Attempts to restart fracking in the UK are deeply worrying – Yorkshire Post Letters by Laura McQuillan, The Yorkshire Post Letters, 24th Mar 2025
From: Laura McQuillan, Fitzroy Road, Sheffield.
Attempts to start fracking again in the UK are deeply worrying and there are better ways to achieve energy security and provide jobs. Fracking proponents disregards the significant health risks documented in medical reports. These reports link proximity to fracking sites to cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and birth defects.
We should also listen to Tony Ingraffea, a former proponent of shale gas extraction, now vehemently opposes fracking. His research demonstrates that methane leaks from fracking operations release substantial greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, rendering fracked gas as environmentally damaging as coal.
Professor Ingraffea, who initially sought to reduce coal reliance through his engineering solutions, now expresses “great regret” for unleashing a “tsunami of oil and gas”. He acknowledges the severe climate damage caused by fracking and its detrimental impact on renewable energy development.
Even the limited fracking activity near Blackpool, as documented by Manchester University, produced methane emissions equivalent to 142 transatlantic flights. This starkly illustrates the environmental impact of this industry.
Fracking is clearly unacceptable. Our resources should be dedicated to reducing our reliance on gas, not releasing more. Initiating fracking in the UK will not halt the practice in the USA or elsewhere, and our planet cannot safely withstand the increased burden of additional fossil fuel extraction.
We must prioritise sustainable energy solutions that safeguard both our health and our climate alongside reducing imports and creating jobs.
Britain is about to start fighting over fracking again, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK think there’s hundreds of billions of pounds worth of shale gas ripe for exploiting. But are they ready for the fracking backlash? by Charlie Cooper, August 1, 2025, Politico
LONDON — Fracking is back.
Three years after a botched attempt to unleash the controversial industry helped bring down Liz Truss, it has a new fan: Nigel Farage.
Farage’s surging Reform UK says fracking will secure U.K. energy supplies and reduce bills. 
No, it won’t. Frac’ing always increases bills, as does LNG. Frac propagandists always lie about reducing bills for people, same as the lie about the jobs jobs jobs that do not appear because of corporate greed using automation instead of humans to frac Opponents say that’s nonsense — and that the drilling ruins the countryside and exposes locals to the risk of mini earthquakes.
Brace for another round of Britain’s shale gas forever war.
Farage — whose party consistently leads national opinion polls — is committed to lifting a de facto ban on fracking, shorthand for hydraulic fracturing, which involves drilling horizontal, underground wells, then forcing water, sand and chemicals into them at high pressure to break up the rock and release the gas inside.
“Abso-bloody-lutely,” he told The Spectator magazine in June, when asked if fracking would be on the agenda should Reform win the general election. I wonder how much the frac mafia bribed him. No politician in the right mind would allow frac’ing, never mind undo a frac ban put in place because of the serious quake harms caused.
Richard Tice, Farage’s deputy and Reform’s energy spokesperson, claims fracking could deliver “hundreds of billions of pounds” for the U.K. economy.
The Labour government’s decision not to pursue it is “bordering on criminal financial negligence,” Tice told POLITICO.
Reform’s top brass are not the first politicians to see pound signs in shale rock. Conservative Prime Ministers David Cameron and Liz Truss both looked at boosting domestic fracking in a bid to ape the United States’ shale gas boom, which helped transform the country’s energy fortunes in the 2010s from a net importer of gas to a net exporter for the first time since the 1950s.
But in the U.K., the idea was beaten back each time by fierce local opposition over the risk to landscapes, water supply and — most notoriously — of earthquakes caused by the required underground extraction.
Now Reform is readying for the same fight.
Fracking and the right
Farage’s opponents — including politicians bruised by their own run-in with the fraught politics of fracking — question whether the new generation of shale enthusiasts have the stomach.
