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

Fossil fuel warriors in charge of ConDems energy policy

As the first cold blast of winter heads down from the Arctic, more than five million UK households cannot afford to heat their homes to the standard required for good health and comfort.

And now that the unscrupulous cartel of big energy corporations has slapped a 9% increase on fuel bills – the average bill is now over £1,300 – the number of people in fuel poverty will soar.

David Cameron talked big at his Party’s conference, claiming the government would force the energy giants to offer customers the lowest price tariff but now rushes to change his tune. The best the Coalition can offer is a letter from the supplier telling the customer what their lowest – but still  unaffordable – tariff is.  

UK governments of all stripes have consistently refused to regulate for high energy efficiency leaving the market to decide. The result is most houses being built in the UK even today, wouldn’t get off the drawing board in Scandinavia.

The much proclaimed Green New Deal replaces the former grant programme with loans at high interest rates offset by small amounts of cash back for measurable energy savings. The paltry sum set aside is £200m - £125 will go for loans and £25m on publicity. It will be used up in about three months.

The truth is Cameron’s “greenest ever government” has been taken over by the dirtiest fossil fuel warriors.

Owen Paterson, the new Minister for Energy, is a climate change sceptic who described the potential for gas fracking as "one unexpected and potentially huge windfall". His policy advisor is a former lobbyist for the Australian fossil fuel industry.

Ian Taylor, boss of energy trader Vitol, gave the Tories more than £500,000. Viton is a major shareholder in companies involved in hydraulic fracturing (fracking and coal bed methane extraction, another dirty business.

Lord Browne, the former chief executive of BP is a government energy adviser. He is chairman of Cuadrilla, the UK’s main “frackers”, and is on the board of North Sea deep water oil explorer Riverstone.

Cameron’s new advisor on energy policy is Ben Moxham, who worked for Browne at BP and Riverstone.

Vitol is a major shareholder in Dart Energy, which will soon begin coal bed methane extraction at Airth, on the River Forth. This filthy technology will start with 22 CBM wells but as many as 600 could be on the cards. It is just “the beginning of a nightmarish industrial transformation for the UK as a whole”, says Elsie Walker of campaign group Frack Off.

Do you get the picture? Energy policy in the UK is being written by the fossil fuel industry, in its own profit-driven interests and has nothing to do with keeping consumer prices low or tackling climate change.

The government argues that getting at new sources of fossil fuel is essential to keep prices down. But the exact opposite is the case.

Systems such as “fracking” or coal bed methane capture or tar sand extraction, are only now economic (profitable) because of the rising price of gas as easy to access supplies run out. When gas was plentiful and cheap, they were not viable.

A recent report from IMF on the future of oil notes that keeping oil production going at current levels will bring about a doubling of the cost in the next decade. The report speaks of “economic peak oil”, a point beyond which importer economies cannot sustain production and there is runaway inflation.

The IMF calls it a "shock" that will have "large and persistent" macro-economic effects and it calls on governments to invest heavily in alternative energy sources.

But these arguments will fall on deaf ears because government energy policy is about the corporations and the profits.

This winter, more than 20,000 people in the UK will die from cold and many more become ill or get into debt. It is time to put all energy resources into a new commons and end the corporations’ right to profit from such misery.

Penny Cole

Environment editor