Last Monday, a group of environmental activists occupied the front entrance of the London offices of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. They spray-painted doors and windows with the symbol of the ‘Extinction Rebellion’ campaign group to protest, among other things, the government’s support for fracking. Later in the week, on the day of crunch talks on Brexit, activists staged further protests, including by super-gluing themselves to the gates of Downing Street.
It was only last month that fracking — or hydraulic fracturing, which is used to release shale gas or oil from rocks deep underground — was able to restart in the U.K. after a seven-year halt. Attempts to launch a fracking project in Lancashire had met with resistance in 2015 after local Councillors rejected applications. However, the government overturned their rejection the following year, insisting that shale gas had the power not only to fuel economic growth but also to provide an important energy source. The decision triggered much anger in the local community.
An intensely divisive issue
Fracking has remained an intensely divisive issue in British politics. While the Labour Party pledged to ban it in its 2017 manifesto, the Conservative manifesto hailed the shale gas “revolution” in the U.S. which it said had resulted in less reliance on foreign energy. In 2013, attempting to sell fracking to the country, then Prime Minister David Cameron suggested that shale gas could provide Britain with the equivalent of gas supply for 51 years.
The self-reliance argument has been bolstered by the heightened tensions with Russia that followed the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury earlier this year. Rather than be “reliant on Mr. Putin for our gas supply”, the U.K. ought to exploit shale gas, Energy Minister Claire Perry told The Times earlier this year, and accused environmentalists of peddling misinformation. ”This is not some sort of Frankenstein technology,” she insisted. However, there remains strong public concern: over 12,000 people have signed a parliamentary petition calling for fracking to be banned.
Critics of government policy have argued that fracking would distract the state from its efforts to re-balance its energy mix towards cleaner, greener sources. In May, a cross-party group of MPs pointed to a “dramatic and worrying” collapse in low-carbon energy investment in the U.K. since 2015, which threatened Britain’s ability to meet its carbon budgets.
Concerns have also centred on the impact of fracking on the local environment — not least suggestions that the process had led to tremors. Since the re-start in Lancashire, it has had to be suspended twice because of several tremors, including two that were higher than the regulatory threshold that requires a halt. Fracking companies have suggested that the limit needs to be raised and even Minister Perry has weighed in on this. However, the government has said no change is on the cards.
The Labour Party has warned that the government’s ties to the industry remain close: research by the party accused the government of working “hand in hand” with the industry, holding 31 meetings with industry figures over the past three years.
While things may be ramping up in the U.K. for now, campaigners are likely to take heart from developments across the English Channel in continental Europe, and, in particular, the Netherlands, where the government earlier this year pulled out of shale gas exploration. “The promises made by industry sound eerily familiar,” said Labour’s Shadow Energy Minister Rebecca Long-Bailey.
Vidya Ram works for The Hindu and is based in London.
