Natural Gas Drilling Rig Stormed by Anti-Fracking Protesters

2.11.11

2.11.11

This morn­ing nine peo­ple, from the nation­al anti- frack­ing net­work from Frack Off, have halt­ed work at Cuadrilla Resources drilling site in Hes­keth Bank, Lan­cashire. They ran on to the Frack­ing site ear­ly this morn­ing and scaled the drilling rig using climb­ing equip­ment. They aim to sit on top of the drilling rig for as long as pos­si­ble to stop the drilling.

The action is aimed at high­light­ing the hypocrisy behind the ‘Shale Gas Envi­ron­men­tal Sum­mit’ start­ing today in Lon­don: a con­fer­ence spon­sored by a host of com­pa­nies involved in the oil and gas indus­try who are try­ing to spin the rapid expan­sion into the untapped fos­sil fuel as ‘green’ [1].

Cam­paign­ers are act­ing in sup­port of the ‘Frack Mob’ mass action hap­pen­ing out­side the sum­mit at 3pm lat­er today [2].

Both actions aim to counter the PR offen­sive of the shale gas indus­try and bring pub­lic atten­tion to the harm frack­ing has been linked to.

Hydraulic Frac­tur­ing, or ‘frack­ing’ is a con­tro­ver­sial method of nat­ur­al gas extrac­tion, in which a mix­ture of water, sand and chem­i­cals is inject­ed into the ground at high pres­sure, crack­ing shale rock and releas­ing the gas [3]. It has been the sub­ject of much con­tention due to numer­ous reports link­ing the method to water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, health prob­lems and earth­quakes [4]. The indus­try is in its infan­cy in the UK, and there are plans for up to 800 wells in Lan­cashire alone [5].

Jen­ny Boykin, a spokesper­son for Frack Off, said “Frack­ing uses huge amounts of water mixed with tox­ic chem­i­cals, a large frac­tion of which are nev­er recov­ered. The frack­ing flu­id also leach­es chem­i­cals like arsenic out of the rocks when it is used mak­ing it even more tox­ic and so the flu­id that is recov­ered becomes a big dis­pos­al prob­lem. The con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of irri­ga­tion water means that everyone’s food sup­plies could poten­tial­ly be affect­ed. Frack­ing in the Unit­ed States has already result­ed in numer­ous spills of these flu­ids.”

Col­in East­man, one of the climbers, said, “Con­ven­tion­al fos­sil fuels have begun to run out and the sys­tem is mov­ing towards more extreme forms of ener­gy like frack­ing, tar sands, and deep water drilling. The move towards ‘extreme ener­gy’ is lit­er­al­ly scrap­ping the bot­tom of the bar­rel, suck­ing the last most dif­fi­cult to reach fos­sil fuels from the plan­et at a time when we should be rapid­ly reduc­ing our con­sump­tion alto­geth­er and look­ing for sus­tain­able alter­na­tives. In the UK frack­ing for shale gas is planned along­side, not instead of, extrac­tion of con­ven­tion­al fos­sil fuels like coal.”

Pic­tures are being uploaded here:  http://s.coop/7hwi

Look at the web­site for more info: www.frack-off.org
Fol­low us on twit­ter: @frack_off
Fol­low us on Face­book: www.facebook.com/frackoffuk
Or e‑mail:  media@frack-off.org
Phone: 07931195505

Notes:
[1] Envi­ron­men­tal sum­mit details:  http://www.smi-online.co.uk/events/overview.asp?is=0&ref=3742

[2] press release for the frack mob:  http://frack-off.org.uk/press-release-anti-fracking-protesters-plan-to-shut-down-an-industry-environmental-summit/

[3] short film explain­ing what frack­ing is:
 http://frack-off.org.uk/fracking-hell/watch-the-film/

[4]  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050025/Earthquakes-Lancashire-coast-WERE-caused-drilling-gas-experts-warn-energy-operation-threatened-closure.html

[5]  http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/sep/21/gas-field-blackpool-dallas-sea