EF! summer gathering 2023

Summergathering 2023!

 

You’re all warm­ly invit­ed to the one and only Earth First! sum­mer gath­er­ing 2023! This year’s gath­er­ing will take place in the north of Eng­land, on a beau­ti­ful squat­ted piece of land. If you want to book train tick­ets, aim for Carlisle for now – a more spe­cif­ic loca­tion will be announced on th 29th. We’ll get going on the 29th, with set­up and work­shops. There will be deli­cious food by Veg­gies kitchen, a kids’ space and soooo many excit­ing work­shops. We can’t wait!

Please spread the word and get in touch if you can get there ear­ly to help us pre­pare the site <3

For work­shop offers and ques­tions about access­abil­i­ty and any­thing else – please email earth­firstuk (at) riseup.net!

 

 

 

 

What to expect when you arrive

A wel­come tent with peo­ple in to give you a warm wel­come and tell you about the site, where the loos are, where to camp, things you can get involved with straight away, and take dona­tions for the cost of the camp (£0–50), and the meals each day (£0–10/day). Depend­ing on how ear­ly you arrive, mar­quees will be ris­ing or risen for work­shop spaces, peo­ple will by scur­ry­ing about on mis­sions to build or clean com­post toi­lets, find that ham­mer that dis­ap­peared, paint­ing signs, chop­ping veg­eta­bles for the next meal, whis­per-plan­ning a secre­tive action, hav­ing loud polit­i­cal debates with some­one they’ve just met… or hav­ing some qui­et time with a book in a cor­ner of some mar­quee. No one is in charge. We are all crew here, putting col­lec­tive liv­ing into prac­tice, cre­at­ing a tiny tran­sient vision of the world we want to cre­ate and defend. The more you par­tic­i­pate in this camp, the more you will get out of it.

But what the f*** is it, really?

The EF! gath­er­ing is a gath­er­ing of like-mind­ed peo­ple inter­est­ed in eco­log­i­cal direct action, green anar­chy, and rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal pol­i­tics. It includes 6 days of camp­ing, 3 veg­an meals a day, a pro­gramme of work­shops and activ­i­ties and dis­cus­sions. There will be some music, danc­ing, and sto­ry­telling around the fire. We’ll have some spaces for com­mu­nal eat­ing and chill­ing, and to stay dry in case it rains. But feel free to bring addi­tion­al tarps! Don’t expect luxaries, but there will be com­post loos and some kind of wash­ing facil­i­ty. Remem­ber, this is a sqat­ted site, so there might be some police inter­ac­tion. If you have any con­cerns, get in touch!

What to bring

Bring your own cut­lery, a plate and a mug, and every­thing you might for a camp­ing trip, such as a tent, sleep­ing bag and mat, warm clothes, water­proofs, head­torch, and wellies!

Get in touch

The site phone will be on from the 29th, num­ber will be on here. More info will be post­ed on here soon. For any ques­tions, emails us at earth­firstuk (at) riseup.net

 

 

EF! Summer Gathering 2022

Prac­ti­cal info
Overview info
Anti-oppres­sion
Kids Space
 
 
 
Loca­tion infor­ma­tion:
 
Bridge Farm, next to Old Flaxmill, Flax­dray­ton Farm, South Pether­ton, TA13 5LR
 
https://maps.app.goo.gl/D1k9b24QXwAmKFLb9
 
The near­est train sta­tions are Yeovil Junc­tion, Crewk­erne and Cas­tle Cary. (Check for bus replace­ment on Sun­day if you’re bring­ing a bike)
 
Pub­lic trans­port info:
 

Train to Yeovil Pen Mill (on Bris­tol-Wey­mouth line) or Yeovil Junc­tion (Water­loo-Exeter line)

Num­ber 68 bus from both sta­tions to Yeovil bus sta­tion (Pen Mill is also easy walk­ing dis­tance from bus sta­tion, Junc­tion is 2 miles south of town), this bus is half-hourly except Sun­days when it does­n’t run

Num­ber 81 bus from Yeovil bus sta­tion to Nor­ton-sub-Ham­den, clos­est vil­lage to site (1 mile), runs hourly week­days, 2‑hourly Sat­ur­days, not at all Sun­days.

Nation­al Express in the­o­ry have a coach stop in Yeovil, but don’t seem to be run­ning any­thing there at present.

Berrys Coach­es run a ser­vice (Super­Fast 2) from Lon­don to Taunton serv­ing South Pether­ton, this has to be booked (and this does run Sun­days). You could then get the 68 bus from South Pether­ton to Nor­ton, or just walk it.

Please send a mes­sage to our site phone (07706 017355, after 5pm on 29th August) if you need a lift — there will be irreg­u­lar shut­tles from Crewk­erne sta­tion. Make sure to let us know plen­ty in advance (day before arrival ide­al­ly) so that we can make this hap­pen!

Bus times:

Hel­lo, here is the timetable for the 81 bus:

https://images.southwestcoaches.co.uk/images/pdfs/81service-public-sept2020.pdf

Also Yeovil sta­tions to bus sta­tion:
http://wyndham.gettingaroundsomerset.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Service-68-June-2018-Bus-Timetable.pdf

 
Call­ing all defend­ers of the wild! You are warm­ly invit­ed to five days of work­shops, skill shares, plot­ting and plan­ning, sol­i­dar­i­ty and social­is­ing in a beau­ti­ful camp out. This year’s Earth First! Sum­mer gath­er­ing will be from Wednes­day 31st August till Mon­day 5th Sep­tem­ber and will host a nation-wide and inter­na­tion­al cam­paigns roundup, work­shops on organ­is­ing secure­ly, facil­i­ta­tion and prac­ti­cal Direct Action skills, avoid­ing burnout and more. The gath­er­ing is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet like-mind­ed peo­ple and form con­nec­tions with oth­ers fight­ing the good fight up and down the British Isles and beyond. So come along!
 
VENUE: near­est train sta­tions are Yeovil Junc­tion, Crewk­erne and Cas­tle Cary. You can get in touch via earthfirstuk@riseup.net.

 

  • www.earthfirst.uk
  • twitter.com/earthfirst_uk
  • FB: Earth­First UK
  • Ins­ta: Earth.FirstUK
What to bring: tent, sleep­ing bag+mat, cup, plate and cut­lery. Cash for cake and dona­tions. Your friends and com­rades. More info here.

