Energy producer Cuadrilla announced today that it will resume hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations at its Preston New Road site in Lancashire. The company has secured all the required permits and permissions to continue fracking in the area. This follows a request from the company, reported on here, for permission to continue fracking past the time allotted by the Town and Country Planning Act, which would have fracking operations shut down in November 2019. This request was due to the fact that the site has been forced to shut down when seismic levels rose above the Government’s limit six times due to fracking. The site has been shut down for testing since December 2018, after fracking caused a tremor that exceeded the legal limit by a factor of three, following nine smaller seismic tremors from the site on the same day. Cuadrilla will resume operations until the end of November, indicating that the request for more time has not yet been granted.

Projects and Operations Director for Cuadrilla, Laura Hughes said that Preston New Road “is a well-run, entirely safe and environmentally responsible operation. We also know there is a reservoir of recoverable high quality natural gas beneath our feet that the UK needs if we are to reach Net Zero by 2050.” Claims of environmental responsibility and striving toward net-zero emissions conflict with a recent study which indicated that fracking may be one of the biggest emitters of the greenhouse gas methane, reported on here. The claims of safety may also be a tough sell to residents of Lancashire who remember property damage caused by an earthquake in Blackpool in 2011 that Cuadrilla admitted to causing through fracking.

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