Working to protect the Water, Air, Soil, Ecology, Homes and Public Health of Sussex. Raising awareness about the dangers of Hydraulic Fracturing or 'Fracking'.
Why then is the government not ensuring MANDATORY Environmental Impact Assessments will take place during the exploration phase?
The government said it would be too burdensome for gas companies to tell everybody within a wide radius of drilling that it might take place under their homes.
It would mean a "disproportionately large number of individuals and businesses" would have to be personally informed, Boles told MPs in a written statement.
"People should be notified personally if firms want to drill or frack for oil and gas under their homes. Removing that right is a further blow to local communities who are rightly concerned about the impacts of fracking. Ministers should be strengthening rules to protect local people, not weakening them in yet another sop to an industry that wants to keep us hooked on dirty fossil fuels."
Here it is folks. See links to where you can tell them what you think about it.
You have 12 weeks before this nightmare could be licensed to roll out across the majority of Britain. This threatens to impact terribly our collective future - our wild ecology, our energy infrastructure .. and our individual personal physical health & that of the children in our communities.
Report: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/environmental-report-for-further-onshore-oil-and-gas-licensing
Consultation:
https://econsultation.decc.gov.uk/decc-policy/consultation-env-report-further-oil-gas-licensing/
"Citizen Space" Online Survey:
https://econsultation.decc.gov.uk/decc-policy/consultation-env-report-further-oil-gas-licensing/consultation/intro/view
About 32,000 square miles of Britain are believed to have potential for shale development, with the biggest concentrations of wells expected to be in Lancashire and the Sussex Weald.
In 12 weeks' time, the frack dealers that run this country could be forcing through a swathe of drilling licenses that would affect every single one of us - potentially causing irrevocable damage to our health and our wild ecology. Are we really going to let them get away with it?
The UK government is to open up thousands of square miles to drilling for shale gas reserves, potentially leading to hundreds of rigs dotting the countryside.
From the Sunday Times article:
The process will begin on Tuesday when Michael Fallon, the energy minister, unveils a report detailing the environmental and social impact of fracking, the controversial process that frees gas by blasting rock formations with jets of water and chemicals.
The government is also considering changes to fast-track the creation of hundreds of fracking sites by changing the system for awarding licences to companies that want to drill for gas and oil.
Shale regions would be divided into boxes as small as a few hundred acres, each with its own licence giving companies the right to prospect.
Fallon is also expected to spell out some of the disruption likely to be experienced by residents, including up to 48 lorries a day arriving at fracking sites — known as gas pads — for up to two years while they are being built. Often the traffic will have to travel along winding lanes; in some cases new roads could be required.
The government is expected to conclude that the risks of despoiling the countryside and polluting water supplies are not enough to outweigh the benefits of fracking. Supporters of shale gas believe it has the potential to supply Britain’s energy needs for decades and bring down household bills.
Ministers have already said communities can expect to receive £100,000 in compensation for each well dug in their area in addition to 10% of the turnover they generate.
Fallon, who has warned that residents “right across the south” should be ready for possible fracking, is expected to say that the area of the country covered by licences could be increased substantially from the current 7,300 square miles. About 32,000 square miles are believed to have potential for shale development, with the biggest concentrations of wells expected to be in Lancashire and the Sussex Weald.
One shale oil drilling site - in Balcombe, West Sussex - has already been the focus for angry protests. Not even national parks or areas of outstanding natural beauty will be exempt from potential drilling.
Lawrence Carter, energy campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: “Local environmental impacts from fracking are likely to be considerable, whether you’re talking about truck movements, water use or flaring.
“Residents in villages where fracking is proposed live there because the areas are tranquil and clean. They will be neither if fracking is allowed.”
The environmental report to be released this week, drawn up by the consultancy Amec, will be open to consultation for 12 weeks before the government announces early next year how it plans to award the licences.
At present, companies are given licences to prospect across broad regions. Cuadrilla Resources, the drilling firm that claims to have found nearly six decades’ worth of domestic supplies under Lancashire, won a single licence covering 1,200 sq km (463 square miles) of the region when the government last held an auction in 2008. Its licence area in the southeast is spread over 800 sq km.
The fast-track process under consideration to replace this would mean that the maximum block of land covered by one licence could be as small as 10 sq km, according to Whitehall sources. The change is designed to prevent a single company from scooping up too many of the most attractive areas and to speed up development.
When companies are awarded licences they commit themselves to drilling a certain number of wells within six years. If they fail to comply, the licences are surrendered back to the government.
By increasing the number of licensed zones — with drilling obligations — the companies will be forced to drill or lose their rights.
George Osborne, the chancellor, has said shale gas could bring “thousands of jobs, billions of pounds of business investment, and lower energy bills”. However, Amec is understood to have played down the potential for large-scale job creation. Rather than the 74,000 jobs initially hoped for, it is expected to estimate that between 15,900 and 24,300 will be created.
Beauty spot drilling bid:
The fracking industry faces the threat of new protests after submitting an application for 24-hour drilling in the South Downs national park, writes Jon Ungoed-Thomas.
