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Engineering consent for fracking: Chris Smith and the ‘astroturf’ consultancy Updated for 2026

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Unless George Osborne gets new orders about his budget this week, it looks like, despite the bluster of the last year, the Government will not be announcing the results of the 14th On-shore Oil and Gas Licensing Round this side of the election (perhaps they’re worried about legal action).

Despite this the Conservative’s token ‘green’, Tim Yeo MP, has been trumpeting the benefits of shale gas, based upon some spurious data produced by DECC which – as I outline in a new report for Talk Fracking this week – is based upon questionable results.

Arguably Tim Yeo’s trust in those results, expressed during the Parliamentary debate on the moratorium proposed by the Commons Environmental Audit Committee, has been very much abused by DECC and shale gas’s supporters in government.

In fact, with less than two months to go before the election, and despite ‘fracking’ having been the major grassroots environmental issue of the last Parliament, all is quiet on the shale gas front.

In reality though this is just the calm before the post-election PR storm.

Coming our way – the fracking spin machine

Irrespective of who wins (or perhaps in the circumstances, who loses the least), after the election the UK public will face an onslaught of PR-orchestrated ‘spin’ to promote shale gas, coalbed methane and underground coal gasification (UCG) as the best thing since … well, anything!

In Scotland, a moratorium on ‘fracking’ was imposed days after the failure of the moratorium in Parliament (although, as I highlighted in my last Ecologist article, the wording of the moratorium doesn’t cover UCG).

As a result the pro-fracking company INEOS, recently heavily invested into unconventional gas, is planning to “love bomb” the Scottish public back into supporting fracking. And though in Scotland that campaign is just getting under-way, in England it’s already begun …

What?, hadn’t you noticed? – that’s because you weren’t meant to.

In the final case study of my recent report for Talk Fracking I examine the use of academics within the Task Force on Shale Gas – a body set up last September under the auspices of former New Labour minister, and more recently former head of the Environment Agency, Lord Chris Smith.

The Task Force claims to “provide a transparent, trusted, independent and impartial platform for public scrutiny, discussion and information about shale gas exploration and production in the UK.”

Behold the Prince of Darkness … Edel who?

This is where the public relations ‘shadow play’ comes into its own. Not in the guise of Lord Chris Smith – who while head of the Environment Agency had behind the scenes meetings to thrash out how environmental regulations would be watered-down.

Not even the Task Force’s ‘expert panel’ members – many of whom have previously expressed support for shale gas and even outright hostility to the anti-fracking movement. And not even the oil and gas industry companies – who are funding the work of the Task Force.

The real players here – the people behind the scenes pulling the strings of the shadow play puppets – are Edelman, which acts as the Task Force’s secretariat.

Who are Edelman? That’s the really important question here – and the most prescient question to ask in relation to the Task Force’s future work on behalf of the public.

All modern businesses tend to specialise in certain fields. Edelman’s specialism is ‘grassroots engagement’ – creating industry-friendly front – or ‘astroturf’-groups to represent the benefits of controversial developments. Edelman has developed this technique in the US for its large American extractive and industrial clients over the last decade or so.

Their purpose is not to convince the public. They are there – as outlined in the recent US study Merchants of Doubt – to confuse the public so that they don’t know who to believe. Their aim is to create, as the original strategies developed by the tobacco industry in the 1960s outlined, an apparent controversy so they can get their point across.

They do not create unity or agreement on an issue, but instead seek to polarise the community to prevent the grassroots opposition holding sway over political decision-makers.

Neutralizing risk, pressurizing opponents

If you want to see how Edelman works, take a look at TransCanada’s alternative proposal for the stalled Keystone Pipeline – the East Energy Pipeline.

Even before the route was announced, TransCanada employed Edelman to carry out an assessment of how they could “drive an active public discussion about Energy East that gives Canadians reasons to affirmatively support the project in the face of organized opposition.”

The way this would be enacted is outlined in another study prepared a few months later by Edelman:

“The most effective way to counter any external challenge is to ready a robust campaign that comprises proactive and reactive communication activities. This approach strives to neutralize risk before it is levelled, respond directly to issues or attacks as they arise, and apply pressure – intelligently – on opponents, as appropriate.”

Their strategy also included a specific digital ‘grassroots advocacy’ proposal which – from Edelman’s US-based offices where they maintain a large interactive intelligence database – would organise an on-line campaign, using 35,000 recruited ‘activists’, to target conventional and social media with positive messages about TransCanada’s pipeline.

There was even a separate proposal for Francophone Québec – perhaps because Edelman’s research showed that French speaking Canadians were politically disposed to be “green” or “super-green”.

The difficulty for Edelman and their clients was that someone leaked these documents to Greenpeace Canada last November.

Edelman changes trains

Which brings us back to the Task Force on Shale Gas.

Up until the Task Force was created, Edelman had been running the secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Unconventional Gas and Oil. The APPGs expenses were funded, like many other APPGs, by the industry – a similar group in fact to those who now support the new Task Force.

Trouble was, being comprised of politicians, the public paid little attention to any of the industry propaganda’ which the APPG circulated.

Then last Autumn, roughly coincident with the formation of the Task Force, Edelman dropped the APPG – handing the secretariat role to another agency with a track record of astroturfing on behalf of industrial causes, Hill and Knowlton.

Was the APPG a failing cause? Were politicians the wrong conduit to influence the public?

After all, in 2013 someone at one of the funders of the Task Force, Centrica, had written an email to the Department for Energy and Climate (DECC) office promoting shale gas stating that

“Our polling shows that academics are the most trusted sources of information to the public so we are looking at ways to work with the academic community to present the scientific facts around shale.”

Just few months before the dropping the APPG, Edelman employed Katie Waring, energy secretary Ed Davey’s former special adviser at DECC – perhaps indicating that a change of strategy was being planned.

With Edelman, has the Task Force lost all credibility?