What to expect when you arrive

A wel­come tent with peo­ple in to give you a warm wel­come and tell you about the site, where the loos are, where to camp, things you can get involved with straight away, and take dona­tions for the cost of the camp (£0–50), and the meals each day (£0–10/day). Depend­ing on how ear­ly you arrive, mar­quees will be ris­ing or risen for work­shop spaces, peo­ple will by scur­ry­ing about on mis­sions to build or clean com­post toi­lets, find that ham­mer that dis­ap­peared, paint­ing signs, chop­ping veg­eta­bles for the next meal, whis­per-plan­ning a secre­tive action, hav­ing loud polit­i­cal debates with some­one they’ve just met… or hav­ing some qui­et time with a book in a cor­ner of some mar­quee. No one is in charge. We are all crew here, putting col­lec­tive liv­ing into prac­tice, cre­at­ing a tiny tran­sient vision of the world we want to cre­ate and defend. The more you par­tic­i­pate in this camp, the more you will get out of it.

Get in touch

The site phone will be on from Mon­day 29th, 5pm: 07706 017355

Community and eco-anarchism

At this gath­er­ing we are work­ing towards a dif­fer­ent kind of liv­ing-togeth­er in nature – non-hier­ar­chi­cal­ly, low-impact and in sol­i­dar­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ty. We want to chal­lenge the mul­ti­ple sys­tems of oppres­sion – patri­archy, white suprema­cy, trans­pho­bia, ableism, speciesism and oth­ers – and work towards new rela­tion­ships with the earth, non­hu­man nature and one anoth­er.

By demon­strat­ing green/e­co-anar­chist ways of organ­is­ing and liv­ing in order to con­front, halt and reverse eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion, we can build a cul­ture of active, non-hier­ar­chi­cal, grass­roots eco­log­i­cal resis­tance. EF! and Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Gath­er­ings pro­vides a plat­form for shar­ing infor­ma­tion, prac­ti­cal direct action and cam­paign­ing skills. In the next few days, we are also prac­tis­ing the kinds of skills that you may need when occu­py­ing land to defend the earth, and our­selves, against the kind of so-called devel­op­ment that involves extract­ing resources from the earth, cut­ting trees, con­struct­ing dams, killing non-human ani­mals, or build­ing large infra­struc­ture projects in the name of moder­ni­ty or progress. This involves keep­ing the site safe from the police by run­ning effec­tive gate pro­tec­tion, organ­is­ing kids’ spaces, mak­ing sure we are all fed healthy veg­an food, and learn­ing from each oth­er.

Rebel, rebel!

In recent years there has been an explo­sion of activ­i­ty in the cli­mate move­ment in the UK. It’s inspir­ing to see so many deter­mined to take action on cli­mate change and com­mit­ting them­selves to fierce­ly defend­ing nature. Extinc­tion Rebel­lion (XR) in par­tic­u­lar has brought in thou­sands of new peo­ple, shift­ed pub­lic opin­ion, and reignit­ed a move­ment. There has also been excit­ing move­ment with­in XR, increas­ing­ly tar­get­ing those in the cor­po­rate media and fos­sil indus­tries caus­ing the prob­lem rather than just creat­ing pub­lic dis­rup­tion.
But it seems that some impor­tant lessons from the past have been for­got­ten. We know some of you are think­ing and talk­ing about these things already and we hope what we’ve writ­ten is received as it is intend­ed, as some con­sid­ered reflec­tions from crit­i­cal friends:

We are not pawns for a personality cult

Cli­mate Change is urgent, and we need to take action now, but we also need to be in it for the long haul. Treat­ing peo­ple as dis­pos­able — get­ting arrest­ed for the sake of get­ting arrest­ed — and ignor­ing the threats of burnout means peo­ple will drop out and feel dis­card­ed. This is already hap­pen­ing. We want to build an inclu­sive, diverse, car­ing move­ment that treats every­one as valu­able, not for­got­ten once they have served their pur­pose in a strat­e­gy they have lit­tle say in. Non-hier­achi­cal organ­is­ing means mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion for all, not unac­count­able lead­ers and unad­dressed invis­i­ble hier­ar­chies.   

FTP!

Cops are not your friends. The police defend the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that are destroy­ing the plan­et’s life sup­port sys­tems. Pris­ons and police are part of the prob­lem, not the solu­tion. They enforce a sys­tem that is eco­ci­dal and vio­lent in nature; they defend the right to degrade, pol­lute, con­trol, and exploit humans and nature. They are inher­ent­ly racist and sex­ist. They need to be abol­ished. These aren’t impos­si­ble dreams. Black fem­i­nists have long led the fight for abo­li­tion, and when the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment erupt­ed around the world, sud­den­ly peo­ple were open­ly dis­cussing police and prison abo­li­tion in the main­stream media.

It’s ALL about politics

Pol­i­tics isn’t about politi­cians and par­lia­ment, it’s about peo­ple try­ing to cre­ate the soci­ety they believe in. Cli­mate change is not ‘beyond pol­i­tics’, tak­ing action on cli­mate change is fun­da­men­tal­ly polit­i­cal. Issues such as race and class aren’t annoy­ing obsta­cles to a big­ger move­ment, they are essen­tial to build­ing effec­tive, endur­ing change. The dom­i­na­tion of humans and the dom­i­na­tion of nature are intrin­si­cal­ly linked, and we can’t end one while the oth­er con­tin­ues. De-politi­cis­ng cli­mate change not only ignores cap­i­tal­ism and oth­er root caus­es, it also means XR will con­tin­ue to be dom­i­nat­ed by white mid­dle class ‘envi­ron­men­tal­ists’.

Diversity of tactics

Civ­il dis­obe­di­ence is just one of many tac­tics, and not the only way to take action. You don’t have to put your­selves in the hands of the state. Eco­log­i­cal direct action is about doing it your­self, attack­ing those destroy­ing nature and inspir­ing oth­ers to fol­low suit, not lob­by­ing gov­ern­ment to act on your behalf. Polit­i­cal vio­lence should nev­er be resort­ed to light­ly, but dog­mat­ic paci­fi­cism pro­tects the state, the rich and the pow­er­ful. His­tor­i­cal strug­gles against slav­ery, feu­dal­ism, colo­nial­ism, patri­archy and fas­cism all involved vio­lence. Riots, revolts and rebel­lion against oppres­sion have their place and should be cel­e­brat­ed not reviled. Preach­ing non-vio­lence also ignores how the very idea of ‘vio­lence’ is used to repress and paci­fy resis­tance, and leads to self-polic­ing and author­i­tar­i­an­ism with­in our move­ments. A diver­si­ty of tac­tics means dif­fer­ent approach­es to work­ing togeth­er and rein­forc­ing each oth­er. In this way we can build towards rev­o­lu­tion­ary change.

