I have always said it is a brutal technique, with unpredictable consequences. The geological equivalent of key-hole surgery. The announcement came after operations at the fracking site in Preston New Road, Lancashire were suspended after a magnitude 2.9 event was recorded in August 2019.Īs the Guardian noted at the time, a new report by the semi independent Oil and Gas Authority warned it was not possible to rule out “unacceptable” consequences for those living near fracking sites and it “was not possible to predict the magnitude of earthquakes fracking might trigger.”Īs I wrote about it back in 2019: The industry always said that fracking was not only safe but also precise. This new evidence concluded, “that it is not possible with current technology to accurately predict the probability of tremors associated with fracking.”
According to its press release in 2019, the Government ended support for fracking in the UK on the basis of new scientific analysis. While everything has changed in the geopolitics of the global energy system since the UK’s ban three years ago, nothing has changed in geology. It is hardly surprising, as if night follows day, that some of these groups have publicly been supportive of her pro-fracking announcement last week. Truss is particularly close to the IEA, having known its director for 25 years, appeared at many of its events and hired its ex-Comms director, who will now follow her into Number 10. These groups have long pushed climate denial in the UK and been critical of Net Zero pledges by Government. She is ideologically joined at the hip to the network of neoliberal think-tanks that are just around the corner from Westminster, notably the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Adam Smith Institute, and Centre for Policy Studies. She is a hard core libertarian prime minister, far to the right of her predecessors, including Boris Johnson, Teressa May, and David Cameron.
On the one hand, a pro-fracking, pro-fossil fuel announcement from Truss is hardly surprising. Truss won’t be the first or last politician to make a U-turn on a policy announcement. It was also a massive U-turn on the last Conservative election manifesto which pledged “not to support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.” None of these announcements will do anything to ease bills and will only exacerbate our climate crisis. The pro-fracking pledge was included in an announcement that also included opening up the North Sea for further drilling. Then in the Conservative party manifesto, the party promised “not to support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.” “We will end the moratorium on extracting our huge reserves of shale which could get gas flowing as soon as six months where there is local support for it.” Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister, also signaled change last week when she ripped up the Conservative government’s moratorium on fracking as part of an energy strategy to tackle the cost of living crisis and huge gas prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The country has both a new Prime Minister and King in a week. There is a quote reported to be from Lenin that says “there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen.” For the UK this last week has been one of those weeks. It is an understatement to say that much has changed in those three years, with the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, both of which have had major ramifications on the global energy market.Ĭhange keeps coming. It is just shy of three years since the UK Government announced it was withdrawing its support for shale gas extraction or fracking.
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