FracktiousIN AMERICA shale-gas extraction has been creating jobs and transforming energy markets. In Britain, by contrast, the shale-gas revolution promised by the prime minister, David Cameron, has run up against a familiar foe: NIMBYism.
On June 29th crowds of people who do not want fracking, the process by which shale gas is extracted, gathered outside the offices of Lancashire County Council. Most of them expected the council’s development-control committee—more used to analysing planning-permission applications than geology—to accept an application by Cuadrilla, an energy company, to start fracking in north-west England. The council’s own legal and planning departments had advised them to approve it.
But the councillors surprised everyone by voting nine to three, with two abstentions, to reject the application, citing not geology but “unacceptable noise impact” and “adverse urbanising effect on the landscape”. Protesters rejoiced with some noise impact of their own. Daisy Sands, a Greenpeace campaigner, called the decision “a Waterloo for the fracking industry”.
Fracking in Britain...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, Seismic
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