Love and rage

Self-reflec­tion and crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion isn’t infight­ing and fac­tion­al­ism, it’s how to build strong, pow­er­ful move­ments that can bring about the unprecedent­ed changes cli­mate change requires. We’re not writ­ing these words to show our­selves as ‘more rad­i­cal than thou’ and we know that every­one goes through their own polit­i­cal jour­ney in life. But if any of what we’ve writ­ten speaks to you, come and talk to us, lets work out where we go next.
We’re ready. Instead of griev­ing for a dying plan­et, it’s time to step up and fight, for peo­ple and nature, with love and rage.
Your friends from the Earth­First! gath­er­ing col­lec­tive

Roll Back The Tracks Bike Ride

What do you need to bring?

– bicy­cle 🙂
– bicy­cle pan­niers
– tent, sleep­ing mat and sleep­ing bag
– headlamp/flashlight
– pow­er bank for charg­ing elec­tron­ics
– bot­tles for car­ry­ing drink­ing water
– a seal­able tup­per­ware for car­ry­ing food and eat­ing out of, mug and cut­lery
– toi­letries and med­ica­tion
– clothes to stay warm and dry
– first aid kit
– a basic cycle repair kit if you have one
– ban­ners and flags to attach to your bike! (no XR ban­ners please)
– cash for dona­tions for food.
We are look­ing into con­tin­u­ing the bike ride along the sec­ond leg of the pro­posed route from Birm­ing­ham to Leeds from the 20th to rough­ly the 27th of August. For this leg, you will also need:
— camp­ing stove & gas
— cook­ing equip­ment

Camping Sites

We have tried where pos­si­ble to get per­mis­sion to use camp­ing sites. How­ev­er, in some places we will be tres­pass­ing, and as such, facil­i­ties will be min­i­mal. We have select­ed places that we feel are suit­able to camp for the nights of the 15th-19th.
On the night of the 20th, we will be wild camp­ing in a park in Brum cen­tre, and from then on, wild camp­ing in loca­tions that we have not yet vis­it­ed, and there­fore we can’t guar­an­tee they will be bril­liant places to camp.

Food & water

On the first leg of the ride from Man­ches­ter to Birm­ing­ham, we will have a cater­ing team fol­low­ing us in a vehi­cle. With vol­un­teer sup­port from us, they will pro­vide one cooked, veg­an, evening meal each day, and pro­vide the ingre­di­ents for us to make our own break­fast and packed lunch­es.
Vol­un­teers in the kitchen will need to wear a face mask and observe phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing.
Dona­tions for food are great­ly appre­ci­at­ed, though no-one will be turned away for lack of funds.
On the sec­ond leg, we will NOT be catered for, so if you are cycling from Brum to Leeds, you will need to buy your own food and cook for your­self.
Most of the camp­ing sites have run­ning water near­by. How­ev­er, you need to have at least 2 1L drink­ing bot­tles with you on the ride, and to fill them up when­ev­er pos­si­ble on route to camp­sites. Stay hydrat­ed!

Toilets

At some of the camp­sites, there are toi­lets. Where there are not toi­lets, we will have a bike trail­er toi­let cubi­cle in tow, and a spade. Col­lec­tive­ly, we will have to dig a pit for every­one to poo in. If the idea of poop­ing in a pit gross­es you out, then make sure you use pub­lic toi­lets on route.

Checking your bike is ready to join Roll Back the Tracks

Lots of dif­fer­ent bikes can make this trip, but it needs to be in good work­ing order.

Please make sure you have at least one water bot­tle hold­er on your bike. You also need to think about how you will car­ry your lug­gage. You need either a pan­nier rack bolt­ed to your bike frame to car­ry pan­nier bags with your belong­ings, or you’ll need to bring bike pack­ing bags to car­ry lug­gage direct­ly on the frame. Please don’t come with a back­pack of all your stuff, you will be sweaty and uncom­fort­able quick­ly. Full sus­pen­sion moun­tain bikes are not rec­om­mend­ed.

If you don’t cycle reg­u­lar­ly, or you are bor­row­ing a bike for the trip check that the bike fits – take it for a test ride of a few hours to see how com­fort­able it is. You need to be able to stand over the frame with­out it touch­ing you between your legs and be able to com­fort­able reach the han­dle­bars and brakes.

Check your brakes

Rim brakes (the brakes act on the metal circular part of your wheel)

• pull on the brakes one at a time to ensure that they can stop the bike
• check there is plen­ty of rub­ber across the whole of all the pads (espe­cial­ly if your brakes are noisy)
• check that the brakes just touch onto met­al and not onto the rub­ber of the tyre
• check that when you pull the brake lever (the part in your hand when rid­ing) the lever does­n’t touch the han­dle­bars.

Disk brakes

• Check that the front and the back brake stops your bike (rather than when both are pressed at the same time).
• Check the rotary wheel is straight and firm­ly attached.
• If the brakes are ring­ing you need to get them adjust­ed.

Wheels

• Check that quick release wheels are prop­er­ly tight­ened. You should be able to read the word ‘closed’ when they are;
• oth­er­wise, check that wheel nuts are tight, espe­cial­ly if you remove your front wheel.
• Clean the brak­ing sur­face if you have rim brakes – use wash­ing up liq­uid in water and a rag.
• Check the tyres are ful­ly inflat­ed. The pres­sure is writ­ten on the side of your tyre.
• Check the tyres still have a pat­tern across the sur­face and do not bulge.
• Check that the brakes haven’t rubbed a grove in the rub­ber of the tyre.
• Check that the wheel runs in a straight line – do this by lift­ing one end of your bike and push­ing the wheel round fast, it should move smooth­ly and not rub.
• Look at your wheels to ensure all the spokes are there and squeeze them in pairs to check they are of a sim­i­lar tight­ness.

Frame

• Make sure there are no cracks or big dents in the frame.
• Check the bolts attach­ing mud guards, water bot­tles and the pan­nier rack are all tight.
• Can you move the han­dle­bars flu­id­ly?
• Could they be too loose? Put the front brake on, turn the front wheel 90 degrees and then see if the front of the bike rocks if you push for­ward on the turned han­dle­bar. If so, it needs tight­ened.