The problem for the ambitions of Chris Smith is that the model of the Task Force – comprising experts doing research for the public, funded by industry and managed by PR agencies – has already been used in the USA. For example, the Center for Sustainable Shale Development.

It too was modelled as a ‘stakeholder group’ where academics, industry and the public could come together and research the impacts of shale gas – but which was shown to be a front group for the industry, and whose fossil fuel industry support increased when some non-industry members left.

Even with the panel of experts many of whom are pre-disposed to shale gas, and the industry financing, the involvement of Edelman is toxic to the future work of the Task Force.

Chris Smith has to come clean. Who thought up the concept of the Task Force? Who co-ordinated the early meetings and identified the key figures who would take part? And what has been the role of Edelman in that process?

If the Task Force exists “to provide a transparent, trusted, independent and impartial platform for public scrutiny”, then a key part of that has to be accounting for the previous manipulative role of Edelman in controversial public issues – and whether that contaminates the Task Force’s role to serve the public interest.

A ‘fair and impartial platform’? Hardly!

In the USA almost 60 years ago the father of PR, Edward Bernays, stated in his influential book, The Engineering of Consent:

“Today it is impossible to overestimate the importance of engineering consent; it affects almost every aspect of our daily lives. When used for social purposes, it is among our most valuable contributions to the efficient functioning of modern society …

“The responsible leader … must apply his energies to mastering the operational know-how of consent engineering, and to out-maneuvering his opponents in the public interest.”

The Task Force on Shale Gas, in its composition, the background to its formation, and those who organise its work, has the appearance of an industry front group; organised by the company who specialise in such tactics to ‘engineer consent’ – Edelman.

Unless and until the process by which the Task Force was created is fully revealed, including who employed or commissioned Edelman in that role, then the Task Force cannot be considered – irrespective of its academic credentials – to be a fair and impartial platform to discuss unconventional gas and oil in Britain.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer, and maintains the Free Range Activism Website (FRAW).

A fully referenced version of this article is located on FRAW.

 




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Engineering consent for fracking: Chris Smith and the ‘astroturf’ consultancy Updated for 2026

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Unless George Osborne gets new orders about his budget this week, it looks like, despite the bluster of the last year, the Government will not be announcing the results of the 14th On-shore Oil and Gas Licensing Round this side of the election (perhaps they’re worried about legal action).

Despite this the Conservative’s token ‘green’, Tim Yeo MP, has been trumpeting the benefits of shale gas, based upon some spurious data produced by DECC which – as I outline in a new report for Talk Fracking this week – is based upon questionable results.

Arguably Tim Yeo’s trust in those results, expressed during the Parliamentary debate on the moratorium proposed by the Commons Environmental Audit Committee, has been very much abused by DECC and shale gas’s supporters in government.

In fact, with less than two months to go before the election, and despite ‘fracking’ having been the major grassroots environmental issue of the last Parliament, all is quiet on the shale gas front.

In reality though this is just the calm before the post-election PR storm.

Coming our way – the fracking spin machine

Irrespective of who wins (or perhaps in the circumstances, who loses the least), after the election the UK public will face an onslaught of PR-orchestrated ‘spin’ to promote shale gas, coalbed methane and underground coal gasification (UCG) as the best thing since … well, anything!

In Scotland, a moratorium on ‘fracking’ was imposed days after the failure of the moratorium in Parliament (although, as I highlighted in my last Ecologist article, the wording of the moratorium doesn’t cover UCG).

As a result the pro-fracking company INEOS, recently heavily invested into unconventional gas, is planning to “love bomb” the Scottish public back into supporting fracking. And though in Scotland that campaign is just getting under-way, in England it’s already begun …

What?, hadn’t you noticed? – that’s because you weren’t meant to.

In the final case study of my recent report for Talk Fracking I examine the use of academics within the Task Force on Shale Gas – a body set up last September under the auspices of former New Labour minister, and more recently former head of the Environment Agency, Lord Chris Smith.

The Task Force claims to “provide a transparent, trusted, independent and impartial platform for public scrutiny, discussion and information about shale gas exploration and production in the UK.”

Behold the Prince of Darkness … Edel who?

This is where the public relations ‘shadow play’ comes into its own. Not in the guise of Lord Chris Smith – who while head of the Environment Agency had behind the scenes meetings to thrash out how environmental regulations would be watered-down.

Not even the Task Force’s ‘expert panel’ members – many of whom have previously expressed support for shale gas and even outright hostility to the anti-fracking movement. And not even the oil and gas industry companies – who are funding the work of the Task Force.

The real players here – the people behind the scenes pulling the strings of the shadow play puppets – are Edelman, which acts as the Task Force’s secretariat.

Who are Edelman? That’s the really important question here – and the most prescient question to ask in relation to the Task Force’s future work on behalf of the public.

All modern businesses tend to specialise in certain fields. Edelman’s specialism is ‘grassroots engagement’ – creating industry-friendly front – or ‘astroturf’-groups to represent the benefits of controversial developments. Edelman has developed this technique in the US for its large American extractive and industrial clients over the last decade or so.

Their purpose is not to convince the public. They are there – as outlined in the recent US study Merchants of Doubt – to confuse the public so that they don’t know who to believe. Their aim is to create, as the original strategies developed by the tobacco industry in the 1960s outlined, an apparent controversy so they can get their point across.

They do not create unity or agreement on an issue, but instead seek to polarise the community to prevent the grassroots opposition holding sway over political decision-makers.

Neutralizing risk, pressurizing opponents

If you want to see how Edelman works, take a look at TransCanada’s alternative proposal for the stalled Keystone Pipeline – the East Energy Pipeline.

Even before the route was announced, TransCanada employed Edelman to carry out an assessment of how they could “drive an active public discussion about Energy East that gives Canadians reasons to affirmatively support the project in the face of organized opposition.”

The way this would be enacted is outlined in another study prepared a few months later by Edelman:

“The most effective way to counter any external challenge is to ready a robust campaign that comprises proactive and reactive communication activities. This approach strives to neutralize risk before it is levelled, respond directly to issues or attacks as they arise, and apply pressure – intelligently – on opponents, as appropriate.”