“Fracking is one of those great rallying cries of the right,” said Kwasi Kwarteng, who was an energy minister when Boris Johnson introduced the first fracking ban in 2019 and then chancellor when Truss briefly lifted it in 2022. “It feeds into the narrative of ‘broken Britain’ where we’re not bold enough, we’re not exploiting our resources enough, we’re too bound by red tape.
“But explaining that to people in the places where fracking will take place is a very different proposition.”
When energy firm Cuadrilla set up the U.K.’s only previously active fracking site in Lancashire, the area was shaken by minor earthquakes in 2019. Locals said the tremors shook wardrobes and beds. The industry has always maintained — and still does — that any seismic activity would be negligible.The only thing frac’ers are good at, is propaganda and lies, and wooing corrupt and extremely stupid politicians. The Lancashire frac quakes caused serious damages to many homes, and even damaged the wellbore, same as frac quakes did in the Horn River Basin in NEBC, Canada. Frac quakes have caused serious damages in Alberta too
2015-09-17: Henry Neumann, Leduc Alberta: What the Frac?
“The likes of Jacob [Rees-Mogg] and Liz [Truss] would say ‘Let’s just frack!’ But politically it was very difficult to land,” Kwarteng said.
When Truss tried to lift the ban, opposition MPs forced a vote in the House of Commons. The government won — but the chaos that evening shattered any remaining confidence among her MPs. Plagued by an embarrassing mini-budget and unable to shake off the fracking saga, she resigned the next day.
Her successor, Rishi Sunak, reinstated the moratorium on fracking, leaning heavily on findings from the British Geological Survey that offered no guarantee it would not bring earthquakes, nor how big any might be.
This ain’t Texas
For Kwarteng, there is a world of difference between fracking in the U.S. and the situation in the U.K.
“The population density of a place like Lancashire is 400 times that of Wyoming or 40 times that of Texas … Given how small Britain is, you can’t get away with it that easily. I’m not saying it’s impossible. But there are a lot of political hoops you’ll have to jump through.”
Arriving in office in 2019, Johnson took one look at marginal parliamentary seats in Lancashire and other fracking zones and decided it was politically wise to step away. A month ahead of the December 2019 general election, he imposed the first moratorium, citing an Oil and Gas Authority report which said it wasn’t possible to accurately predict the likelihood or size of earthquakes linked to fracking.
“There was no coincidence with that,” said Kwarteng. “This is a very controversial issue. Particularly people in Lancashire were very exercised … We put a moratorium on it, and that went a very long way to reassure people ahead of that election.”
Voters have now elected Reform to lead Lancashire County Council.
But the populist party will reach the same conclusion as Johnson when they wake up to the extent of local opposition, Kwarteng predicted.
“I think they’re very pragmatic. Their mission will be to try and get as many seats as possible and in that context they may well tread more warily as the election comes into view.”
Boris ‘bottled it’
Tice, unsurprisingly, views the Tory legacy very differently.
“They bottled it,” he said. “The thing about leadership is it requires courage and conviction. We didn’t have that with a Boris-led Tory government that was obsessed with net stupid zero.”
Recent commercial liesannouncements have only made Reform more excited about fracking.
American-backed energy firm Egdon Resources recently claimed new analysis showed gas reserves under Lincolnshire and surrounding areas could produce 87 percent of the U.K.’s demand and add £140 billion to the U.K. economy. (The estimates are based on a Deloitte report that the company would not share with POLITICO.)Of course they wouldn’t share it, I bet it’s filled with the usual frac lies and greed luring. Often these types of claims do not account for what’s physically possible to extract and bring to surface, and what is left behind 0 the majority. Frac Fields everywhere are proving to be garbage compared to what the liars and propagandists spewed to hook inhumane politicians (no humane human would allow the permanent water loss that frac’ing causes). And then, there’s the massive lie and scam about clean up, which companies most often refuse to do, hanging the citizenry and its future with billions of dollars in clean up and pollution costs, never mind the collective trillions in damages caused by global warming from methane and CO2 pollution
Andrea Jenkyns, the former Conservative minister now elected as Reform’s regional mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, has met with the company and is bullish about the prospects.