Gears

• Look at your chain and every­thing it touch­es. Dirty? It real­ly is worth­while using an old tooth brush to clean each link and con­tact point before re-apply­ing oil to each link and then remov­ing any excess with a rag.
• Move the ped­als and ensure they can freely turn round com­plete­ly.
• Check that the bike can go into all of its gears. There are going to be hills, so you’ll need a range of gears.

Got a creaking bike?

Can you work out where it is com­ing from? If stand­ing up to ped­al makes it stop check your sad­dle, if it is worse when you ped­dle hard it is like­ly your bot­tom brack­et.

Got a prob­lem with one or more of these areas? If yo don’t know how to fix it find a friend who does or take it to an inde­pen­dent bike shop – but watch out they may not be able to do this at short notice.

Please bring a spare inner tube with you in case you get a punc­ture, the size is writ­ten on the side of your tyre. If you don’t know how to change a flat tyre still bring a spare inner tube and we can fix it togeth­er.

Hav­ing a ful­ly work­ing bike is your respon­si­bil­i­ty.
We are meet­ing togeth­er on the 14th at Rye­bank Fields Protest Camp in Man­ches­ter to check bikes. Please bring a bike which is in full work­ing order as we may sad­ly have to ask you not to come if you’re bike isn’t up to the job and we can’t get parts to fix it.

How can you help?

• Know of any­where we (max 50 rid­ers) could sleep in the fol­low­ing areas?
◦ North Cheshire
◦ Birm­ing­ham Cen­tre (ide­al­ly near Dig­beth)
◦ West Leices­ter­shire
◦ Sheffield
◦ Leeds
• Involved in a crit­i­cal Mass or cycling group in Brum, Not­ting­ham, Sheffield or Leeds? Help us organ­ise some cyclists into a crit­i­cal mass!
• Have you got a bike sound sys­tem you could bring on part of the ride?
• Do a work­shop on route. Sing a song round the camp­fire.
• Get cre­ative and make some flags or ban­ners for our bikes!
• Vol­un­teer in the kitchen.
• Tow the bike trail­er toi­let for a few hours.
• Spare some change? We are try­ing to raise 2000 pounds to fund the project. can you help either by donat­ing or shar­ing? Here´s the link to the crowd­fun­der:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/roll-back-the-tracks

Drop us an email on rollbackthetracks@riseup.net to RSVP or for more info.

 

Two Coal Mines In North East England Shutdown By Protests

Pro­test­ers occup­ping equip­ment at the Har­g­reaves open cast coal mine at Field House, Coun­ty Durham

ACTIVISTS UNDER THE BANNER OF EARTH FIRST! TAKE ON COAL MINING IN THE NORTH EAST OF ENGLAND. TWO COAL MINES SHUT DOWN!

In the ear­ly hours of this morn­ing, activists from the North East,
around the UK and abroad entered and occu­pied machin­ery in Field House mine and block­ad­ed Schot­ton mine to stop them from con­tin­u­ing to dig up coal, destroy­ing the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment and con­tribut­ing to the cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe.

Open­cast coal min­ing is strong­ly resist­ed in the “des­o­late North”, an
area that has become a sac­ri­fice zone for con­tin­ued eco­nom­ic growth at
the cost of the glob­al cli­mate, local envi­ron­ment and  com­mu­ni­ty health. It sup­plies the UK’s dirty pow­er sta­tions, lead­ing CO2 emit­ters, while peo­ple in the glob­al South are suf­fer­ing the con­se­quences. Even in the UK we are start­ing to see the impacts of cli­mate change such as flood­ing and the expect­ed sea lev­el rise will affect coastal areas around the coun­try.

Pro­test­ers occup­ping equip­ment at the Har­g­reaves open cast coal mine at Field House, Coun­ty Durham

Field House open­cast start­ed in 2018 and is oper­at­ed by Har­g­reaves. The
exact des­ti­na­tion or pow­er sta­tions that the coal is being trans­port­ed to is unknown. Machin­ery inside the mine is occu­pied.

Coal pro­vid­ed just 5.3% of the elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed in the UK in 2018.
Recent research by Friends of the Earth has shown that already, enough
coal is held in stock­piles in the UK to last until 2025, the date by which the UK gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted to phas­ing out coal.

Yet, it allows for con­tin­ued extrac­tion, expan­sion and even pro­pos­als
for 2 new coal mines to go ahead.

Pro­test­ers block­ade entrance to Shot­ton open cast coal mine, Blag­don Hall, Northum­ber­land

Coal burn­ing is not only one of the main con­trib­u­tors to cli­mate change, but also destroys valu­able habi­tat and impacts air qual­i­ty where it is dug and where it is burnt. The Bradley mine in the Pont Val­ley, Durham for instance, vio­lat­ed Euro­pean and UK nature con­ser­va­tion leg­is­la­tion by destroy­ing Great Crest­ed Newt habi­tat.

We need to stop import­ing coal, and we need to stop dig­ging it up in the
UK now. Frack­ing, bio­mass, gas and nuclear are not solu­tions either.
Nei­ther do we want large-scale, cor­po­rate-con­trolled renew­able ener­gy
instal­la­tions that rely on the min­ing of rare met­als else­where to pow­er
indus­tri­al so-called “devel­op­ment”. Green cap­i­tal­ism is not the answer.

Instead, we have to work towards rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent, local­ly and
com­mu­nal­ly con­trolled, off-grid solu­tions that involve the use of DIY
tech­nolo­gies made with recy­cled mate­ri­als. These solu­tions need to be
cou­pled with a dras­tic reduc­tion in ener­gy con­sump­tion, and a wider,
rad­i­cal oppo­si­tion to our cap­i­tal­ist plu­toc­ra­cy. Such sys­tems can then
be embed­ded in non-hier­ar­chi­cal­ly organ­ised shar­ing economies that
oper­ate accord­ing to prin­ci­ples of mutu­al aid and sol­i­dar­i­ty.

Earth­First! is a plat­form for peo­ple to take direct action against the
destruc­tion of the earth. We adhere to prin­ci­ples of non-hier­ar­chi­cal
organ­i­sa­tion and the use of direct action to con­front, stop and reverse
the destruc­tion of the earth.

No com­pro­mise in defence of the earth!