Their strategy also included a specific digital ‘grassroots advocacy’ proposal which – from Edelman’s US-based offices where they maintain a large interactive intelligence database – would organise an on-line campaign, using 35,000 recruited ‘activists’, to target conventional and social media with positive messages about TransCanada’s pipeline.

There was even a separate proposal for Francophone Québec – perhaps because Edelman’s research showed that French speaking Canadians were politically disposed to be “green” or “super-green”.

The difficulty for Edelman and their clients was that someone leaked these documents to Greenpeace Canada last November.

Edelman changes trains

Which brings us back to the Task Force on Shale Gas.

Up until the Task Force was created, Edelman had been running the secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Unconventional Gas and Oil. The APPGs expenses were funded, like many other APPGs, by the industry – a similar group in fact to those who now support the new Task Force.

Trouble was, being comprised of politicians, the public paid little attention to any of the industry propaganda’ which the APPG circulated.

Then last Autumn, roughly coincident with the formation of the Task Force, Edelman dropped the APPG – handing the secretariat role to another agency with a track record of astroturfing on behalf of industrial causes, Hill and Knowlton.

Was the APPG a failing cause? Were politicians the wrong conduit to influence the public?

After all, in 2013 someone at one of the funders of the Task Force, Centrica, had written an email to the Department for Energy and Climate (DECC) office promoting shale gas stating that

“Our polling shows that academics are the most trusted sources of information to the public so we are looking at ways to work with the academic community to present the scientific facts around shale.”

Just few months before the dropping the APPG, Edelman employed Katie Waring, energy secretary Ed Davey’s former special adviser at DECC – perhaps indicating that a change of strategy was being planned.

With Edelman, has the Task Force lost all credibility?

The problem for the ambitions of Chris Smith is that the model of the Task Force – comprising experts doing research for the public, funded by industry and managed by PR agencies – has already been used in the USA. For example, the Center for Sustainable Shale Development.

It too was modelled as a ‘stakeholder group’ where academics, industry and the public could come together and research the impacts of shale gas – but which was shown to be a front group for the industry, and whose fossil fuel industry support increased when some non-industry members left.

Even with the panel of experts many of whom are pre-disposed to shale gas, and the industry financing, the involvement of Edelman is toxic to the future work of the Task Force.

Chris Smith has to come clean. Who thought up the concept of the Task Force? Who co-ordinated the early meetings and identified the key figures who would take part? And what has been the role of Edelman in that process?

If the Task Force exists “to provide a transparent, trusted, independent and impartial platform for public scrutiny”, then a key part of that has to be accounting for the previous manipulative role of Edelman in controversial public issues – and whether that contaminates the Task Force’s role to serve the public interest.

A ‘fair and impartial platform’? Hardly!

In the USA almost 60 years ago the father of PR, Edward Bernays, stated in his influential book, The Engineering of Consent:

“Today it is impossible to overestimate the importance of engineering consent; it affects almost every aspect of our daily lives. When used for social purposes, it is among our most valuable contributions to the efficient functioning of modern society …

“The responsible leader … must apply his energies to mastering the operational know-how of consent engineering, and to out-maneuvering his opponents in the public interest.”

The Task Force on Shale Gas, in its composition, the background to its formation, and those who organise its work, has the appearance of an industry front group; organised by the company who specialise in such tactics to ‘engineer consent’ – Edelman.

Unless and until the process by which the Task Force was created is fully revealed, including who employed or commissioned Edelman in that role, then the Task Force cannot be considered – irrespective of its academic credentials – to be a fair and impartial platform to discuss unconventional gas and oil in Britain.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer, and maintains the Free Range Activism Website (FRAW).

A fully referenced version of this article is located on FRAW.

 




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Algeria: fracking and the Ain Salah uprising Updated for 2026

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The city of Ain Salah lies about 750 miles south of Algiers in the Sahara Desert.

Its location as a desert oasis relies on a sensitive aquifer system that stretches from Southern Algeria to Tunesia and Libya, and overlaps with at least four intensive shale gas fields.

Fracking commenced in the area in 2013, and a mass movement against the practice has rapidly unfolded.

This new turn against resource extraction and exploitation has emerged elsewhere in recent months, such as Burkina Faso, as the global push to extract resources ranging from gold to agricultural commodities to fossil fuels has led to widespread dispossession in Africa since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008.

It carries with it the revolutionary sentiment the drove Algeria to independence from France, leading a tidal wave of liberation movements throughout Africa.

Since New Years Eve, four days after fracking operations were announced near the city, Ain Salah has effectively stopped functioning in a conventional way. Commerce and administration has moved between business as usual and an extensive occupation / sit-in of the main square, along with several rallies.

Video and photographic evidence has been released exposing harmful pollution and contaminated water supplies, causing an uproar and sense that fracking must be stopped.

Halliburton, Total

The companies primarily involved in exploiting shale gas in Algeria include Halliburton and France’s major oil company, Total.

After settling a major bribery case in Nigeria in 2010, Halliburton, the leading oilfield services company in the world, began looking to Africa for increased gas exploitation in 2012. As fracking began to slow in the US, they made a major play for Algeria, which has the second highest proven gas reserves in Africa.

For its part, Total grabbed oil lands in Libya after the NATO invasion that toppled the government of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, but the collapse of national infrastructure that ensued has significantly hindered the once-strong oil industry.

In December 2013, the National Oil Corporation announced its intensions to bolster the economy by allowing oversees corporations like Total to commence fracking operations.

The outbreak of violence in Libya had severe repercussions in Mali to the south, as armed militants swept into the country and added a surge to the Tuareg separatist uprising the next year. With hundreds of thousands displaced in the ensuing calamity, increased unrest combined with severe drought and the recent Ebola outbreak to create difficult economic conditions.

In an ironic turn, Halliburton was forced to cut 1,000 employees last December, it claimed, due to the turmoil in West Africa caused in no small part by French intervention on behalf of Total’s access to natural resources.

