Frack­ing test site in Greater Man­ches­ter block­ad­ed with giant wind tur­bine blade

 

Fifty pro-renew­ables cam­paign­ers deliv­er 17 metre, 1.5 tonne wind tur­bine blade as “Christ­mas gift” for frack­ing com­pa­ny IGas

 

Entrance to Bar­ton Moss test site blocked, to pre­vent drilling vehi­cles from enter­ing

 

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At 5.30 this morn­ing (Mon­day 16^th Decem­ber 2013), fifty peo­ple blocked the entrance to IGas’s explorato­ry drilling site in Bar­ton Moss with a giant wind tur­bine blade. The cam­paign­ers arrived at the site in Sal­ford in Greater Man­ches­ter, pro­ceed­ed to unload and assem­ble the 17-metre blade from its three com­po­nent seg­ments. They were spot­ted by a secu­ri­ty guard who called the police, but the offi­cers who arrived on the scene were too late to pre­vent the block­ade from being set up.

 

The cam­paign­ers then left, leav­ing the heavy wind tur­bine blade in place across the entrance, com­plete with a large red Christ­mas bow. Cur­rent­ly all vehi­cle access the site is being sev­er­ly dis­rupt­ed by the 1.5‑tonne blade, which can­not be moved with­out large num­bers of peo­ple or spe­cial­ist equip­ment.

 

IGas have obtained per­mis­sion to drill a 3000 metre (10000 foot) test well at Bar­ton Moss, in the hope of extract­ing both coal bed methane and shale gas. If the tests prove suc­cess­ful, IGas would then be like­ly to use the con­tro­ver­sial extrac­tion method of hor­i­zon­tal slick­wa­ter hydraulic frac­tur­ing (or “frack­ing”) to blast gas out of the ground [1]. In the US, where frack­ing has been under­way for sev­er­al years, the prac­tice has been linked to water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, air pol­lu­tion, and risks to local water sup­plies, with over 1000 leaks and spills report­ed in one year in North Dako­ta alone [2]. If frack­ing were to spread across the UK, it would lead to the extrac­tion of large amounts of oil and gas that would oth­er­wise have remained in the ground, with seri­ous con­se­quences for the cli­mate [3].

 

The frack­ing indus­try itself has admit­ted that the prac­tice is unlike­ly to bring down ener­gy bills [4], and econ­o­mist Nicholas Stern has accused the Gov­ern­ment of “base­less eco­nom­ics” for claim­ing oth­er­wise [5]. Mean­while, the Gov­ern­men­t’s own Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change has released a report show­ing that a shift away from fos­sil fuels to renew­ables and ener­gy effi­cien­cy could save the UK pub­lic £85 bil­lion per year [6].

 

Fol­low­ing a sum­mer of high-pro­file anti-frack­ing protests at Bal­combe in West Sus­sex, which end­ed when the drilling com­pa­ny Cuadrilla with­drew its frack­ing appli­ca­tion [7], Bar­ton Moss is now wide­ly seen as the new front­line in the bat­tle for clean ener­gy in the UK [8], and in Novem­ber 2013 a “Bar­ton Moss Pro­tec­tion Camp” was set up at the site. Actions are fre­quent­ly launched from the camp to dis­rupt drilling activ­i­ties at the site, and at least ten peo­ple, includ­ing local res­i­dents, have been arrest­ed in the last few weeks [9]. This year’s anti-frack­ing protests seem to have shift­ed pub­lic opin­ion; accord­ing to nation­al polling by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham, sup­port for frack­ing dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly after the sum­mer protests at Bal­combe [10].