@earthfirst_uk

Back­ground info

The Durham coal­field has been a work place and source of ener­gy since
Roman times. At its height, this coal­field employed almost 250,000
minework­ers and their union was the lifeblood of their com­mu­ni­ties.
Durham min­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in the nation­al strike for a year from March
1984 resist­ing the gov­ern­men­t’s plan to close more than 70 under­ground
mines, (but only 20 clo­sures were acknowl­edged at the time) in an effort
to increase elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion from import­ed coal, nuclear and gas
and try to smash the pow­er of the unions. Min­ers came togeth­er to fight against the pit clo­sures and to sup­port the fam­i­lies left in pover­ty as wages stopped com­ing in.

The last under­ground mine in the Durham closed in 1993, but the
com­mu­ni­ty cul­ture born of the indus­try and col­lec­tive resilience car­ries
on. Now mem­bers of the same com­mu­ni­ties are fight­ing to stop the total
eco­log­i­cal oblit­er­a­tion, noise, dust, heavy traf­fic, denial of access to
nat­ur­al spaces and com­mu­ni­ty dis­em­pow­er­ment that are open­cast coal extrac­tion.

Also near­by lies a site of con­tin­ued strong oppo­si­tion to coal by the Cam­paign to Pro­tect Pont Val­ley who bat­tle against Banks Group in their
val­ley. Banks Group’s the only Eng­lish com­pa­ny sub­mit­ting plans to
expand its coal extrac­tion ven­ture, with appli­ca­tions await­ing deci­sions
to open­cast Dew­ley Hill (out­skirts of New­cas­tle) and at Druridge Bay (a
stun­ning beach north of New­cas­tle). Banks wants to extend the open­cast
in the Pont Val­ley and could put in fur­ther exten­sion appli­ca­tions at
its two exist­ing open­cast sites in Northum­ber­land.

Trees Under Threat Across The Country

This year has seen an huge inten­si­fi­ca­tion in the bat­tle to save Sheffield­’s trees as the coun­cil push­es for­ward with a plan to fell 17,500 out of 36,000 trees on Sheffield­’s streets by 2037. The pro­gramme is part of a Pri­vate Finance (PFI) con­tract with pri­vate firm Amey PLC. The result­ing res­i­dents led cam­paign, which has includ­ed a sig­nif­i­cant amount of direct action, has tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed felling but the coun­cil seems hell bent on restart­ing as soon as they can get away with it. The bat­tle to save Sheffield­’s trees appears to be the tip of a very large ice­berg. More than 110,000 trees have been chopped down in three years by coun­cils across the UK, with Sheffield only com­ing in at third place behind New­cas­tle (8,414 trees in 3 years) and Edin­burgh (4,435 trees). Felling of trees on pri­vate land is cer­tain­ly an even larg­er prob­lem but there are no sta­tis­tics and very lit­tle scruti­ny.

There are reports that Net­work Rail is plan­ning an “enhanced lev­el of clear­ance” of trees from 2019 to 2024, threat­en­ing the 13 mil­lion trees along 20,000 miles of rail­way track, in a ‘scorched earth’ pol­i­cy. There are fears that an Oxford to Bices­ter line upgrad­ed in 2015/2016, which has been described as ‘eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter’ and ‘bar­ren waste­land’, is a ‘pathfind­er’ for this aggres­sive future pol­i­cy to be rolled out across the coun­try. The High Speed 2 (HS2) planned new ultra-high speed rail line would also result in the felling of a sig­nif­i­cant but undis­closed num­ber of trees, as would the gov­ern­ment new road build­ing dri­ve (see New Roads Threat: The Express­way To Hell)

This comes at a time when the coun­try’s trees are already threat­ened with being dev­as­tat­ed by a wave of new dis­eases brought by cli­mate change and the glob­al trade in plants. Dis­eases such as “ash dieback” are already killing sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of trees and are also being used to jus­ti­fy even more tree felling. This short-sight­ed war on trees is being pros­e­cut­ed in the face grow­ing evi­dence of the direct pos­i­tive impact of trees, includ­ing removal of pol­lu­tion which saves 27,000 life years and the NHS around £1 bil­lion in med­ical costs in a year.

Tree Campaigns

A small selec­tion of promi­nent tree cam­paigns across the coun­try includes:

Street Trees, Sheffield

Ongo­ing coun­cil push to fell 17,500 out of 36,000 trees on Sheffield’s streets by 2037 as part of PFI con­tract, which is meet­ing sig­nif­i­cant resis­tance. Felling has been tem­porar­i­ly paused due to protests but could restart at any point. Cam­paigns: Sheffield Tree Action Groups — STAG, Sheffield Tree Action Groups — STAG (Face­book), Save Sheffield Trees (Twit­ter)

Street Trees, South Tyneside

Inspired by actions in Sheffield local res­i­dents are organ­is­ing to resist tree felling and the revok­ing of Tree Preser­va­tion Orders which are threat­en­ing the pre­cious street trees of South Tyne­side Cam­paigns: South Tyne­side Tree Action Group — STTAG (Face­book), South Tyne­side Tree Action Group — STTAG (Twit­ter)

Cemeteries, Southwark

South­wark Coun­cil is push­ing for­ward with plans to bull­doze the wood­land in its ceme­ter­ies and and exca­vate all graves over 75 years old, to cre­ate new bur­ial space. 2.5 acres of woods have already cleared, and anoth­er 10 acres is threat­ened with destruc­tion of beau­ti­ful inner-city woods and her­itage. Cam­paigns: Save South­wark Woods, Save South­wark Woods

Stoke Park Woods, Bristol

Bris­tol City Coun­cil has plans for cut­ting down parts of the beau­ti­ful and wild Stoke Park Wood in Bris­tol and replac­ing it with cat­tle and graz­ing areas, destroy­ing impor­tant habi­tat and deprive peo­ple who live in the city access to a beau­ti­ful, nat­ur­al wood­land. Tree felling could begin as soon as Sep­tem­ber. Cam­paigns: Save Stoke Park Woods

Whitmore Wood, Staffordshire

Whit­more Wood faces the sin­gle largest amount of loss to ancient wood­land across the entire High Speed 2 (HS2) route. The HS2 line will plough straight through the mid­dle of the wood result­ing in the destruc­tion of six hectares of this pre­cious ancient wood­land.

New Nuclear Threat: Hinkley and Wylfa Just The Beginning

While “nuclear” feels so last cen­tu­ry the real­i­ty could eas­i­ly be the oth­er way round, the with the 21st cen­tu­ry see­ing a whole phase of even more risky nuclear devel­op­ment, if a new wave of nuclear reac­tors is not stopped. With dwin­dling fos­sil fuel reserves and cap­i­tal’s demand for unend­ing eco­nom­ic growth, it is all hands on deck to plug the grow­ing gap between cur­rent ener­gy sources and the expo­nen­tial ener­gy demands of the indus­tri­al sys­tem. Frack­ing, bio­mass and new nuclear are all being dri­ven by the same under­ly­ing dynam­ic, which could eas­i­ly see a pro­lif­er­a­tion of new reac­tors if there is no resis­tance.