Now the two companies are making plays for Algeria’s gas reserves. The combined total assets of Halliburton and Total comes close to 40% of Algeria’s GDP, and the President of Algeria, the aging Abdelaziz Bouteflika, has not put up any opposition to their extraction efforts.

In his fourth term, Bouteflika, the longest-serving president in Algeria’s history, has weathered substantial protests in 2010 and 2012 calling for his ouster, and today he meets with a movement that extends from Ain Salah to Algiers calling for another way of looking at public control over natural resources.

Back to liberation

This different approach was manifested on February 24, when nearly the entire city of Ain Salah, some 40,000 people, took to the square, which has been renamed Place Somoud, or Resistance Square, to celebrate the 44th Anniversary of the nationalization of hydrocarbons by former-President Boumediene.

But the new approach is not simply in favor of extraction by a state-owned oil company. It’s also playing fast and loose with the aquifer that sustains Ain Salah and its precious oasis – and it’s the threat of groundwater pollution from fracking that most worries people as it imperils their very existence.

And the struggle is not simply about Ain Salah: February 24 saw mass demonstrations touch off from the town of Ouragla to Algiers. These protests challenged Algiers’s ban against protests that has been in place since the end of the terrible Civil War that claimed upwards of 150,000 lives between 1991 and 2002.

Bouteflika is seen by many as a hero who helped put a stop to the war, but now his regime is challenged by the progression of popular opposition to industrial extraction. There is concern that unrest might cause an opening for another civil war (one that Halliburton and Total could attempt to exploit), prompting harsh police reactions.

As police officers pre-empted the protest in Algeria on February 24, arresting some 50 demonstrators while national festivities were held to commemorate the day, Bouteflika’s advisor, M. Boughazi took to national TV to read a 20-minute declaration that included the admonition, “Shale gas is a gift from God, and it is our duty to exploit it.”

Police attacks, arests, insults provoke violent reaction

In the midst of the tensions that loomed over the rest of the week, protests turned violent. When a group of activists arrived at the Halliburton base in Ain Salah to protest, they were met with racist provocations by the police, who continued retaliation measures by conducting forceful arrests.

Protestors reacted to the oppressive measures by rallying at the Gendarme station, and police responded with large quantities of tear gas and rubber bullets. The police violence persisted into Resistance Square, where the rally site was destroyed and tents burned, and over the next few days, hundreds of people were arrested and numerous injuries incurred among the mostly-peaceful protestors.

Finally, as police attempted to seal off the city and lay siege to the city, protestors began throwing stones. Police retreated, and an uprising was in effect; a police barracks, a residence of the mayor, and several police vehicles were set ablaze. The army was called in, and a tense order once again held.

This is the second time serious unrest has been caused in Ain Salah over gas companies – the first having occurred in 2002, due to widespread unemployment and the stringent demands of foreign gas companies.

The economic issue stands side-by-side with the environmental one, as civil society searches for better ways of living sustainably outside of the control of corrupt foreign multinationals and a distant government.

Fracking and resistance against an effective gas grab in Algeria has become an issue for the opposition to utilize in its attempt to develop another kind of politics in the country. However, the opposition, itself, remains fractured and disorganized.

The real issues confronting Algeria are tied to the low petrodollar and the increasing inaccessibility of oil and gas reserves without unconventional practices like fracking, but the gas companies are notoriously unable to carry the weight of unemployment in places like Ain Salah.

So, like many places in the world confronted with the curse of extractive industries, Algeria must find a unique way out of the global land grab.

And now the anti-fracking movement has brought some momentum to thinking broader, long-term solutions in keeping with the revolutionary tradition of decolonization and autogestion.

 

 

Alexander Reid Ross is a contributing moderator of the Earth First! Newswire. He is the editor of Grabbing Back: Essays Against the Global Land Grab (AK Press 2014) and a contributor to Life During Wartime (AK Press 2013). His most recent book Against the Fascist Creep is forthcoming through AK Press.

This article originally appeared on CounterPunch

 




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Fracking: MPs and Lords have derelicted their legal duties – now they must pay the price! Updated for 2026

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On 13th January, just before the Parliamentary Committee on the Infrastructure Bill was to report back to the House of Commons, I put every single MP in the UK (and more recently, all the Lords with a policy interest in Energy and the Environment) on legal notice.

The point I made in my ‘Letter before Action’ was that if they passed the Bill with the clauses promoting 1. economic recovery of petroleum; and 2. fracking; and if harm ensued thereby, they might find themselves in breach of their moral and legal duty to the nation set out in The Code of Conduct for Members of
Parliament.

Among other obligations it reminds MPs that they “have a general duty to act in the interests of the nation as a whole; and a special duty to their constituents”, and that they must “take decisions solely in terms of the public interest”, the latter obligation also applying to members of the House of Lords.

As public servants both MPs and Lords are, moreover, “accountable for their decisions and actions to the public and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office.”

So what about the risks of fracking?

I also sent them the introduction and executive summary of this document detailing the risks and harms of fracking – a document instrumental in New York State’s decision to ban the practice last December.

I sent the 657 letters by recorded delivery (it took the local post office 10 hours to process), so even if the MPs didn’t even look at them, from a legal point of view those letters will have been deemed as read.

Interestingly, a flurry of amendments to the Bill ensued, mitigating the clauses allowing fracking and even calling for a moratorium. Was this a complete coincidence, or did some of our elected representatives check with their lawyers and find that the Code of Conduct for MPs holds weight in a civil court?

I have taken legal advice from a barister and it does, in case you’re wondering.

I received a number of replies from MPs, many saying they had passed the information to my own MP, Neil Carmichael (Conservative), according to “strict Parliamentary protocol”.

This made me wonder: did the industry lobbyists who clearly had a major hand in drafting the Bill also get asked to make contact only via their own MPs? Either way, no MP can now legally deny prior knowledge of the risks and harms of fracking.

