Ongoing Blockade Of Fracking Site In Sussex

Frack­ing com­pa­ny Cuadrilla Resources are try­ing to start drilling in Bal­combe, West Sus­sex and the com­mu­ni­ty is try­ing to stop them.

Update (2:45pm): Begin­ning to look like Bal­combe 1 – Cuadrilla 0. Thoughts are turn­ing to Day 2 of block­ade!

Update (12:45pm): Now over 250 peo­ple at site. Come down and join the par­ty!

Update (10:45am): Large crowd. Truck isn’t going any­where. Come on down!

Update (9:45am): Gaze­bos are up. Gala set­tling in for long haul. Come on down!

Update (9:00am): Great Gas Gala going strong. Trucks now backed up all through the vil­lage.

Update (8:30am): Great Gas Gala is well under­way. A truck tring to deliv­er equip­ment is being blocked from enter­ing the frack­ing site. Num­bers are grow­ing.

Pho­tos of evolv­ing block­ade at Cuadrilla Resources frack­ing site in Bal­combe, Sus­sex. Around 250 peo­ple, truck immo­bilised out­side site, seems to have mys­te­ri­ous­ly devel­oped fault with brakes. Gaze­bos up, legal brief­ing for locals, anoth­er truck stopped in vil­lage. Anoth­er 15 more trucks were due today. Now seems unlike­ly any will get on. Cuadrilla had want­ed to be up and drilling by week­end.

Cuadrilla have tem­po­rary plan­ning per­mis­sion to drill at site in Bal­combe. Per­mis­sion expires in Sep­tem­ber and drilling will take at least 6 weeks so any sig­nif­i­cant delays could scup­per their plans. They are explor­ing for tight (shale) oil, and the Kim­mer­age Clay shale lay­er they are tar­get­ing is sim­i­lar to the Bakken Shale in North Dako­ta. Full scale pro­duc­tion would involve thou­sands of wells, pipelines and com­pres­sor sta­tions coat­ing the Sus­sex coun­try­side. This is before you get to water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, air pol­lu­tion and accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change. See  http://frack-off.org.uk/latest-news-from-the-great-gas-gala/ for updates