Celtique Energie has submitted the proposal for an exploratory site to be sunk next year in Fernhurst, West Sussex, in an area of outstanding natural beauty.
Lord Cowdray, who owns a 16,500-acre estate in the South Downs, is among locals opposing the drilling site. He has registered his ownership of the verges adjacent to the site, which could block access for lorries.
He has also said he will legally challenge any attempt to frack oil or gas from his land.
Marcus Adams, founder of Frack Free Fernhurst, said: “If they get approval to drill here, then nowhere is safe.”
He said the company would risk facing similar protests to those seen at an exploratory drilling site at Balcombe, West Sussex, where more than 1,000 protesters set up camp in the summer.
Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP for Chichester, whose constituency covers Fernhurst, has said it would be “very unlikely” he would support drilling in such a sensitive area.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Environment/article1352770.ece
Sorry Allan, the Poms/Brits know a frackwit when we see one.
According to the Sunday Times:
The founder of the controversial shale-gas explorer Cuadrilla Resources wants to hand towns and villages billions of pounds from fracking what he calls “the people’s gas”.
In his first interview in Britain, Allan Campbell, the Australian behind Cuadrilla, claimed his company has discovered “another North Sea”, but bemoaned the lack of political will to develop it.
“I’ve got a great admiration and fondness for this country from whence my ancestors came, but the regulatory and planning system here is just bullshit,” he said.
“There is no leadership, there is no oomph.”
The company claims to have discovered 200 trillion cubic feet of gas thousands of feet underground in Lancashire — sufficient to meet typical British demand for more than 50 years — but has been hamstrung by mounting opposition to fracking.
Last year the government lifted a ban imposed after Cuadrilla caused two small earth tremors when drilling near Blackpool in 2011.
Fracking, a hydraulic fracturing process, involves pumping millions of gallons of water and chemicals underground to blast apart previously untappable geological formations.
In America it has transformed an energy shortage into a century’s reserve. The gas price has plummeted to less than half the cost in Britain and is credited as a driver of the country’s economic recovery.
Campbell claimed Britain’s shale-gas resources could be just as transformative. The 58-year-old hopes the promise of huge paydays will break the logjam hindering development. “This isn’t our gas, it’s the people’s,” he said. “If we have just rediscovered the North Sea — which we believe we have — we deserve to collect an economic rent for having the balls to spend the money to commercialise it.
“But there is so much gas that we can give the supernormal profits to the people it belongs to — the people of Great Britain.
“We want to give away billions. It’s pretty radical stuff, right? I’m a bit of a pinko."
In the new year, the company hopes to kick off a “big conversation” on fracking. This would take the form of 40-odd town-hall meetings in collaboration with the government and campaign groups who do not have the vested interests of the industry.
The hope is to dispel the worst fears over fracking, such as ground water being poisoned by it, and thousands of drilling rigs blighting Britain’s rural landscape.
Campbell said: “I am not opposed to the opposition; I think it’s a really good thing. But this has got to be an informed decision, and at the moment there is a vacuum of information being filled with hyperbole that has no foundation in facts.”
He wants to reward communities in two ways. First, like other drillers, Cuadrilla has pledged to give 1% of the turnover generated by each well to the local communities — two thirds of which would go to parishes and the rest to the county council.
Each drilling site — a typical one would be about the size of a football pitch — would use a few entry points above ground for as many as 40 individual wells that would fan out underground in all directions. Each one of these would be a separate source of revenue.
Campbell has also proposed to carve out a chunk of the tax that the Treasury stands to collect from shale wells, and set it aside for investments in green technologies, or for a strategic investment vehicle such as Norway’s £500bn state pension fund.
He said: “The tax system is not strategic. This is our gas. So how can you, the government, be so arrogant as to dictate how we should invest it? Or piss it away on middle-class tax allowances or some such bullshit?
“We should reinvest it smartly for the benefit of your kids and their kids and their kids . . . whether that’s in skills or new technologies or whatever. And that should be for the people to determine in accordance with an agenda for their own self-sustainability.”
< .. Tumbleweed ... >
Terror in #Pungesti and whole of Romania due to Fracking operations of Chevron! Chevron has started a real war against the Romanian people, backed by the Romanian government, while using the heavy and brutal arm of the militarised police, the Riot Police.
In a country where the property rights are blatantly breached, the freedom to express is abusively prohibited, the right to free movement is restricted, we desperately need international solidarity!
Yesterday, the 7th of December, was a war day little covered and debated in Romania in the media, as expected.
In the first round, people, who have gathered there to send out a message to Chevron and to the Romanian Government, who has done everything to impose Chevron's fracking project, pulled down the fence surrounding the land where Chevron abusively and illegally and despite the huge opposition of the local community, started erecting its first rig on Romanian territory. 20 people were arrested, others injured in the fights after, mainly to release the arrested ones.
The camp was fully evacuated and destroyed by the Riot Police for the reason of insalubrity! They accused the people of possession of white weapons (totally false) and flamable materials! In the camp, they only kept the gas for the generator used to fuel the camp with energy!