Ground has already been bro­ken at Hink­ley Point in Som­er­set and plans are push­ing for­ward at Wyl­fa on Angelsey, as well a num­ber of oth­er sites (see below for details). Beyond the russ­ian roulette being play with the lives of peo­ple liv­ing any­where near these new reac­tors, as amply demon­strat­ed by acci­dents such as Fukashima and Cher­nobyl, the long term eco­log­i­cal threat posed by the con­tin­u­al pro­duc­tion of even more radioac­tive waste to which there is no prac­ti­cal long term solu­tion to con­tain it, when it will remain dead­ly for hun­dreds of thou­sands of years.

New Nuclear Threat

The UK’s cur­rent fleet of nuclear reac­tors is age­ing fast with the last new reac­tor built in 1987 and most reac­tors are either already shut down (Mag­nox) or well past their design life (AGR). The nuclear indus­try needs new reac­tors soon or it will cease to exist. While nuclear pow­er has nev­er made any sense from an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive, and the unknown even­tu­al cost of deal­ing with the waste make that even worse, its links to nuclear weapons pro­duc­tion have so far sus­tained it. Cur­rent plans call for new reac­tors at 6 sites: Hink­ley Point in Som­er­set, Wyl­fa in Angle­sey, Sizewell in Suf­folk, Moor­side in Cum­bria, Old­bury in Glouces­ter­shire and Brad­well in Essex (see below for details).

These planned new reac­tors are in gen­er­al more dan­ger­ous than pre­vi­ous ones, due to the low­er lev­el (though still large) of gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies avail­able in the cur­rent cli­mate requir­ing them to be more com­mer­cial. These more “effi­cient” reac­tors have high­er burn up rates (amount of ener­gy pro­duced per ton of ura­ni­um), up to 65 GWd/tU for planned EPR and AP-1000 reac­tors, com­pared to 4.1–33 GWd/tU for pre­vi­ous Mag­nox and AGR reac­tors. This will pro­duce hot­ter, more radioac­tive spend fuel (high lev­el waste) and make acci­dents such as Fukashima and Three Mile Island, which involved loss of cool­ing to fuel in the reac­tor or in cool­ing ponds, more like­ly and more dan­ger­ous.

Attempts to make nuclear reac­tors even more com­mer­cial (i.e. dan­ger­ous) are also on the cards. The extreme­ly high cap­i­tal costs of exist­ing and planned reac­tors is dri­ving a push towards explor­ing ways of cre­at­ing small­er reac­tors which could be pro­duced in large num­bers in fac­to­ries and installed wher­ev­er. While these reac­tor are like­ly to be much less effi­cient in oper­a­tion than larg­er reac­tors, mas­sive cost sav­ings are envis­aged in the per­mit­ting and con­struc­tion of these reac­tors. There is also an exist­ing indus­try mak­ing small nuclear reac­tors for mil­i­tary sub­marines which can see an oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand. Obvi­ous­ly the dan­gers posed by pro­duc­ing large num­bers of small nuclear reac­tors and scat­ter­ing them across the coun­try wher­ev­er they can be forced on com­mu­ni­ties, are too numer­ous to men­tion.

Hink­ley Point, Som­er­set EDF Ener­gy has begun con­struc­tion of Britain’s first new nuclear plant in a gen­er­a­tion in Som­er­set and aims to start up the reac­tors from the £20 bil­lion project in 2025. The new pow­er sta­tion would would be pow­ered by 2 x 1,630 MW Euro­pean Pres­surised Reac­tors (EPR), a new untest­ed design, whose pri­ma­ry aims is to pro­vide enhanced eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness through design changes like high­er fuel bur­nup rates. The first EPR reac­tor was brought online on the 29th June 2018 at the Tais­han plant in Chi­na, despite reports of numer­ous seri­ous prob­lems with the reac­tor. Two oth­er plants are under con­struc­tion at Olk­ilu­o­to in Fin­land and Fla­manville in France, and are both fac­ing cost­ly delays due to severe prob­lems. Cam­paigns: Stop Hink­ley, South West Against Nuclear (Face­book)

Wyl­fa, Angelsey Hori­zon Nuclear Pow­er (Hitachi) is plan­ning to con­struct 2 x 1,350 MW Advanced Boil­ing Water Reac­tors (ABWR) at Wyl­fa on Angelsey. As with the EPR reac­tors planned at Hink­ley these ABWR reac­tors would have a high bur­nup rate up to 65 GWd/tU. The reac­tors are planned to be online by 2026–27 but the project needs to get over a num­ber of hur­dles first. Cam­paigns: Peo­ple Against Wylfa‑B (PAWB), Stop Wyl­fa — No Nuclear in Wales (Face­book)

Sizewell, Suf­folk EDF Ener­gy is plan­ning a sim­i­lar plant to Hink­ley Point C at Sizewell in Suf­folk, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Chi­na Gen­er­al Nuclear Pow­er Group (CGN). The plan is to use 2 EPR reac­tors and . Cam­paigns: Shut Down Sizewell Cam­paign, Togeth­er Against Sizewell C, Togeth­er Against Sizewell C (Face­book), The­ber­ton and East­bridge Action Group on Sizewell (TEAGS)

Moorside,Cumbria The devel­op­er NuGen­er­a­tion is in process of begin bought by South Korea’s Kep­co, and the reac­tor design (APR1400) Kep­co would want to use is not approved in the UK at present. The expect­ed com­ple­tion date of this £15–20 bil­lion project has been pushed back to “lat­er in the 2020s”. Cam­paigns: Stop Moor­side and Nuclear Dump­ing in the Lake Dis­trict (Face­book)

Oldbury,Gloucestershire Hori­zon Nuclear Pow­er (Hitachi) is plan­ning a sim­i­lar plant to Wyl­fa at Old­bury in Glouces­ter­shire. The plant would use the same ABWR reac­tors but the project is at much less advanced stage. Cam­paigns: STAND — Sev­ern­side Togeth­er Against Nuclear Devel­op­ment, Sev­ern­side Togeth­er Against Nuclear Devel­op­ment (Face­book)

