Ecological Magazine
The Executive of Theresa May undertakes a flight forward and will reduce its energetic dependence to drill blow and holes to its green and living floors. But the British anti- rafaction movement is ready for the fight.The curtain opens and several trucks appear in a very green spot with seven trees. Talan five. They build a well a mile deep. They get water and sand (chemicals save them) and fracture the intimacies of the Earth to extract gas. The years go by. The trucks leave. But before, they replant the five pines that they felled at the beginning. The curtain closes. The film is the one that has been mounted by the UK Government on hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking , and which is necessary to extract shale gas, very difficult to access and much greater depths than conventional gas.
It is a video of just over three and a half minutes and is part of the guide that the Executive of Theresa May launched earlier this year under the title: "Guidance on fracking : development of shale gas in the United Kingdom" [ 1 ]. And they are clear: the exploitation of unconventional gas is "the domestic solution" to prevent up to 60% of this fossil fuel in 2025, according to official data.
That is why the Government has created the so-called Shale Gas Team [ 2 ] i -ii - ( Shale Gas Team ) within the Ministry of Business, Energy and Industry, which believes that this hydrocarbon "enriches energy security and helps economic growth". Although the most ironic justification for pulling this type of gas from the bowels of the Earth is undoubtedly that this strategy "is an important part of the country's transition to a low carbon future." And so, UK, change cancer by sclerosis: coal by gas.
In the last round of concessions, approved in 2016, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) granted 159 blocks of land to be explored, grouped into 93 new licenses [ 3 ]. In 75% of the granted soil the frackingtechnique will be applied . The government estimates that only in the north of England, citizenship walks on a treasury of 1,300 trillion cubic feet of shale gas (about 36 trillion cubic meters). What they do not seem to have calculated is the money and the energy it will cost them to reach him.
In any case, everything could go smoothly for the concession companies, but part of British society, which already has experience in combating this technique (Balcombe 2013 [ 4 ], Sussex, south of England), is Ready to resist what they consider a "threat". And the general message, at least in the affected areas, is clear: frack-off! An expression that plays with the insult fuck off - of the English "fuck you" - and which is pronounced almost the same as frack , of fracking .
Resistance against increased location
France was the first country in the world to ban fracking in 2011. Thanks to a great public mobilization, Germany has done so last year. In Spain, the Government supports and facilitated its implementation, but always opaque and sometimes through the back door [ 5 ]. However, the British Government does not hide its desire to bore its green and bucolic meadows until reaching the mile deep, a mile in vertical, or what is the same, 17 times Big Ben, the famous clock tower From london.
Thus, opposition to hydraulic fracturing in the country has been growing exponentially in recent years. From the national network Frack-Off , which centralizes information on the hundreds of local groups in the country, they say that the main threat now lies on Preston New Road, near Little Plumpton, a village of 13 inhabitants in the north of England, In the county of Lancashire, and which will be the largest fracking place in the UK so far.
The concessionaire company, the British Cuadrilla, began work in early 2017 without waiting for a court ruling following an appeal from local groups. And while there are many reasons for opposing them, there is one that is key: Lancashire County and its political representatives said "no" to frackingin an official consultation. The government reversed the decision and allowed Cuadrilla to enter their lives.
"We take turns going there every day and use different forms of protest. Sometimes we slow down the entrance of trucks; Others, we directly moored at the entrance doors and prevented the passage of vehicles, "says Ecologist, Kate Styles, a local activist who presents himself as" mother and soon after grandmother. " She is part of Lancashire Nanas [ 6 ], a group of local women against fracking.
The resistance is also made visible in the meetings that a group of people as a liaison maintains with the company. The minutes are public and in them the tension is read. "Cattle insurance does not cover fracking damage , how can you compensate us?" Asks a resident. "We will bear the costs," the company says, assuming there will be damages. "And what of the cracks that appear in our houses when you begin to drill?" Exclaims another. But Styles is blunt: "We do not trust them."
Gang, a history of failures
The first time Styles heard of this technique was when Cuadrilla began its explorations in 2011 in Preese Hall, near its county, and that caused earthquakes [ 7 ] in the surroundings, reason why the works had to finalize and the Government prohibited Temporarily the technique, although it would allow it months later. Even so, six years later, the site is still unrefurbished, as the law says, and little by little problems with the sealing of the well left behind after the earthquakes are known [ 8 ].