The Riot Police waited for the night to fall and sent out troops to the houses of the locals to look for guests (no real activists, whatsoever, mostly citizens who came there out of solidarity with the abused people of Pungesti), beat them up in their own yards, broke inside the homes and fined the people hosting non-local protesters and beat them up, while people were hiding fearful in their homes, with the lights switched off and whispering in the dark. Prior to this, the Riot Police made look like the protesters have thrown stones at one of their trucks, so that they intervene in force once again. This time, they have came to the local shop where the evicted people gathered and took away and brutally beat up some of the newly arrived leaders of the the political and environmental awakening movement in Romania. They were detained and beaten up brutally, the camera of one of them was broken. Some 11 more people were arrested. Penal files will be made for many of them and some of them will be arrested with a 29-detention mandate for researches (unlike until so far), like real criminals! The leaders of the camp are targeted!
In the mean time, in Bucharest, hundreds took to the street in solidarity with Pungesti! They were fined by the Riot Police right away and they tried to remove people from there using violence. No means are there for people to protest anymore! All types of protest are being denied to the people of Romania and the resistance is brutally abused!
We underline, this is no local situation, the whole country is backing Pungesti! What the Romanian dictatorship wanted to do in Pungesti was to have a showcase of repression, so that it opens the way for the rest of the projects countrywide! The Romanian people will not give up the fight, but we need any type of international solidarity!
Pungesti camp needs to resist and it will resist! Please help us to make it resist! Spread out the message worldwide that Romanians are resisting fracking and they want to inspire everyone to do so!
Today, massive protests throughout Romania will be held. Huge repression from the Riot Police will try to block our protest, just as they have done it before. It's just that this time, it got worse and they are desperate to silence us!
The war goes on and we need people to come down here to help us!!! The situation is desperate!
No gazaran!!!"
In what is being seen as a test case for fracking in national parks, Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, has made it clear he is likely to oppose plans to drill in Fernhurst, a village in the South Downs National Park in West Sussex.
He was filmed expressing support for fracking as part of an undercover investigation by Greenpeace last year.
Frack Free Fernhurst, Greenpeace UK
It has to be said that if we all looked after our own back yards, we might be in a much better collective situation. Doesn't quite apply to this apparent hypocrisy on the part of someone who also has the power to influence other communities negatively.
We are NOMPS - NOT ON MY PLANET!
From the article:
A senior Tory MP who has previously voiced strong support for fracking has said he is "very unlikely" to back an application to drill on land in his own constituency.
“I think it is very unlikely that I would find a planning application acceptable in such an environmentally sensitive area, particularly since it would also be very close to a village of 3,000 inhabitants.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fracking/10482667/Pro-fracking-Tory-MP-rejects-drilling-in-his-own-backyard.html
The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee was taking evidence today from the Environment Agency, Health and Safety Executive along with the DECC. Mr Tony Grayling, Head of Climate Change and Communities, Environment Agency stated that the EA will 'take air quality very seriously'. This does not seem to be the case according to the FoI request received today.... without any testing or monitoring, how will the EA know what the quality of the air is? They don't currently do it at other sites around West Sussex.
Fracking should take place in Sussex, the Energy Minister says.
Michael Fallon, MP for Sevenoaks in Kent, said households “right across the south” of England should prepare for hydraulic fracturing in their areas.
He vowed to tackle “myths” around the controversial extraction process, which involves blasting water and chemicals underground to release reserves of gas trapped in shale rock.
This is information about article one
In the USA, towns near fracking sites have seen cancer rates rising, water supplies running out and the poisoning of land, livestock, pets and people by hazardous air pollutants. Water that was once pristine is now so contaminated with methane that it can be set alight. Industry studies show 5-7% of all new oil and gas wells leak and ALL wells will leak eventually.
Our water supply, which comes predominantly from the chalk aquifer, would be threatened.
Property values are falling in areas near drilling sites.
Even the energy secretary says fracking WON’T REDUCE ENERGY BILLS.
Frack Free Sussex
Sort code: 08-92-99
Account: 65733697
The campaign to keep Sussex a healthy and happy place for all of us to live is reliant on all of us! We are not a political organisation and nobody involved gets paid - we do it because we care. Here are the sort of awareness raising activities that your donation could help to pay for:
Posters, information leaflets, flyering
Organising screenings of films such as The Bentley Effect and PowerTrip
Organising public meetings and talks with knowledgeable guest speakers (get in touch)
Web hosting for this website
Getting the Frack Free Sussex information stand to festivals and community events
Advertising to local press
The campaign to prevent fracking and any forms of unconventional drilling ruining our county is made up of an ever growing number of people LIKE YOU! We are fighting against multi-national corporations with millions of pounds to spend on PR so we need you, whatever your skills and expertise.
Event organisers, letter-writers, graphic designers, video-makers, photographers, website builders, persuasive talkers, sign-makers, cake-bakers, tea servers, leaflet handers, media observers, database builders, film showers, nature-lovers, lorry-blockers, T-shirt designers, scientists, economists, environmentalists, musicians, artists....you name it!
Please do what you can or give what you can!