Jenkyns wants “to make sure we have the skills in the local economy to ensure that — if we get a Reform government in 2029 — then we’ve got the workforce across the county to meet [energy] needs through fracking,” she said. Pfffft! Better read some reality. Frac jobs are few and far between. The promises of jobs is a hose job, and fucking politicians, fall for it every time.
Jenkyns, who recently said she does not believe climate change is happening, added that she wants the U.K. to be “energy self-sufficient.” Energy efficient with much cheaper alternate energies is a healthier, more economical and sane way to go, with the added bonus, homes, hospitals, schools, bridges and roads won’t get damaged or destroyed in frac quakes
To some, it all sounds wearily familiar.
Michael Bradshaw, professor of global energy at the Warwick Business School, who has spent years monitoring the development of U.K. shale gas policies, said Reform’s rhetoric today reminded him of David Cameron’s pledge in 2014 to go “all out for shale.”
“In the end, shale turned out to be a bust.” Bradshaw said. “There may be gas in the rocks, but the challenges of extracting it are many.”
Ira Joseph, senior research associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy at New York’s Columbia University, concurred. “U.K shale is not like the Permian Basin [in Texas]. … Everything I’ve seen [suggests] it’s definitely more faulted, more complex.”
More importantly, in Joseph’s estimation, British shale just doesn’t look a good commercial bet for any major energy companies.
“The amount of bang for buck on shale in the U.K. seems pretty limited at the moment, particularly in a market where gas demand is falling not rising,” he said. “There are other, more attractive plays potentially out there than [fracking] in a country where gas demand is falling and the cost would be relatively high.”
In the country
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband appears to be relishing the prospect of a fight over fracking.
“We intend to ban fracking for good,” said a Labour spokesperson. “If Reform want to impose fracking on our countryside, we will take them on.” Excellent!
Farage’s party will also need to take on campaigners who have fought this battle before — and won.And they’re experienced, wise about frac harms, and passionate.
Before Johnson and then Rishi Sunak imposed fracking moratoria in 2019 and again in 2022, one group spearheading opposition was countryside charity the CPRE.
The group remains “completely opposed” to fracking, said its campaign lead, Jackie Copley — and served notice to Reform that they won’t be changing tack.
“We believe it to be extremely harmful to our environment, in terms of atmospheric greenhouse gases, seismic events and via the trucking of contaminated water,” she said. And, frac’ers have a lot of other toxic stinky waste to get rid of, and they always demand to do it as cheaply as possible, like how Encana (now Ovintiv) did it in my community!
“I think Richard Tice is onto the wrong track,” she added, “and CPRE would be highlighting all the problems every step along the way. It’s not something we’d envisage for iconic British countryside.”
Tice is having none of it. Fracking’s impact on the countryside would be minimal, he insisted, with industrial sites no bigger than football fields.Frac impacts go far beyond – hundreds of miles – beyond frac sites; the harms will be many, and unbearable to live with for families.
It was “not the middle-class people, the members of CPRE” who suffered from the fracking ban but “the poorest, the least well-off, in places like Skegness [his constituency]” left with higher energy bills, he added. Ah, I was waiting for this. What a lying fucker, spewing the usual lying threat to terrify ordinary poor people to con them into thinking they are being ripped off by frac bans. Incredibly cruel of Tice. People living frac’d live hellish lives, and suffer higher bills for everything. I live frac’d. I must haul alternate safe water, which for a single senior woman is challenging, and infuriating, and means I must keep an expensive truck. I live in Alberta with frac’ing everywhere and the highest energy prices in Canada! Same in frac’d to hell states.
Reform will be betting that years of painfully high energy prices will encourage threatenvoters to give fracking a chance.
There are some signs they may be onto something. A new poll by Merlin StrategyI don’t believe it. Polls can be easily skewed to fit whatever politicians and industry want people to believe, which asked voters whether they supported fracking based on what they know about it, found 41 percent support versus 25 percent opposed.