Brad­well, Essex Chi­na Gen­er­al Nuclear Pow­er Group (CGN) and EDF are plan­ning a plant at Brad­well in Essex using CGN’s HPR1000 reac­tor. The HPR1000 has not yet been licensed for use in the UK and the devel­op­ment could take some time. Cam­paigns: Black­wa­ter Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG), Black­wa­ter Against New Nuclear Group (Face­book)

Nuclear Waste

As for where all the radioac­tive waste pro­duced by these new reac­tors would go, giv­en that no solu­tion exists to this prob­lem, that is any­one’s guess. Geo­log­i­cal Dis­pos­al, bury­ing waste in the ground and hop­ing for the best, is the lead­ing con­tender but will require forc­ing some region to take this waste. And appar­ent­ly no where is safe with even Nation­al Parks and areas of out­stand­ing nat­ur­al beau­ty (AONBs) in the fir­ing line. In fact giv­en that Nation­al Parks tend to have low­er pop­u­la­tion den­si­ties than oth­er areas, they are a like­ly tar­get.

While geo­log­i­cal dis­pos­al may sound like the best of a bad set of options, the real­i­ty is that these projects are more about pub­lic rela­tions than a real solu­tion. As long as some geo­log­i­cal dis­pos­al project is being dis­cussed, the fic­tion that there will be a solu­tion at some point in the future can be main­tained and some objec­tions to nuclear “busi­ness as usu­al” can be avoid­ed. Cut price geo­log­i­cal dis­pos­al in the form of deep bore­hole dis­pos­al, which would involved inject­ing waste down deep bore­holes, is also being dis­cussed. As with the dis­pos­al of frack­ing waste by this method in the US, earth­quakes are one like­ly result and the prob­a­bil­i­ty of the waste remain­ing con­tained for hun­dreds of thou­sands of years is pret­ty low.

The only geo­log­i­cal dis­pos­al facil­i­ty in exis­tence, on the unin­hab­it­ed island of Onka­lo in Fin­land, is planned to start bury­ing nuclear waste in 2020 and con­tin­ue until 2120, when the facil­i­ty is sup­posed to be sealed and aban­doned. The prob­a­bil­i­ty that this 100 year long project will be car­ried through to com­ple­tion and sealed to plan in the face of a declin­ing resource base, aus­ter­i­ty, reces­sions, wars, bank­rupt­cies and oth­er unfore­seen events bound to take place in the next 100 years, seems slim to non-exis­tent. Even if you were opti­mistic enough believe in the gen­er­al­ly promise of geo­log­i­cal dis­pos­al, suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ing it would demand stop­ping the tidal wave of new waste from exist­ing and new reac­tors as soon as pos­si­ble, so dis­pos­al could be com­plet­ed on real­is­tic timescales.

More Information

Extreme Mining: Small Deposit And Seabed Mining Threats Growing

While any­one who is aware of the destruc­tive nature of some of the worlds largest mines may think that min­ing is pret­ty extreme already, it seems that as with many oth­er com­po­nents of indus­tri­al civil­i­sa­tion, the only way is down. Frack­ing and oth­er uncon­ven­tion­al ener­gy extrac­tion meth­ods are being dri­ven by a process, extreme ener­gy, which is far from unique. Indus­tri­al civil­i­sa­tion has pref­er­en­tial­ly tar­get­ed the eas­i­est to extract ener­gy resources first, but as those have been suc­ces­sive­ly exhaust­ed the sys­tem has blind­ly moved on to tar­get increas­ing­ly more dif­fi­cult to extract resources. A sim­i­lar process has been play­ing out with­in the min­ing sec­tor more gen­er­al­ly where the con­tin­u­ous deple­tion of var­i­ous met­al ores and min­er­als is push­ing the indus­try towards more extreme extrac­tion.

Small Deposit Mining


Com­mu­ni­ty Demon­stra­tion Against Plans For Gold Mine And Cyanide Pro­cess­ing Plant In Sper­rin Moun­tains, Coun­ty Tyrone (Click To Enlarge)

At present in the Britain and Ire­land the new min­ing threat which is emerg­ing does not have the obvi­ous threat of these vast open cast mines in oth­er parts of the world. But it is being dri­ven by the same under­ly­ing process­es and head­ing in the same gen­er­al direc­tion. As prices have risen and larg­er deposits deplet­ed, the indus­try is turn­ing eyes to much small­er ones, or even look­ing to re-exploit old mines for their remain­ing deposits. This is so called “Small Deposit” min­ing, tar­get­ing numer­ous small, low qual­i­ty min­er­al deposits in an attempt to replace more con­ven­tion pro­duc­tion from larg­er mines. In some ways this has many par­al­lels with frack­ing where one indi­vid­ual oil or gas well has a lim­it­ed impact, but the cumu­la­tive impact of the hun­dreds or thou­sands of wells required for frack­ing is anoth­er mat­ter. Even more so that frack­ing, small deposit min­ing has the poten­tial to sneak in under the radar, one mine at a time.

In 2015 Wolf Min­er­als opened the first new met­als mine in the UK for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry, after a wave of clo­sures up and down the coun­try in recent decades. Drake­lands in Devon is one of the world’s top five pro­duc­ers of tung­sten. But this is just part of a much wider trend. Sir­ius Min­er­als has recent­ly begun con­struc­tion of a poly­halite mine on the North York moors. the deep­est mine in the UK (and the sec­ond deep­est in Europe). The Wood­smith Mine will tar­get largest and high­est grade deposit of poly­halite in the world. Mean­while the Conon­ish gold mine in Scot­land has been reopened by Aus­tralian firm Scot­Gold in the last year.

These projects are just the tip of a loom­ing ice­berg, with a whole raft of min­ing plans at var­i­ous stages of devel­op­ment. Cana­di­an com­pa­ny, Strong­bow Explo­ration, has announced plans to acquire 26 old tins mines in Corn­wall and has plans to reopen the South Crofty tin mine in the near Redruth in the future. Mean­while Strate­gic Min­er­als and New Age Explo­ration have begun test drilling in prepa­ra­tion for min­ing tin and tung­sten in Red­moor near Bod­min in Corn­wall.


