Fracking capitalism is the way to go

The campaign against fracking the UK is building on all fronts, including the legal one. Greenpeace is encouraging actions for trespass against the companies like Cuadrilla. But will they be enough to bring a halt to shale gas exploration?

Unlike in France, where the constitutional court this week upheld a government ban on fracking introduced in 2011, the UK state is heavily committed to the dash for gas.

Planning laws and new technical guidance introduced in the summer are heavily weighted in favour of applications to frack.

For example, the guidelines state: “Mineral extraction is essential to local and national economies. As stated in paragraph 144 of the National Planning Policy Framework, minerals planning authorities should give great weight to the benefits of minerals extraction, including to the economy, when determining planning applications.” [emphasis added] The guideline say:

• Planning applications for exploration of shale gas should not take account of “hypothetical future activities” – actual extraction.
• Planning authorities should not consider demand for, or alternatives to, oil and gas when determining applications.
• Councils should understand that government policy is clear that energy supplies should come from a variety of sources.
• Planning authorities should give great weight to the “benefits of minerals extraction, including to the economy

Jon Gateley, principal planner at property firm Savills, told Planning magazine that the guidance was akin to a presumption in favour of shale gas. "Rather than just introducing controls over how decisions would be made, the guidance implies that government wants to see them go through," he said.

As the hot summer rolled on into September, the government stepped in again with plans to change the current notification requirements on underground gas and oil applications to make it easier for the corporations, naturally.

At present, companies have to serve a notice on any other person who owns or is a tenant of land to which the application relates. They also have to publish a notice in at least one local newspaper and display a notice in every parish affected ahead of submission.

But under the draft proposals,  the requirement to serve notice on individual owners and tenants of land would be dropped where solely underground operations would be involved.

Enter Greenpeace. They are assembling home owners to mount a legal challenge to prevent fracking companies drilling underneath the homes of people who don’t want it. The campaign group says that such drilling would amount to trespass and be illegal.

“This is about people asserting their legal and democratic right,” said Anna Jones, senior campaigner with Greenpeace. They’ve launched a website wrongmove.org where homeowners can find out, using their postcode, whether they are living near a potential fracking operation.

While under English law, mineral rights beneath the surface belong to the state, Greenpeace argues that companies will still need permission from landowners. Lancashire dairy farmer Andrew Pemberton has joined the legal action. “My biggest worry is pollutants,” he said. Water supplied that feed his animals come from aquifers beneath the Lancashire Fylde.

But as Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, pointed out yesterday, the state is heavily committed to fracking. She was actually speaking outside court, where she pleaded not guilty to alleged offences following her arrest outside the Cuadrilla site in Balcombe in the summer.

She said: "The government is not only refusing to listen to the evidence, it is choosing to become a flag-waver-in-chief for the fracking industry, offering them generous tax breaks as well as allowing them senior roles within the government itself.”

Among those she was referring to is Lord Browne, a former BP boss, who is now holding a cross-departmental role in government, reporting to the minister for the Cabinet Office, at the same as he holds significant shares in Cuadrilla. Coincidentally, the minister concerned, Francis Maude includes Balcombe in his constituency.

You have to conclude that it will take more than local legal challenges to halt fracking. And it will also take more than a change of government, as rebranded One Nation Labour is totally silent on the issue, leading campaigners to suspect Ed Miliband’s party has fallen for discredited “cheap energy” claims. We will have to put fracking capitalism on the agenda.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Dirty gas gets the green light

As the government’s experts on renewable energy form a queue at the exit, the gas specialists are moving in, counting the zeros on their budgets. Dirty gas will get big tax breaks following George Osborne’s budget.

He wants big investment in “unconventional gas” to match the big money British banks have already invested in Canadian tar sands. These are huge deposits of bitumen, a tar-like substance that’s turned into oil through energy-intensive processes. 

Now a quarter of Scotland has been earmarked for drilling for gas to replace declining stocks from the North Sea. Companies will be invited to apply for licences next year. At the same time, the ban on fracking has been lifted.

The process involves drilling down and creating tiny explosions to shatter and crack hard shale rocks to release the gas inside. Cuadrilla, whose operations caused earthquakes in Blackpool, is back on site and ready to resume this dangerous dash for gas.

There is clear evidence from Australia and the United States, about the dangers of fracking. Water supplies have been contaminated with toxic chemicals that make people constantly ill, with the potential to cause cancer and even to change people’s gender.

