Local residents set to march against plans to FRACK for gas UNDER their villages

Frack Free Coastal Communities and Frack Free Scarborough are urging residents to join them on a march through Burniston in a show of opposition to Europa Oil & Gas’s plans to drill for gas under local villages.

Burniston: no gas drilling here

The event, planned for 22 March, will also mobilise people to register their objections to the application with North Yorkshire Council’s planning committee. It is backed by York City Unison, Parents For Future UK, Scarborough Green Party, York City Unison, Scarborough Unity, Social Justice Party Scarborough, Friends of the Earth, and York Trades Council.

Europa Oil & Gas has submitted a planning application for a gas well at Burniston, which would use a form of hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) to extract gas from the sandstone beneath the neighbouring village of Scalby.

The initial application is for a ‘test and appraisal’ well. However, future plans include more wells directed beneath Burniston and Cloughton and twenty years of continuous gas extraction. And this at a time when the climate crisis means we must double down on progress to net zero.

As the Canary previously reported, fracking is not currently allowed in England. However, Europa is exploiting a loophole to try to push ahead with the Burniston project.

It will involve a form of fracking known as a ‘proppant squeeze’. Essentially, it’s a process that injects a proppant – a solid material, usually sand – and water slurry into the wellbore. Technically, this isn’t the same procedure that Cuadrilla used at notorious fracking site Preston New Road. This is because it uses less water, and due to the proppant, less pressure to carry out the operation. Ultimately though, the end goal is no different – that is, to fracture the gas-bearing rock.

Fobbed off with misinformation

Chris Garforth from Frack Free Coastal Communities said:

We’re fed up with being fobbed off with misinformation and platitudes from fossil-fuel dinosaurs. The company is playing down residents’ justified concerns about damage to the local rural and coastal environment, the impact of hundreds of heavy goods vehicles on road safety, air and noise pollution, methane leaks, flaring, and the potential for earthquakes and damage to important aquifers. To say nothing of the damage to efforts to keep global warming down to survivable levels.

John Atkinson from Frack Free Scarborough said:

We can’t just rely on the planning process to protect us. It’s vital we back up individual objections with a collective show of opposition on the streets and within our organisations. We intend to be a force that can’t be ignored.

Anyone wanting to object to the planning application can find out more here. There are more details about the march on the Frack Free Coastal Communities and Frack Free Scarborough Facebook pages.

Featured image via Neil Terry