Round-up of anti-fracking campaigns in the U.K

Things are busy in the world of anti fracking. The Barton Moss camp is still there, still disrupting the lorries with lock ons and slow walking, despite the best brutal efforts of the cops. The landowners have been given a possession order but some of the Barton Moss protectors are appealing the decision so any eviction will be delayed.

Most of the planning applications and drilling happening for extreme energy at the moment are for 'exploratory' drilling, but in Airth in Scotland, the local community has been fighting plans to start actual production of coal bed methane. Although not strictly fracking, the risks to the local community are much the same and it doesn't score too well on carbon emissions either. Community councils have voted against the plans and there have been strong petitions but Dart Energy are appealing. See http://www.faug.org.uk for more.

There are planning applications relating to exploratory drilling at several sites in Cheshire, Nottinghamshire and Wrexham, but community resistance just keeps on popping up everywhere there is a potential fracking site. One site near Chester has eight schools within a mile of the drilling site.

There is a drilling rig working at a site in Farndon, near Chester (Mill House Lane - CH3 6NF). The local community have mobilised but want a boost, with a big demo called for this Sunday 16th. There are coaches going from Chester, Wrexham, Liverpool and Manchester.

Some of the smaller energy companies have been sneaking a bit of fracking exploration in while pretending they're just checking out the conventional fossil fuels. (As SchNEWS explained in more technical language in 'Sneaking in the Frack Door') They have drilled sometimes about 5,000m deeper than needed for conventional extraction. (whoops!) This seems to mostly be happening in Yorkshire at the moment, but there's no reason they won't try it other places.

In the South, foolhardy Cuadrilla are asking to do more test drilling at Balcombe in Sussex. Apparently they weren't completely deterred by the hordes of people making it almost impossible for them to work last year.

Raithlin Energy have applied to do some 'Mini-Frac' tests, which though they sound cute are actually horribly polluting. One site alone might produce 88,000 gallons of radioactive waste. The radioactive material is normally deep underground but fracking dissolves it and brings it to the surface. There doesn't appear to be a plan as to how to dispose of this radioactive waste; there is already no permanent sites to dispose of the waste from nuclear power stations – it is just sitting about in containers waiting until someone comes up with an idea. Imagine if large scale fracking goes ahead, with hundreds of wells drilled and still nowhere to put the radioactive waste.

Productive fracking would need many more wells then the number of current test sites, as each well doesn't produce much. The companies have licences to frack hundreds of square miles with thousands of wells. Now is the time to stop them, before they really get rolling.

Check out www.frack-off.org.uk for locations and more details.