After almost a thousand days of protest, Cuadrilla has abandoned its fracking site at Preston New Road in Lancashire โ but is the company gone for good, or is this just a temporary reprieve for the localย community?
At the end of September, Cuadrilla announced that it would be removing its fracking equipment from the site. A series of tremors meant that work at the site had already been halted until the Oil And Gas Authority had conducted a technical review, a process that is stillย ongoing.
The energy firmโs current permission to frack and drill at Preston New Road expires on 30 November, and the company confirmed that no further fracking would take place ahead of that date. The news was met with cheers by campaigners, many of whom have held daily vigil outside the Cuadrilla site since Januaryย 2017.
But the story isnโt over for Cuadrilla. The company confirmed two weeksโ later that it would still apply for an extension to its licence beyond November, contingent upon the outcome of technical reviews by the Oil and Gas Authority, which would allow the company to drill until at leastย 2021.ย
โPeople have put down their tools for the moment but they havenโt gone home,โ said Gina Dowding, a Lancashire county councillor representing the Green Party, and an MEP for the North West. โEverybody Iโve spoken to has said, โNot until categorically this company itself declares its leaving will everyone completelyย relax.โโ
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Local councilย conditions
The application would involve taking the decision back to Lancashire County Council, which rejected Cuadrillaโs previous application to frack in 2015. The local council’sย decision was overturned by theย central government which was, at that point, determined to support the growthย of a British shale gasย industry.ย
But three years on from Cuadrillaโs initial rejection, conditions are different, both in Lancashire and at the national governmentย level.
The Conservatives gained control of Lancashire County Council in 2017, where Labour had previously been the largest party. At the very top, David Cameron is no longer in power, and Boris Johnson is leading a minority government, with yet another election around theย corner.
โEven inside the conservative party, thereโs no consensus that fracking is a great idea,โ said David Powell, head of environment and green transition at the New Economics Foundation. โMPs are under a lot of pressure locally to oppose it, and the government doesnโt have aย majority.โ
A report by the National Audit Office found that the UK has spent ยฃ32.7 million to support fracking since 2011, yet had only drilled three wells, despite plans to have established 20 by the middle of nextย year.
The fracking industry has called for the government to relax regulations on earth tremors, the stringency of which have led to an impasse for drilling in the UK. But the government has so far refused to bend, meaning that companies must halt work if they trigger earthquakes above a 0.5 magnitude. If those regulations are going to be changed, it’s going to be withouth the help of local pro-fracking lobby group, Lancashire For Shale, which recently announced it isย being โwoundย downโ.
Read moreย โย Frack Off: Meet the Campaigners Protecting Lancashire fromย Fracking
Despite strong local opposition to fracking, councillors on the Lancashire Council Development Control Committee must have โsustainableโ reasons, founded in the planning process, to reject a fracking planningย application.ย
โIf there were going to be any further applications, whether itโs in my division or any other division, I would like to see an independent geological survey undertaken,โ said Paul Hayhurst,ย the independent councillor who proposed the 2015 motion to refuse Cuadrilla permission toย drill.
Governmentย support
If the council did again reject a future application by Cuadrilla, the central government could again overturn it โ though given the current political upheaval, this decision could be in the hands of a new government that is less sympathetic to fracking. A Labour victory in any forthcoming election would likely spell defeat for the fracking industry โ the party has promised to ban the practice โonce and forย allโ.
While the government still officially supports fracking, and Boris Johnson has backed it in the past (famously declaring that London should leave no stone unfracked while he was mayor), an imminent government white paper on energy is reportedly set to overlook the technology in favour of renewableย energy.ย
Both the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party support a ban on fracking, and Ireland and Scotland have already called a halt toย it.ย
โCuadrilla is not stupid. Theyโre a business,โ says Powell. โAt some point I wouldnโt be at all surprised if they look at the writing on the wall and they go: how long are we going to keep throwing money at this thing that local people donโt want, that ministers say they want but theyโre not about to let us cause big tremors in pursuit of, and if Jeremy Corbyn held the balance of power tomorrow we wouldnโt be allowed to doย anyway?โ
Publicย antipathy
Socially, too, Cuadrilla is in a different place now to four years ago. Polls suggest that support for fracking is at an all-time low. Those opposed to the industry now have four more years of evidence under their belts of the damage that it can cause in localย communities.
โGiven the councillors have seen the wreckage that comes with the fracking industry, I would hope they would be able to make a strong case,โ said Dowding. โI think it would be a foolish set of councillors that passedย it.โ
All this remains hypothetical: Cuadrilla, despite its bullishness, may yet decide against re-submitting its application. โI think the company is putting on a brave face,โ Dowding adds. โI think the industryโs dead in theย water.โ
Cuadrillaโs spectre may continue to hover over the UKโs energy sector, but as the UKโs ‘shale revolution’ is now represented by an empty field in Preston, itโs easy to see why protesters are cautiouslyย optimistic.
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Image: Ric Lander/Flickrย CC BY–NC–SAย 2.0
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