It is not the first time that this company leaves the places that it explodes, also in other countries like United States and Australia. "They came, they took our lands, they took our lives and destroyed our community," explains an Australian farmer in a video [ 9 ] while lighting a river near the gas extraction.
However, on his website, Cuadrilla says he is "a good neighbor" of Preston New Road. "Would it destroy a good neighbor to a whole locality, generate noise pollution, emit toxic air or impose its interests against the wishes of an entire community," Styles asks.
Cuadrilla was also the licensing company in Balcombe, Sussex, south of England, where citizenship protest was brutally repressed, as tens of videos [ 10 ] demonstrate on social networks. The company backtracked with the fracking , but not with exploration by other techniques.
The police action
The global fight antifracking shares a common denominator: the forcefulness of the police response to the protests. And in the United Kingdom, the subject has been used for the Network of Police Supervision -Netpol, of Network for Police Monitoring - has done an investigation on the subject.
"The work of Netpol covers a wide spectrum of police actions, but in 2014 we saw that the growing anti- trafficking movement would be a victim of police oppression as its activity takes place outside the cities; In places of difficult access for media; In areas where there is little protest experience; And involves local people who often find themselves immersed in activism for the first time battling powerful and well-backed corporations, "explains Kevin Blowe, coordinator of the organization.
His latest report, "Protecting Protectors: Monitoring Police Action in Anti-Fracking Protests Since 2014" [ 11 ] reveals that in the UK there is a "great threat of covert infiltration" by the police in the protests and "zero tolerance "Towards civil disobedience. Netpol says in its investigation that "the surveillance of prominent activists and the search and documentation of their online discussions in social networks is more hostile and exhaustive than normal and more intense than any supposed extremist threat, so it is totally disproportionate" .
Blowe says that the ultimate objective of the investigation, which is based on observations during protests, interviews with activists and investigations of official documents, is to influence the way in which operations are planned and to promote "a less hostile and less police approach" troubled".
The British government has given life to a monster that in other areas of the continent has been defeated by social pressure. For this reason, many of the banners that are carried out today in the demonstrations appeal to the mobilization. " I always wondered why nobody did anything about that, then I realized that I am someone", says a poster placed at The gates of Preston New Road.
Original source: https://www.ecologistasenaccion.org/article34737.html
It is a video of just over three and a half minutes and is part of the guide that the Executive of Theresa May launched earlier this year under the title: "Guidance on fracking : development of shale gas in the United Kingdom" [ 1 ]. And they are clear: the exploitation of unconventional gas is "the domestic solution" to prevent up to 60% of this fossil fuel in 2025, according to official data.
That is why the Government has created the so-called Shale Gas Team [ 2 ] i -ii - ( Shale Gas Team ) within the Ministry of Business, Energy and Industry, which believes that this hydrocarbon "enriches energy security and helps economic growth". Although the most ironic justification for pulling this type of gas from the bowels of the Earth is undoubtedly that this strategy "is an important part of the country's transition to a low carbon future." And so, UK, change cancer by sclerosis: coal by gas.
In the last round of concessions, approved in 2016, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) granted 159 blocks of land to be explored, grouped into 93 new licenses [ 3 ]. In 75% of the granted soil the frackingtechnique will be applied . The government estimates that only in the north of England, citizenship walks on a treasury of 1,300 trillion cubic feet of shale gas (about 36 trillion cubic meters). What they do not seem to have calculated is the money and the energy it will cost them to reach him.
In any case, everything could go smoothly for the concession companies, but part of British society, which already has experience in combating this technique (Balcombe 2013 [ 4 ], Sussex, south of England), is Ready to resist what they consider a "threat". And the general message, at least in the affected areas, is clear: frack-off! An expression that plays with the insult fuck off - of the English "fuck you" - and which is pronounced almost the same as frack , of fracking .
Resistance against increased location
France was the first country in the world to ban fracking in 2011. Thanks to a great public mobilization, Germany has done so last year. In Spain, the Government supports and facilitated its implementation, but always opaque and sometimes through the back door [ 5 ]. However, the British Government does not hide its desire to bore its green and bucolic meadows until reaching the mile deep, a mile in vertical, or what is the same, 17 times Big Ben, the famous clock tower From london.