The public and national interest trampled underfoot

The Commons proceeded to significantly amend the fracking clauses in the Bill, and if their amendment 21 had stood, fracking would not have been permitted in AONBs, SSSIs, National Parks, under aquifers, etc, and drilling companies would have had to go through a number of procedures in order to frack including individual notification of local residents.

However, the Lords replaced this amendment in short order, doing two things:

  • watering down the safeguards proposed by the Commons so as to make them toothless and dependent upon secondary legislation; and
  • applying those weakened safeguards only to fracking using over 1,000 cubic metres of fluid, meaning that all exploratory and potentially even medium scale production could escape the safeguards altogether.

The Lords made these replacement amendments at the final ‘ping pong’ stage of the bill, and the Commons were assigned a paltry 1 hour’s discussion to address them. The Commons vote showed that MPs were now strongly divided about fracking (257 in favour of the Lords amendments, 203 against), but the amendments were still passed.

Only Caroline Lucas MP (Green) pointed out the farcical nature of these phantom safeguards, but there was no time to explore further. The following morning on 12th February, with truly unseemly haste, the Bill was made law.

We now have a situation where, by law, drilling companies can frack wherever they like with no special permission, as long as they use less than 1,000 cubic metres of fluid – about the volume of a large municipal swimming pool.

To our knowledge, all fracks carried out to date in the UK have used significantly less. Certainly what this means is that all future drilling that uses less than 1,000 cubic meters of fluid is exempt from all the safeguards drafted.

Goodbye ‘Green and Pleasant Land’

Reading the Hansard scripts of the discussions that took place on this Bill, we don’t think any of those in favour of the Act that was passed have a clue what fracking actually looks like in production. They seem to be chatting about a well or two here or there, nothing to disturb a national park … do they really not know? It requires hundreds of wells, four to every square mile, to make a viable production facility.

This government has an aggressive expansion policy to put in place up to 30,000 wells. Goodbye ‘green and pleasant land’! Use Google Earth to have a look at Texas or North Dakota and you’ll pretty soon get the idea.

 

Then – health hazards aside – there are the thousands upon thousands of HGV journeys required to service the site. And the disposal of the millions of gallons of toxic waste from the process. This is not easy, cheap, abundant gas and oil. It’s an expensive post-apocalyptic nightmare and an environmental disaster.

Not only that. One clause of the Infrastructure Act remained virtually unchallenged from start to finish, and that is a clause adjusting the Petroleum Act 1998, apparently making it a legal obligation for the Government to “maximise the economic recovery of UK petroleum” and for the relevant Secretary of State to create a strategy for doing this in whatever way he sees fit.

A legal duty to maximize petroleum recovery

This clause is so astonishing that it bears printing in full:

PART 1A

Maximising economic recovery of UK petroleum

9A The principal objective and the strategy

(1) In this Part the “principal objective” is the objective of maximising the economic recovery of UK petroleum, in particular through-

(a) development, construction, deployment and use of equipment used in the petroleum industry (including upstream petroleum infrastructure), and

(b) collaboration among the following persons-

(i) holders of petroleum licences;

(ii) operators under petroleum licences;

(iii) owners of upstream petroleum infrastructure;

(iv) persons planning and carrying out the commissioning of upstream petroleum infrastructure.

(2) The Secretary of State must produce one or more strategies for enabling the principal objective to be met.

(3) A strategy may relate to matters other than those mentioned in subsection (1)(a) and (b).

This appears to be no less than a legal mandate to fill the coffers of Halliburton, oil infrastructure supplier par excellence, and other industry players, with a clause to cover the arse of any Secretary of State who implements this.

Our Government has effectively just passed the ‘Support Halliburton’ Act 2015, with a few subsections making it easy to frack, and a bunch of transport, planning and other elements thrown in for infrastructural support and general confusion.

How exactly is this in the ‘national interest’ or that of constutuents? Isn’t the real national interest the health and happiness of the inhabitants of this country and the land we live on? Shouldn’t all economic activity be serving that, not vice versa? Is this not the true legal mandate of anyone in public service?

Anyone in either House who supported this corrupt, dangerous and ridiculously rushed piece of legislation has acted in blatant contravention of their legally-binding Code of Conduct, and failed miserably in their duty of care. We must prepare to sue.

 

 

Jojo Mehta is a mother of two young children based in Nympsfield, Gloucestershire, and a campaigner on environmental and democratic issues. Together with Katy Dunne, she is a co-founder of Frack Free Five Valleys.

 




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Fracking company valuation sinks to new lows Updated for 2026

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A major investor in British fracking has suffered a catastrophic fall in share price as protesters continue to fight attempts to drill the countryside in pursuit of shale gas.

Allan Campbell has now resigned as chief executive of AJ Lucas in Australia after two decades at the helm, as the company heads perilously close to the rocks. “It is time for me to move on to the next chapter of my life”, he said.

The Sydney-based mining company is a founding investor in Cuadrilla, the company leading the fracking initiative in Britain. It was also among the first to gamble on hydraulic fracturing, and at its height in 2008 was trading at more than Au$5.50 per share.

But shares in the company have collapsed since the 2008 financial crisis and continue to fall as protesters camp out at fracking sites, earthquakes unsettle local residents, and politicians in Scotland and Wales threaten to ban the practice.

Investors have lost faith

Shares in AJ Lucas have traded on the Australian stock exchange as low as 34 cents this week, as investors appear to have lost faith in the company and continue to sell with some making a considerable loss. The firm has lost 71% of its value in the last 12 months.

The firm is a founding investor in Cuadrilla, which plans to exploit fracking licences in the UK, and retains 44% of the company. Cuadrilla is privately owned and not listed on the stock market, but the fate of AJ Lucas may be indicative of its value.

Cuadrilla is facing mounting opposition from the Lancashire County Council, which has expressed serious concerns about the uncertainties surrounding shale gas exploration.

