Tories Go It Alone On Shale Gas As Opposition Calls For Fracking Ban

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Could the Conservative Party be the last man standing when it comes to promoting fracking in the UK? This week, Chancellor George Osborne reaffirmed the partyโ€™s pro-shale agenda, urging Britain not to โ€œturn its backโ€ on shale gas and to โ€œget on withโ€ย fracking.

Osborneโ€™s statement during Wednesdayโ€™s Prime Ministerโ€™s Questions’ comes a week ahead of a crucial vote by councillors in Lancashire on whether to allow Cuadrilla to frack for the first time in the UK sinceย 2011.

But the opinion amongst the opposition parties appears to be shifting, as Tim Farron and Andy Burnham โ€“ both favoured to win leadership of the Liberal Democrats and Labour, respectively โ€“ have called for shale gas drilling to beย stopped.

Rethinkย Fracking

Writing in the Huffington Post this week, Farron โ€“ who was among the 52 MPs who voted in favour of a moratorium on fracking in January โ€“ declared that his party had โ€œgot it wrong onย frackingโ€.

Calling for the Lib Dems to โ€œrethinkโ€ their approach, he argued that a debate is needed on whether the party should support a ban onย fracking.

He wrote: โ€œShale gas will only have a future in the UK if we abandon, or significantly scale back, our climate targets โ€“ and that’s something that I hope every Liberal Democrat would oppose. I wish I could say the same about the Tories, but I’d be surprised if we don’t see them beginning to talk down the UK‘s climateย objectives.โ€

He argued that to meet the UKโ€™s Climate Change Act objectives we must decarbonise power generation almost entirely by 2030, noting that any large-scale extraction of shale gas is โ€œa minimum of ten to fifteen yearsย awayโ€.

โ€œIf these targets mean anything, we shouldnโ€™t be planning to use significant volumes of gas for power at all, regardless of its source,โ€ heย wrote.

This follows statements made by Burnham earlier this month to the Guardian calling for a moratorium.

Burnham, who is widely tipped to win the contest to replace Ed Miliband as Labour leader, said: โ€œThese things [licences] just seem to be handed out like confettiโ€ฆ Where is the evidence that it is safe to come and frack a place like this? No fracking should go ahead until we have much clearer evidence on the environmentalย impact.โ€

Both the Welsh Government and the Scottish National party (SNP), which holds the third largest number of seats in the London Parliament, have voiced support for a moratorium on fracking. In January, the SNP announced a moratorium on all fracking applications until a full examination of health and environmental impacts isย conducted.

Lancashireย Shale

However, the fracking industry got a boost of support earlier this week as a local planning officer in Lancashire recommended that one of Cuadrillaโ€™s sites should be approved ahead of next weekโ€™s planning applicationย decision.

The officer said that fracking at the Little Plumpton site should go ahead while being subject to certain environmental conditions related to water and noise pollution. This reverses an anti-frackingย draft ruling made in January. However, Cuadrillaโ€™s Roseacre Wood site should be rejected, he said, due to the impact on localย traffic.

The news was welcomed by both Francis Egan, chief executive of Cuadrilla, as well as Phil Arnall, a Cuadrilla director and chairman of Australian mining company AJย Lucas.

AJ Lucas, which owns 45 percent of Cuadrilla, saw its share price soar by 28 percent following the Lancashire officerโ€™sย recommendation.

Arnall told the Australian Financial Review: โ€œWeโ€™ve put tens of millions of dollars into this exercise: we are trueย believers.โ€

It seems all of AJ Lucasโ€™s eggs are in one basket with Cuadrilla described as its โ€œbiggest growth projectโ€; this is due to its other businesses in mining and drilling suffering from the downturn in Australian resourcesย investment.

@kylamandel

Photo: Google Creativeย Commons

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Kyla is a freelance writer and editor with work appearing in the New York Times, National Geographic, HuffPost, Mother Jones, and Outside. She is also a member of the Society for Environmental Journalists.

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