But other polls, including the government’s own public attitudes tracker from spring 2024, showed 40 percent opposed and just 18 percent supportive. A YouGov tracker from April this year, which explicitly mentions the risk of minor earthquakes, finds 51 percent against and 24 percent supportive. Frac quakes start out small, and get bigger and bigger and bigger and damaging, and more frequent, even after frac’ing is shut down to try to stop the damaging quakes
Pollster Scarlett Maguire, founder of Merlin Strategy, said: “With higher energy bills and a recent energy crisis, Ahah! Merlin intentionally skewed the poll with threats! Douche fuckers!Brits are looking for an abundance of energy supply here in the U.K., and are becoming more open minded as to what that could look like.” Unforgivable.
But her company’s poll also found ongoing concerns about fracking. “The public are worried about its safety, and further messaging on its risk could cause support to fall,” Maguire said. So, she’s likely told Reform to up the lies and propaganda and swing sweetly about how harmless frac’ing is, and how it lowers bills, and fills the sky with fairy dust, not cancerous and sperm bending benzene, etc. lie and lie after lie to con the people into voting to be abused and have their homes and communities destroyed to make a few rich fuckers richer via gov’t subsidies
Give it a go
Even Reform’s chief attack dog admitted the plans could yet come unstuck, no matter the billions he thinks fracking might unlock. might unlock, but good luck trying to get the reluctant shit to the surface
“The way through [local opposition] is to have a couple of test wells for a couple [of] years,”That was already tried, and frac’er Cuadrilla is refusing to clean up by requesting and getting extension after extension (the usual oil and gas industry trickery, we have nearly $300 Billion in clean up liabilities companies are refusing to deal with in Alberta alone! And, many homes were damaged in the frac quakes, who pays for that? Never the companies. Typical how greedy politician quickly forget and or never talk about the known harms Tice said, “using different extraction techniques, under independentthis made me roar out loud laughing. In the frac world, there is no such thing as “independent”! supervision and monitoring, so that one can show to people it can be done safely. I think that is the way through it. Just another dirty frac con, always a con to make people “accept” frac’ing. If frac’ing is so wonderful and harmless and gives the frac invaded more money by savings on our bills, do frac’ers and their agents – our politicians, need to lie so much and brutally threaten and con communities?
“And, cards on the table — if you do a couple of test wells and, in a sense, for whatever reason, it doesn’t work out, then my hands are up, and I’ll say: ‘It was the right strategy to try, it doesn’t work, but at least we’ve tried and we know.’ That’s my position.”
If Reform can find a way to win the political battles, it will also have to show it was right about bringing down bills for hard-pressed voters. And the impact of even extensive fracking on energy bills is disputed.
The U.K.’s gas price is largely determined by Europe-wide supply and demand, as well as the global market for liquefied natural gas shipped across oceans.
In theory, significantly higher U.K. domestic production could lower wholesale gas prices enough to shift household energy bills, said one energy industry expert, granted anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive topic.
But even in this “most boosterish but still-credible scenario,” they said, it would “knock gas bills down by maybe a fiver or a tenner per year at peak.”
It is more likely to raise government revenue than cut bills, the industry expert added. And then only “if it works at scale … which is uncertain.”
Fracking site clear-up extensions anger neighbour by Paul O’Gorman & Paul Burnell, July 31, 2025, BBC News Lancashire
A woman who lives across the road from a former fracking site has said she is “frustrated” the energy firm responsible for the fracking has applied for more time to restore the site to farmland.
Cuadrilla Resources has asked for a two-year extension to rehabilitate the Preston New Road drilling site in Little Plumpton, Fylde, claiming the delay re-establishing the farmland is due to monitoring required by the Environment Agency.I don’t believe they have a valid reason, I bet they’re intending to never clean it up, as is typical of frac’ers everywhere, notably if damages were done underground
However, local resident Susan Halliday said the work should have been completed some time ago, adding: “They have already had one two-year extension – how do we know they won’t be coming back again in two years’ time?”