The Council is set to make a decision on the firm’s planning application for the UK’s first full-scale exploratory fracking project for shale gas in April. However, it previously recommended that the planning application should be refused.

Lord Browne, the former boss of BP and a partner of the investment firm Riverstone Holdings LLC, became a member of Cuadrilla’s board of directors in 2010 shortly after being appointed to the Cabinet Office. At the same time, Riverstone Holdings bought an estimated 42% share of Cuadrilla.

Browne is a member of the House of Lords and last week he stepped down as Government Lead Non-Executive. While he is close to David Cameron, the fate of his company has not in any way been linked to the prime minister’s increasingly shrill support for the fracking industry.

A bunch of losers

AJ Lucas raised Au$200.8 million during a recapitalisation last year, which Andrew Burrell of The Australian Business Review believes “averted disaster“.

Centrica, which owns British Gas, paid Cuadrilla and AJ Lucas £40 million in June 2013 for two subsidiaries, and agreed to pay £60 million to cover the costs of shale gas exploration, with a further £60 million promised if development continues.

But this was not enough to shore up the share price in the long term, and the share price continues to dwindle.

The significant fall in value is also bad news for Paul Fudge, an Australian multi-millionaire who made a fortune from coal seam gas. He invested Au$28.4 million from his wholly-owned company Belbay Investments in 2013 when shares were still worth more than a dollar.

Kerogen Capital, a Hong Kong-based private equity firm, is also facing losses after buying 49.6% of the company.

 

 

Brendan Montague writes for DeSmogUK. Follow him on Twitter @Brendanmontague.

This article was originally published on DeSmogUK.

 

 




390243

Fracking company defies Wales’s shale gas moratorium Updated for 2026

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IGas has responded to a motion passed at the Welsh Assembly this week stating the Welsh Government’s opposition to shale gas extraction, declaring “they have no power to stop fracking!”

The motion calling for a fracking moratorium was tabled by Plaid Cymru, and passed with the support of Welsh Labour Assembly Members by a large margin: 37 for and 16 against. 

Despite the cross party backing, the Welsh Government has yet to take action. Labour’s economy minister Edwina Hart, who backed the Plaid motion calling for a moratorium, has turned down calls for planning advice on fracking to be updated.

But insiders have indicated that the First Minster, Carwyn Jones, is currently seeking legal advice on what powers the Welsh Government has to effectively place a moratorium on fracking.

The UK Government currently has control over shale gas licensing but the Welsh Government has responsibility, in theory, for any related planning applications. But any appeals against refusals are judged by the London-based Planning Inspectorate for England and Wales.

And as IGas helpfully points out, these devolved planning powers render the Welsh Government helpless in protecting Welsh communities against any unwanted developments.

IGas: ‘we’re going ahead anyway’

The original IGas application to carry out test drilling at a site in Borras, near Wrexham was rejected by the democratically elected councillors on the local authority. The company then appealed against the decision, which went to the Westminster-controlled Planning Inspectorate, which overturned the earlier refusal.

An IGas spokesman told the Daily Post: “Nothing has changed in our plans to test drill for underground gas in Wrexham, which we will be continuing with.

“And if we were to put in a planning application in the future, which is rejected by Wrexham council, the appeal would go to the Welsh Secretary, which comes under Westminster, not the Welsh Government.

“The decision by the Welsh Government was not a moratorium. They can refuse applications on planning grounds, but they have no power to stop fracking.”

As Sion Chavez, editor of Daily Wales, points out, “It’s a situation which highlights the absurd consequences of having one country administered by a neighbouring country.”

“Scotland and Northern Ireland each have their own completely separate Planning Inspectorates which allow their own governments to oversee any appeals. But in the case of Wales, it’s the Planning Inspectorate for England and Wales.”

The SNP controlled Scottish Government has recently used its control over planning to announce an immediate moratorium on all fracking applications.

Welsh Government must be firm

Gareth Clubb, Director of Friends of the Earth Cymru, commented: “As soon as this legal advice is available, it needs to be published so that all the people of Wales can know where we stand on this problem.

“If a moratorium is within the Welsh Government’s powers then it just needs to get on and make it happen. If a ban isn’t possible, two things need to happen straight away. The first is that any powers restricting Wales’ ability to protect its communities should be devolved immediately.

“The second is that until those powers are devolved the Welsh Government must issue a Planning Policy Statement with a presumption against the development of unconventional oil and gas onshore in Wales.

“Anything other than these steps will suggest that the Welsh Government was being duplicitous through voting in favour of doing everything in its power to prevent fracking in Wales, but failing to take the action needed to deliver on its promise.”

Among other clauses, the successful motion calling for a fracking moratorium “Believes that energy should be fully devolved to the National Assembly for Wales and that the Welsh Government should have the power to block fracking.”

It further “Calls on the Welsh Government to do everything within its power to prevent fracking from taking place in Wales until it is proven to be safe in both an environmental and public health context.”

 

 

Principal source:  original articles published by Daily Wales.

 

 




389955

Fracking company defies Wales’s shale gas moratorium Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




IGas has responded to a motion passed at the Welsh Assembly this week stating the Welsh Government’s opposition to shale gas extraction, declaring “they have no power to stop fracking!”

The motion calling for a fracking moratorium was tabled by Plaid Cymru, and passed with the support of Welsh Labour Assembly Members by a large margin: 37 for and 16 against. 

Despite the cross party backing, the Welsh Government has yet to take action. Labour’s economy minister Edwina Hart, who backed the Plaid motion calling for a moratorium, has turned down calls for planning advice on fracking to be updated.

But insiders have indicated that the First Minster, Carwyn Jones, is currently seeking legal advice on what powers the Welsh Government has to effectively place a moratorium on fracking.

The UK Government currently has control over shale gas licensing but the Welsh Government has responsibility, in theory, for any related planning applications. But any appeals against refusals are judged by the London-based Planning Inspectorate for England and Wales.

And as IGas helpfully points out, these devolved planning powers render the Welsh Government helpless in protecting Welsh communities against any unwanted developments.