 

Today’s action was car­ried out by a group of peo­ple from all over the UK who had been inspired by the Reclaim The Pow­er protest camp at Bal­combe ear­li­er this year. San­dra Den­ton, who was one of the peo­ple who put the blade in place, said: “We’ve deliv­ered this ear­ly Christ­mas gift to IGas to remind them that we don’t need dam­ag­ing, risky and pol­lut­ing ener­gy sources like oil and gas to pow­er the UK. The Gov­ern­ment and the big ener­gy com­pa­nies are plan­ning to build a new wave of gas-fired pow­er sta­tions, part­ly fed by thou­sands of frack­ing wells across the British coun­try­side. This would lock us into using this expen­sive and dirty fos­sil fuel for decades to come, trap­ping us in a future of spi­ralling ener­gy prices and dis­as­trous floods, storms and droughts as cli­mate change kicks in. Mean­while, a shift to prop­er­ly insu­lat­ed homes pow­ered by clean, com­mu­ni­ty-owned or pub­licly-con­trolled renew­able ener­gy would res­cue mil­lions from fuel pover­ty, pre­vent thou­sands of win­ter deaths and give us all a decent chance at avoid­ing run­away cli­mate change.”

 

Rachel Thomp­son of Frack Free Greater Man­ches­ter, a sep­a­rate local group who are cam­paign­ing against frack­ing in the area, said: “The Gov­ern­men­t’s plan to increase our reliance on gas – includ­ing fracked gas — would lead to high­er ener­gy bills and more pol­lu­tion. The only rea­son they’re going down this path is because of the pow­er and influ­ence of the big ener­gy com­pa­nies. The Big Six can make far big­ger prof­its from fos­sil fuels than from clean ener­gy or home insu­la­tion schemes, which is why they’re using their cosy rela­tion­ship with Gov­ern­ment to block renew­able alter­na­tives and keep us all burn­ing their expen­sive gas. That’s why we all need to stand up for a fair­er, clean­er, more demo­c­ra­t­ic ener­gy sys­tem with­out the Big Six prof­i­teers in charge.”

 

Pearl Hop­kins, a local res­i­dent, said, “I did­n’t know today’s action was going to hap­pen but I’m very glad it did. It’s great that peo­ple are com­ing from all over the coun­try to sup­port us at Bar­ton Moss — and with cre­ative block­ades like this one. Local peo­ple have tried using all the offi­cial chan­nels to object to this scheme, but the Coun­cil and IGas seem deter­mined to brush our con­cerns under the car­pet and car­ry on regard­less. We’d like renew­able ener­gy for the future — not the destruc­tion of our towns and coun­try­side with thou­sands of drill sites.”

ENDS

 

Notes for Edi­tors

[1] http://frack-off.org.uk/frack­ing-man­ches­ter-igas-threat­ens-bar­ton-moss/

 

[2] http://www.propublica.org/arti­cle/the-oth­er-frack­ing-north-dako­tas-oil-boom-brings-dam­age-along-with-pros­peri

 

[3] The Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency has cal­cu­lat­ed that we need to leave two thirds of known con­ven­tion­al fos­sil fuels in the ground to have even a 50% chance of avoid­ing run­away cli­mate change. This cal­cu­la­tion does­n’t include uncon­ven­tion­al fos­sil fuel sources like shale gas and coal bed methane, which means we can’t real­ly afford to burn these forms of fuel at all. See Page 11 of http://newint.org/blog/the_fracking_files.pdf

 

[4] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/29/browne-frack­ing-not-reduce-uk-gas-prices-shale-ener­gy-bills

 

[5] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/pol­i­tic­s/base­less-eco­nom­ics-lord-stern-on-david-camerons-claims-that-a-uk-frack­ing-boom-can-bring-down-price-of-gas-8796758.html

 

[6] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/11/uk-car­bon-tar­gets-ben­e­fits

 

[7] http://www.resource.uk.com/article/UK/Cuadrilla_withdraws_planning_applications-3584#.Uq4AkOK3AgU

 

[8] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bar­ton-moss-the-lat­est-front-line-in-britains-uncon­ven­tion­al-ener­gy-rev­o­lu­tion-against-fracking-8967753.html

 

[9] http://northerngasgala.org.uk/

 

[10] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/02/frack­ing-protest-sup­port-shale-gas-poll