The BBC has contacted Cuadrilla for comment.
Cuadrilla has applied to Lancashire County Council for an extension to planning permission, which ran out in June.
A previous extension was granted in 2023.
The company said while work, including the plugging and capping of wells, had taken place, monitoring by the Environment Agency meant the restoration may not be completed before summer 2027.“May” is the key word. I doubt complete appropriate clean up will ever happen
However, Ms Halliday said that was “frustrating because I don’t feel we have won until it’s all completely gone“.Very wise!
“The fence is still in place,” she said.
“Until that is taken away, it is still not a greenfield site.”
Her views were echoed by Josh Roberts, Lancashire County Council cabinet member for rural affairs, the environment and communities.
“We want the site fully restored without further delays – progress has been far too slow,” he said.Keep the pressure on, do not let Cuadrilla walk from complete clean up. Oil patch workers that are owners of gas wells contaminated by frac waste can’t even get appropriate resolution and remedy by regulators, courts and frac’ers, ordinary citizens haven’t a hope in hell.
“Any extensions need to be backed by solid reasons and not excuses.”
The councillor, who is part of the new Reform-led council, added: “We will look to see if everything on the site needs to stay for another two years, like fencing.”
He said that although Reform’s national policy supports fracking, fracking “has its place, but not everywhere”.
He said the geology of sites in Lancashire made subsidence and water contamination a risk.
A consultation has opened on Cuadrilla’s application.
Refer also to:
A proportion (25% to 100%) of the water used in hydraulic fracturing is not recovered, and consequently this water is lost permanently to re-use, which differs from some other water uses in which water can be recovered and processed for re-use.
2025: ‘It shook the house.’ Noble County residents talk about frequent earthquakes
Stephen Bond has lived in Noble County for 53 years. In April, his house began rattling. He thought there was an explosion. “It shook the house, sounded like a bomb going off,” he said.
The cause was an earthquake. The southeastern Ohio county has seen aspike in earthquakes this year, with 70 recorded — the second most in the state after Washington County, Ohio, which experienced 76 over the same time period, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources earthquake database. …
The quakes began after hydraulic fracturing operations for oil and gas — also known as fracking — started in Buffalo Township. On May 8, ODNR asked Encino Energy, operator of the Bears Pad, to halt operations in the community after recording the seismic activity nearby. …
2023: NYT: Individual fracks are using more and more water
2020: UK: Frac’ing is over as the big frac lies fail
2019: Katie de Kauwe, UK lawyer: “Access to justice should not be just for the oil and gas industry.”
2019: UK: 143 health professionals urge PM Theresa May to ban frac’ing
2018: UK, New Study: Fracking is one of the most harmful forms of energy production
2017: Jessica Ernst UK Speaking Tour
2016: UK Fracking giant Cuadrilla fails to lock up a grandmother
2015: Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand against the World’s Most Powerful Industry
2014: Just like Steve Harper: A Government Frac Report Named Redact: UK government heavily censors state-sanctioned report on fracking
2014: Keiser Report: Earthquakes caused by fracing, Interview with Tina Louise from Blackpool UK
2014: Nearly 2,000 Lancashire UK residents join legal bid to block fracking under their homes
2014: Balcombe UK Shouted ‘No!’ to Fracking and Says ‘Yes!’ to Rooftop Solar
2014: Russia concerned by Ukrainian fracking
2014: Is the British Geological Survey exaggerating frac potential to lure leery investors?
2013: Fracking runs “high risk” of polluting countryside, UK Government report warns
2013: Cuadrilla Drilling set back at Balcombe, UK Environment Energy regulator caught not regulating
2013: Radioactive water from Lancashire fracking site
2013: “Many fleas make big dog move” : Jessica Ernst’s inspirational talk in St. Anne’s, Lancashire UK
2012: Fracking can be extended throughout UK, even though it caused two earthquakes
2012: Results of controversial ‘fracking’ for shale gas in UK will be kept secret
