UK government rings death knell for the fracking industry

By Adam Vaughan

ASHLEY COOPER / science PHOTO LIBRARY

The UK executive has launched a moratorium on fracking and dropped measures to run the enchancment of shale gas wells, ringing the death knell for the nascent industry.

The sharp reversal of toughen ends almost a decade of protests, court docket cases and minor earthquakes with none energy being produced.

The switch follows a 2.9 magnitude quake in August introduced on by fracking advance Blackpool, the ideal to this level after operations by shale company Cuadrilla this summer and closing autumn. A scientific prognosis printed closing week by the UK oil and gas regulator concluded bigger future tremors may perhaps now not be ruled out, which can perhaps cause unacceptable “ruin and disturbance.”

In an announcement, alternate secretary Andrea Leadsom stated the chronicle had made it: “definite that we’ll now not rule out future unacceptable impacts on the local folk.”

Whereas the moratorium ideal applies to England, fracking is already successfully banned in Scotland and Wales, and opposition political events possess pledged to ban the form of extracting gas. The executive additionally ditched controversial planning reforms to relief the industry.

The dedication follows the UK spending watchdog announcing closing month that fracking had price police forces and public bodies £33 million, and the industry’s progress had been valuable slower than expected.

Labour, the UK’s most valuable opposition occasion, accused the chief of an are attempting and judge over voters and stated it will ban fracking completely. High minister Boris Johnson has stated the atmosphere may well be one in all his high three domestic priorities, and opposition to fracking has lengthy outstripped toughen in legit polling.

Cuadrilla’s Australian proprietor, AJ Lucas, stated it will proceed to give the firm its stout toughen, and it will proceed to work with UK regulators to are attempting and desire the moratorium. The UK imposed a moratorium in fracking in 2011 after issues over earthquakes, but later lifted it and space new guidelines.

The North Sea is aloof a mandatory supply of the UK’s gas, but around 60 per cent is imported, mostly from Qatar and Norway. Nationwide Grid expects that these imports will lower in coming years as ‘green gas’, such as that produced by anaerobic digesters, will enhance.

Whereas environmentalists welcomed the chief’s fracking moratorium, on the the same day officials gave the fairway light for the nation’s first deep coal mine in a protracted time, advance Whitehaven in Cumbria.