IGas: ‘we’re going ahead anyway’

The original IGas application to carry out test drilling at a site in Borras, near Wrexham was rejected by the democratically elected councillors on the local authority. The company then appealed against the decision, which went to the Westminster-controlled Planning Inspectorate, which overturned the earlier refusal.

An IGas spokesman told the Daily Post: “Nothing has changed in our plans to test drill for underground gas in Wrexham, which we will be continuing with.

“And if we were to put in a planning application in the future, which is rejected by Wrexham council, the appeal would go to the Welsh Secretary, which comes under Westminster, not the Welsh Government.

“The decision by the Welsh Government was not a moratorium. They can refuse applications on planning grounds, but they have no power to stop fracking.”

As Sion Chavez, editor of Daily Wales, points out, “It’s a situation which highlights the absurd consequences of having one country administered by a neighbouring country.”

“Scotland and Northern Ireland each have their own completely separate Planning Inspectorates which allow their own governments to oversee any appeals. But in the case of Wales, it’s the Planning Inspectorate for England and Wales.”

The SNP controlled Scottish Government has recently used its control over planning to announce an immediate moratorium on all fracking applications.

Welsh Government must be firm

Gareth Clubb, Director of Friends of the Earth Cymru, commented: “As soon as this legal advice is available, it needs to be published so that all the people of Wales can know where we stand on this problem.

“If a moratorium is within the Welsh Government’s powers then it just needs to get on and make it happen. If a ban isn’t possible, two things need to happen straight away. The first is that any powers restricting Wales’ ability to protect its communities should be devolved immediately.

“The second is that until those powers are devolved the Welsh Government must issue a Planning Policy Statement with a presumption against the development of unconventional oil and gas onshore in Wales.

“Anything other than these steps will suggest that the Welsh Government was being duplicitous through voting in favour of doing everything in its power to prevent fracking in Wales, but failing to take the action needed to deliver on its promise.”

Among other clauses, the successful motion calling for a fracking moratorium “Believes that energy should be fully devolved to the National Assembly for Wales and that the Welsh Government should have the power to block fracking.”

It further “Calls on the Welsh Government to do everything within its power to prevent fracking from taking place in Wales until it is proven to be safe in both an environmental and public health context.”

 

 

Principal source:  original articles published by Daily Wales.

 

 




389955

Fracking company defies Wales’s shale gas moratorium Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




IGas has responded to a motion passed at the Welsh Assembly this week stating the Welsh Government’s opposition to shale gas extraction, declaring “they have no power to stop fracking!”

The motion calling for a fracking moratorium was tabled by Plaid Cymru, and passed with the support of Welsh Labour Assembly Members by a large margin: 37 for and 16 against. 

Despite the cross party backing, the Welsh Government has yet to take action. Labour’s economy minister Edwina Hart, who backed the Plaid motion calling for a moratorium, has turned down calls for planning advice on fracking to be updated.

But insiders have indicated that the First Minster, Carwyn Jones, is currently seeking legal advice on what powers the Welsh Government has to effectively place a moratorium on fracking.

The UK Government currently has control over shale gas licensing but the Welsh Government has responsibility, in theory, for any related planning applications. But any appeals against refusals are judged by the London-based Planning Inspectorate for England and Wales.

And as IGas helpfully points out, these devolved planning powers render the Welsh Government helpless in protecting Welsh communities against any unwanted developments.

IGas: ‘we’re going ahead anyway’

The original IGas application to carry out test drilling at a site in Borras, near Wrexham was rejected by the democratically elected councillors on the local authority. The company then appealed against the decision, which went to the Westminster-controlled Planning Inspectorate, which overturned the earlier refusal.

An IGas spokesman told the Daily Post: “Nothing has changed in our plans to test drill for underground gas in Wrexham, which we will be continuing with.

“And if we were to put in a planning application in the future, which is rejected by Wrexham council, the appeal would go to the Welsh Secretary, which comes under Westminster, not the Welsh Government.

“The decision by the Welsh Government was not a moratorium. They can refuse applications on planning grounds, but they have no power to stop fracking.”

As Sion Chavez, editor of Daily Wales, points out, “It’s a situation which highlights the absurd consequences of having one country administered by a neighbouring country.”

“Scotland and Northern Ireland each have their own completely separate Planning Inspectorates which allow their own governments to oversee any appeals. But in the case of Wales, it’s the Planning Inspectorate for England and Wales.”

The SNP controlled Scottish Government has recently used its control over planning to announce an immediate moratorium on all fracking applications.

Welsh Government must be firm

Gareth Clubb, Director of Friends of the Earth Cymru, commented: “As soon as this legal advice is available, it needs to be published so that all the people of Wales can know where we stand on this problem.

“If a moratorium is within the Welsh Government’s powers then it just needs to get on and make it happen. If a ban isn’t possible, two things need to happen straight away. The first is that any powers restricting Wales’ ability to protect its communities should be devolved immediately.

“The second is that until those powers are devolved the Welsh Government must issue a Planning Policy Statement with a presumption against the development of unconventional oil and gas onshore in Wales.

“Anything other than these steps will suggest that the Welsh Government was being duplicitous through voting in favour of doing everything in its power to prevent fracking in Wales, but failing to take the action needed to deliver on its promise.”

Among other clauses, the successful motion calling for a fracking moratorium “Believes that energy should be fully devolved to the National Assembly for Wales and that the Welsh Government should have the power to block fracking.”

It further “Calls on the Welsh Government to do everything within its power to prevent fracking from taking place in Wales until it is proven to be safe in both an environmental and public health context.”

 

 

Principal source:  original articles published by Daily Wales.

 

 




389955

Fracking company defies Wales’s shale gas moratorium Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




IGas has responded to a motion passed at the Welsh Assembly this week stating the Welsh Government’s opposition to shale gas extraction, declaring “they have no power to stop fracking!”

The motion calling for a fracking moratorium was tabled by Plaid Cymru, and passed with the support of Welsh Labour Assembly Members by a large margin: 37 for and 16 against. 

