Say no to shale: Greenpeace UK launches legal challenge against fracking

Greenpeace have launched a legal challenge against fracking in the UK. Creative Commons: Lock the Gate Alliance, 2011

Greenpeace UK has launched a landmark legal challenge against fracking in an attempt to derail plans for the controversial extraction process.

The campaign group has joined forced with Andrew Pemberton, a Lancashire diary farmer living on the frontline of the UK fracking debate, to launch their challenge and are now urging landowners to assert what Greenpeace says is their legal right to veto drilling underneath properties.

Pemberton said:

I’m supplying milk to 3,000 households, and if for any reason my water became contaminated, my business would be ruined and my livelihood destroyed, as well as the livelihoods of the 16 families who work for me.

“Fracking is dangerous and short-sighted. We should be keeping this gas in the ground.

Greenpeace says they expect thousands of people across the country to join the legal challenge, and create a patchwork of “no-go” areas across England – effectively banning fracking from the country.

The challenge is based on a claim that drilling underneath people’s homes without permission is unlawful.

Anna Jones, a senior campaigner with Greenpeace said:

Under English law, if you own land, your rights extend to all the ground beneath it. That means if someone drills under your home without permissions it is trespass. To avoid being liable to trespass, driller would need landowners’ permission.

And this case is about people explicitly declaring they do not give that permission. This will make it extremely difficult for companies to move ahead with any horizontal drilling plans.

As campaigners in the UK once again attempt to curtail the growth of the shale industry, across the Channel green groups have praised a French court’s decision to keep a ban of fracking.

Last week, France’s constitutional court ruled to uphold a law from 2011 banning fracking across the country, saying it represents a legitimate goal to protect the environment. It rejected the argument that the ban went against property rights.

And while UK critics of fracking are calling on Prime Minister, David Cameron, to similarly halt the industry’s growth, its prospects have been dealt yet another blow this week as new forecasts warned that an increase in fracking would create far fewer jobs than the 74,000 figure cited by Cameron over the summer.

The new figures put the potential number of jobs at just a 3^rd of the prime minister’s original predictions.

Greenpeace’s legal challenge follows several previous efforts by campaigners to halt the development of the UK’s fracking industry.

It is based on a test case from three years ago when former Harrod’s owner Mohammed Al Fayed successfully argued that a company drilling for oil under his Surrey estate had trespassed.

Last month, however, the government released a consultation proposing an amendment to the law allowing drilling under homes without such permission. Under current proposals communities could also be offered incentives of around £100,000 per drill site and 1% of revenues from production, to allow fracking in their area.

Concerns over its impact on freshwater resources, chemical contamination and increased greenhouse gas emissions have all put the process at the heart of a fierce debate in the UK. Fears have also focused on the possibility that the process could cause earthquakes. In 2011, exploratory fracking by Cuadrilla in Lancashire caused two earth tremors measuring 2.3 and 1.5 on the Richter scale.

Unlike the US, the UK, and countries across Europe are densely populated, and many countries are concerned that drilling will almost always be near a community.

Greenpeace wants more landowners to make clear they do not give energy companies permission to frack under their property.

Their website, www.wrongmove.org, allows people to check if their property is in the 64% of the country currently being considered for possible drilling – including fracking – and sign up to the challenge.

Join the Challenge: www.wrongmove.org>>