Thus, opposition to hydraulic fracturing in the country has been growing exponentially in recent years. From the national network Frack-Off , which centralizes information on the hundreds of local groups in the country, they say that the main threat now lies on Preston New Road, near Little Plumpton, a village of 13 inhabitants in the north of England, In the county of Lancashire, and which will be the largest fracking place in the UK so far.
The concessionaire company, the British Cuadrilla, began work in early 2017 without waiting for a court ruling following an appeal from local groups. And while there are many reasons for opposing them, there is one that is key: Lancashire County and its political representatives said "no" to frackingin an official consultation. The government reversed the decision and allowed Cuadrilla to enter their lives.
"We take turns going there every day and use different forms of protest. Sometimes we slow down the entrance of trucks; Others, we directly moored at the entrance doors and prevented the passage of vehicles, "says Ecologist, Kate Styles, a local activist who presents himself as" mother and soon after grandmother. " She is part of Lancashire Nanas [ 6 ], a group of local women against fracking.
The resistance is also made visible in the meetings that a group of people as a liaison maintains with the company. The minutes are public and in them the tension is read. "Cattle insurance does not cover fracking damage , how can you compensate us?" Asks a resident. "We will bear the costs," the company says, assuming there will be damages. "And what of the cracks that appear in our houses when you begin to drill?" Exclaims another. But Styles is blunt: "We do not trust them."
Gang, a history of failures
The first time Styles heard of this technique was when Cuadrilla began its explorations in 2011 in Preese Hall, near its county, and that caused earthquakes [ 7 ] in the surroundings, reason why the works had to finalize and the Government prohibited Temporarily the technique, although it would allow it months later. Even so, six years later, the site is still unrefurbished, as the law says, and little by little problems with the sealing of the well left behind after the earthquakes are known [ 8 ].
It is not the first time that this company leaves the places that it explodes, also in other countries like United States and Australia. "They came, they took our lands, they took our lives and destroyed our community," explains an Australian farmer in a video [ 9 ] while lighting a river near the gas extraction.
However, on his website, Cuadrilla says he is "a good neighbor" of Preston New Road. "Would it destroy a good neighbor to a whole locality, generate noise pollution, emit toxic air or impose its interests against the wishes of an entire community," Styles asks.
Cuadrilla was also the licensing company in Balcombe, Sussex, south of England, where citizenship protest was brutally repressed, as tens of videos [ 10 ] demonstrate on social networks. The company backtracked with the fracking , but not with exploration by other techniques.
The police action
The global fight antifracking shares a common denominator: the forcefulness of the police response to the protests. And in the United Kingdom, the subject has been used for the Network of Police Supervision -Netpol, of Network for Police Monitoring - has done an investigation on the subject.
"The work of Netpol covers a wide spectrum of police actions, but in 2014 we saw that the growing anti- trafficking movement would be a victim of police oppression as its activity takes place outside the cities; In places of difficult access for media; In areas where there is little protest experience; And involves local people who often find themselves immersed in activism for the first time battling powerful and well-backed corporations, "explains Kevin Blowe, coordinator of the organization.
His latest report, "Protecting Protectors: Monitoring Police Action in Anti-Fracking Protests Since 2014" [ 11 ] reveals that in the UK there is a "great threat of covert infiltration" by the police in the protests and "zero tolerance "Towards civil disobedience. Netpol says in its investigation that "the surveillance of prominent activists and the search and documentation of their online discussions in social networks is more hostile and exhaustive than normal and more intense than any supposed extremist threat, so it is totally disproportionate" .
Blowe says that the ultimate objective of the investigation, which is based on observations during protests, interviews with activists and investigations of official documents, is to influence the way in which operations are planned and to promote "a less hostile and less police approach" troubled".
The British government has given life to a monster that in other areas of the continent has been defeated by social pressure. For this reason, many of the banners that are carried out today in the demonstrations appeal to the mobilization. " I always wondered why nobody did anything about that, then I realized that I am someone", says a poster placed at The gates of Preston New Road.
Original source: https://www.ecologistasenaccion.org/article34737.html
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