On Monday, concrete will be poured into Britain’s last two shale gas wells in Lancashire. Cuadrilla Resources, which owns the license at the Preston New Road site, is being forced to destroy the wells by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which has ordered that the wells be ‘plugged with cement and decommissioned’ by 30 June.
This is not for safety or environmental reasons. Cuadrilla has offered to keep the wells secure at its own expense. It is to ensure that the wells can never be used to extract natural gas at any point in the future. In other words, the NSTA requirement is an act of economic vandalism, reflecting the extreme anti-fracking position of Ed Miliband, the Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary.
Reacting to the news last month of the discovery of a massive gas field under Lincolnshire, a spokesman for Miliband declared that it was the government’s intention to ‘ban fracking for good’. In any other age or country, this response would be greeted with incredulity.
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