The most advanced proposition is coal-bed methane capture. Australian corporation Dart Energy has already drilled 16 exploratory wells around Falkirk and Stirling. They have agreed a £300m deal to supply Scottish and Southern Electricity and plan to expand rapidly with at least 20 more wells in short order.

Campaign group Frack Off has raised serious questions about Dart’s operations. But the Scottish government led by the SNP has nothing to say – they smell they money, not the methane. So much for the promise that Scotland’s energy future lies in becoming the world leader in wind and tide!

Coal-bed methane extraction pumps water into the seam and gas bubbles through. But nobody seems to have planned what to do with the contaminated water. It’s the nuclear waste disposal story all over again.

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) will wait until companies apply to start work to examine the list of chemicals they plan to use. But fracking licences have already been issued in the south-west of Scotland and companies can simply move from exploration to production without any further discussion

Hundreds of objections from community groups and individuals are pouring in to SEPA. Network Rail is worried that wells drilled near the main line to the north might blow it up.

But these concerns are not high on the list of government priorities. It’s as if some ruthless Victorian coal owner travelled forward in time to take charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (causing it). It’s all back to the fossil fuel future for capitalism’s energy policy.

Chancellor Osborne, told a meeting in New York: "I see with admiration what has happened in the US in the way your shale gas revolution has made a contribution to GDP.”

In the interests of short-term profits governments will permit absolutely anything corporations propose. They know the dangers – they know about climate change – but remain paralysed by the economic and social changes needed to tackle it. And when a system can only move backwards, it is in terminal crisis.

So it’s over to us – we call on all those who want to defend the environment to form or join People’s Assemblies, popular forms of alternative government that can challenge the power of the corporations to befoul the land for profit and replace the governments, national or local, that facilitate them.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Shale gas will increase emissions

Supported by governments and floating on a raft of dubious claims, shale gas is the new global fossil fuel of choice for the corporations.

Explorations are taking place across the world, including deposits that would in the past have been economically unviable. Rising gas prices and new extraction methods have brought vast new areas into play and the energy corporations smell profits.

They are charming governments with claims of freedom from dependence on imported oil and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions without all the bother of developing renewable energy sources or looking to reduce consumption.

But their claims are extremely dubious. For example, the European Gas Advocacy Forum paid McKinsey to rework base data from a European Climate Foundation (ECF) report, to show that shale gas is the way to go for emissions reductions.

The ECF is furious at this manipulation of their data. Its report had in fact shown that the best and most sustainable way to reduce emissions is by urgently developing a low-carbon generation network and moving away from fossil fuels altogether.

And a report from Cornell University shows that far from reducing carbon emissions, it could be as damaging as burning coal. Natural gas is mostly methane, and researchers found that between 3.6% and 7.9% of the methane was released into the atmosphere in the course of production. Methane emissions are between 30% and 50% higher than from conventional gas.


There are also environmental and health risks associated with the process of hydraulic fracturing – or "fracking". This involves drilling a hole deep into the dense layer of shale rocks and then pumping in at very high pressure vast quantities of water mixed with sand and highly toxic chemicals to release the gas.

Communities near production facilities in the US report respiratory problems, and polluted water supplies. In the award-winning documentary
Gasland, people are shown setting light to the water from their tap.

The Cameron government has turned down a request for a moratorium on shale gas extraction from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. It said that Cuadrilla, the firm involved, “has made it clear that there is no likelihood of environmental damage and that it is applying technical expertise and exercising the utmost care as it takes drilling and testing forward”. The phrase “well they would say that, wouldn’t they” springs to mind.

Cuadrilla is working on two sites near Blackpool, and has permission to explore four more. Bridgend-based Coastal Oil and Gas is exploring sites in Wales. The Scottish midlands are said to hold the shale deposits with the greatest potential.

Protests have halted developments in the south of France, but in Poland, credited with Europe’s largest shale gas deposits, ConocoPhillips is poised to start drilling next month near Gdansk on the Baltic coast.

Based on projections that China may be sitting on 30 trillion cubic metres of shale gas reserves, the Chinese government is rushing ahead, and says it will begin production in 2015 to deliver 10% of the country’s energy by 2020.

It’s nothing short of a new profit-driven global bonanza which can entirely derail development of renewable energy sources and tie human society into fossil fuels for a further two or three generations. As long as the corporations remain in control of our energy future, this will be the continuing disastrous reality.

Penny Cole
Environment editor