Wolf Min­er­als Drake­lands Tung­sten Mine In Devon, The First New Met­als Mine In The UK In Half A Cen­tu­ry (Click To Enlarge)

While a polif­er­a­tion of new, more extreme, tin and tung­sten min­ing is one threat to Corn­wall, a poten­tial­ly even larg­er one is posed by min­ing for lithi­um. Extrac­tion oper­a­tions would be more akin to frack­ing than min­ing; wells would tap hot brine from a depth of between 400m and 800m, before being sent to a pro­cess­ing plant to extract the lithi­um. Extrac­tion usu­al­ly involves evap­o­ra­tion in very large ponds, thou­sands of acres in size, which can have sig­nif­i­cant impact on water resources and ecol­o­gy. A joint ven­ture between Cor­nish Lithi­um and Strong­bow Explo­ration is the main play­er at present, with it being tout­ed as Europe’s largest source of lithi­um.

Gold min­ing, the ulti­mate is waste­ful excess, also has mas­sive expan­sion plans with Ire­land and Scot­land in the fir­ing line. North­ern Ire­land is claimed to have the sev­enth rich­est unde­vel­oped seam of gold in the world. At present there is only active gold mine in the whole of Ire­land, run by Galan­tas Gold in Omagh, but it has per­mis­sion to expand and many oth­er plans are on the table. For instance rur­al com­mu­ni­ties in the Green­cas­tle area of Co Tyrone are cur­rent­ly fight­ing plans by a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny, Dal­ra­di­an Gold Ltd, for a gold mine and cyanide pro­cess­ing plant to sep­a­rate the gold from ore. Mean­while south of the bor­der Irish gold min­ing firm Con­roy Gold and Nat­ur­al Resources is tar­get­ing four new gold zones in Coun­ty Mon­aghan.

Oth­er threats include zinc-cop­per-lead min­ing at Parys Moun­tain in Angle­sey, zinc min­ing near Tara in Coun­ty Meath, Ire­land and min­ing for cok­ing coal (dis­tinct from ther­mal coal which is in a price slump at present) near White­haven in Cum­bria, as well as on the Scot­tish bor­der around Gret­na and Canon­bie. These are not iso­lat­ed, one off, projects, but just the most attrac­tive of large num­bers of small/low qual­i­ty deposits which the min­ing indus­try will be look­ing to exploit as larger/higher qual­i­ty deposits around the world are deplet­ed. While indus­tri­al civil­i­sa­tion con­tin­ues on its destruc­tive path, the pres­sure for more extreme min­ing is only going to grow.

Seabed Mining


Min­ing machines built at Soil Machine Dynamic’s facil­i­ty in New­cas­tle Upon Tyne for the first attempt a deep seabed min­ing by Cana­di­an com­pa­ny in the Bis­mar­ck Sea near Papua New Guinea (Click To Enlarge)

Ener­gy resource extrac­tion (i.e. oil drilling) start­ed on land but has move off shore, and is now mov­ing into deep­er and deep­er water. For sim­i­lar rea­sons, until now min­ing has been most­ly con­fined to the land. Excep­tions have includ­ed tun­nel min­ing for coal which began stray­ing out under the sea from the 18th cen­tu­ry and dredg­ing for sand/gravel in shal­low water, which rel­a­tive­ly easy to tar­get and extract. With prices ris­ing and bet­ter option deplet­ing fast, the min­ing indus­try is turn­ing its atten­tion to min­er­al deposits on the ocean floor.

Some seabed min­ing is already under­way in shal­low water, for instance De Beers is sour­ing the seabed for dia­monds at depths of around 150 meters in a 2,300 square mile licence area off the Namib­ian coast. The first seri­ous deep sea min­ing effort is expect­ed to begin in 2019, in the Bis­mar­ck Sea near Papua New Guinea. Cana­di­an firm Nau­tilus Min­er­als plans to use three giant robots crawl­ing machines (each the size of a house) to grind up rocks rich in cop­per, zinc and gold at a depth of 1,600 metres and pump the slur­ry up to a cus­tom-built sur­face ship at a rate of over 3,000 tonnes a day.


Viable Alter­na­tive Mine Oper­at­ing Sys­tem (VAMOS) seabed crawlers which Marine Min­er­als plans to use to mine tin off the north­ern coast of Corn­wall (Click To Enlarge)

Seabed min­ing would cer­tain­ly kill off most organ­isms liv­ing on seabed that would be exca­vat­ed, but will cre­ate sed­i­ment plumes dis­rupt­ing the nat­ur­al move­ment of ocean water, and poten­tial­ly smoth­er entire eco­log­i­cal com­mu­ni­ties on the seabed, intro­duc­ing nutri­ent-rich deep water into sur­face waters caus­ing algae blooms and dead zones and releas­ing heavy met­als once out of reach to shal­low-water organ­isms, which can accu­mu­late up the food chain — poten­tial­ly harm­ing the health of humans con­sum­ing fish as well.

The UK is heav­i­ly involved in the seabed min­ing push. UK Seabed Resources Ltd, a sub­sidiary of US defence con­trac­tor Lock­heed Mar­tin, is one of the main com­pa­nies explor­ing for poly­med­tal­lic nod­ules in the cen­tral Pacif­ic Clar­i­on-Clip­per­ton Frac­ture Zone. Mean­while the min­ing machines for the first attempt a deep seabed min­ing by Cana­di­an com­pa­ny in the Bis­mar­ck Sea near Papua New Guinea, have been built a Soil Machine Dynamic’s facil­i­ty in New­cas­tle Upon Tyne. Clos­er to home Marine Min­er­als is even con­sid­er­ing seabed min­ing for tin off St Ives, Per­ran­porth, Portreath and St Agnes, while Tre­liv­er Min­er­als is plan­ning to mine St Austell Bay for tin.

See Extreme Min­ing: Small Deposit And Seabed Min­ing Threats Grow­ing for all the details includ­ing map of grow­ing threats across coun­try.

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

Drilling Rig Leav­ing PNR After Spend­ing A Year Drilling 2 Wells As Focus Turns To Resist­ing Hydraulic Frac­tur­ing (Click To Enlage)

(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.

Angus Ener­gy’s Brock­ham Site In Sur­rey, One Sev­er­al In Region Where Renewed Test­ing Is Expect­ed (Click To Enlage)

(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.

Third Ener­gy’s Kir­by Mis­per­ton Site In North York­shire, Where Hydraulic Frac­tur­ing Is Planned (Click To Enlage)

(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

Com­mu­ni­ty Block­ade IGas Ener­gy’s Tin­ker Lane In Not­ting­hamshire Site Where Drilling Is Immi­nent (Click To Enlage)

(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

IGas Ener­gy’s Ellesmere Port Site In Cheshire, To Which The Com­pa­ny Wants To Return For Fur­ther Test­ing (Click To Enlage)

(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