set based on infor­ma­tion from UK Methane’s Aus­tralian par­ent com­pa­ny. This indi­cat­ed up to 2100 drilling sites with exten­sive gas pipelines across the Som­er­set coun­try­side.

A spokesper­son from Ris­ing Tide said: “It is no good this indus­try claim­ing that they will do it dif­fer­ent­ly in the UK because we have tighter reg­u­la­tion.  The licens­ing regime for the ‘extreme gas’ in the UK is based on off-shore oil extrac­tion.  Reg­u­la­tion falls between the Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change, the Envi­ron­ment Agency, the Health and Safe­ty Exec­u­tive and local plan­ning author­i­ties and is total­ly unco­or­di­nat­ed.  Expe­ri­ence in Lan­cashire has shown one com­pa­ny oper­at­ing out­side its plan­ning per­mis­sion and in con­tra­ven­tion of its plan­ning con­di­tions.”

Wells Town Coun­cil­lor, Chris Briton chaired the meet­ing and heard local res­i­dents express strong con­cerns about pol­lu­tion of drink­ing water and local rivers and envi­ron­men­tal impacts on the Som­er­set coun­try­side.

The audi­ence was over­whelm­ing­ly opposed the UK Methane’s pro­pos­als.