Despite the cross party backing, the Welsh Government has yet to take action. Labour’s economy minister Edwina Hart, who backed the Plaid motion calling for a moratorium, has turned down calls for planning advice on fracking to be updated.

But insiders have indicated that the First Minster, Carwyn Jones, is currently seeking legal advice on what powers the Welsh Government has to effectively place a moratorium on fracking.

The UK Government currently has control over shale gas licensing but the Welsh Government has responsibility, in theory, for any related planning applications. But any appeals against refusals are judged by the London-based Planning Inspectorate for England and Wales.

And as IGas helpfully points out, these devolved planning powers render the Welsh Government helpless in protecting Welsh communities against any unwanted developments.

IGas: ‘we’re going ahead anyway’

The original IGas application to carry out test drilling at a site in Borras, near Wrexham was rejected by the democratically elected councillors on the local authority. The company then appealed against the decision, which went to the Westminster-controlled Planning Inspectorate, which overturned the earlier refusal.

An IGas spokesman told the Daily Post: “Nothing has changed in our plans to test drill for underground gas in Wrexham, which we will be continuing with.

“And if we were to put in a planning application in the future, which is rejected by Wrexham council, the appeal would go to the Welsh Secretary, which comes under Westminster, not the Welsh Government.

“The decision by the Welsh Government was not a moratorium. They can refuse applications on planning grounds, but they have no power to stop fracking.”

As Sion Chavez, editor of Daily Wales, points out, “It’s a situation which highlights the absurd consequences of having one country administered by a neighbouring country.”

“Scotland and Northern Ireland each have their own completely separate Planning Inspectorates which allow their own governments to oversee any appeals. But in the case of Wales, it’s the Planning Inspectorate for England and Wales.”

The SNP controlled Scottish Government has recently used its control over planning to announce an immediate moratorium on all fracking applications.

Welsh Government must be firm

Gareth Clubb, Director of Friends of the Earth Cymru, commented: “As soon as this legal advice is available, it needs to be published so that all the people of Wales can know where we stand on this problem.

“If a moratorium is within the Welsh Government’s powers then it just needs to get on and make it happen. If a ban isn’t possible, two things need to happen straight away. The first is that any powers restricting Wales’ ability to protect its communities should be devolved immediately.

“The second is that until those powers are devolved the Welsh Government must issue a Planning Policy Statement with a presumption against the development of unconventional oil and gas onshore in Wales.

“Anything other than these steps will suggest that the Welsh Government was being duplicitous through voting in favour of doing everything in its power to prevent fracking in Wales, but failing to take the action needed to deliver on its promise.”

Among other clauses, the successful motion calling for a fracking moratorium “Believes that energy should be fully devolved to the National Assembly for Wales and that the Welsh Government should have the power to block fracking.”

It further “Calls on the Welsh Government to do everything within its power to prevent fracking from taking place in Wales until it is proven to be safe in both an environmental and public health context.”

 

 

Principal source:  original articles published by Daily Wales.

 

 




389955

Government reneges on ‘no fracking’ promise Updated for 2026

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The Government has reneged on its commitments to ban fracking near drinking water zones by amending the Infrastructure Bill at its final stage in the House of Lords today.

The change is contained in a sneaky loophole that most politicans entirely missed – but was spotted by an alert Friends of the Earth campaigner.

Most of the wording of Labour’s amendments, which prohibited fracking in national parks, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, ‘groundwater source protection areas’ and ‘areas of outstanding natural beauty’, remain in the current version of the Bill, Section 4A.

But instead of specifying the designations of the areas that fall under protection, the Government is leaving that to be set out in regulations by a Statutory Instrument to be issued by the Secretary of State before July 2015 – well after the general election, due in May.

This gives the Government the opportunity to weaken or fudge the definitions to the point where the protections become a dead letter – and it’s hard to see any other reason for legislating in this convoluted way.

Broken promises

Reacting to the Government’s late amendment, Friends of the Earth‘s Energy Campaigner Donna Hume, who first spotted the loophole, said: “The Government has U-Turned on its commitment to enforce regulatory conditions that would have introduced common sense measures to protect drinking water from controversial fracking.

“The Government seems determined to make fracking happen whatever the cost and people will be staggered that risky fracking will be allowed in areas that provide one third of our drinking water.

“Ministers must follow the lead of Wales, Scotland, France, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and New York State by putting a stop to fracking and instead focus on renewables and cutting energy waste.” 

In the Commons, the Government accepted the Labour Party amendment that banned fracking within groundwater source protection zones 1-3; the area around aquifers that safeguards drinking water. These collectively cover some 15% of the country – including many areas with potentially oil and gas bearing rock.

There’s only one answer now – defeat the Tories!

The ‘supplementary provisions’ in Section 4B specify that the Secretary of State must, in the statutory instrument, specify the descriptions of areas which are ‘protected groundwater source areas, and ‘other protected areas’ for the purposes of section 4A.

The statutory instrument will have to be laid before both the Commons and the Lords, and approved by a vote in each house. But if the Conservatives are re-elected with an overall majority in the May elections, they could in effect nullify the protections altogether.

Labour’s shadow energy minister Tom Greatrex stated last week that in return for the support of Labour MPs for the Infrastructure Bill as a whole, and for not pressing the demands for a fracking moratorium, demanded by the Environmental Audit Committee, the details of its amendment were not up for further negotiation:

“Let me make it absolutely clear that our new clause is all or nothing; it cannot be cherry-picked”, he said. “All the conditions need to be in place before we can be absolutely confident that any shale extraction can happen.”

But as the Bill will not return to the Commons, and the Conservatives enjoy an overall majority in the Lords, there is in fact nothing at all that Greatrex or his Labour colleagues can do about it.

So now we know – if the Tories win the election, we can expect ‘fracking everywhere’ – national parks, groundwater zones, nature sites, whatever. Nowhere will be safe.

 

 

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 




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