I was delighted to hear from our new Prime Minister that he will reinstate the moratorium on shale gas extraction, honouring the manifesto on which the Conservative Party was elected to Government in 2019.
I believe that the UK must not abandon domestic production of oil and gas at the expense of our pursuit of net-zero, however I do not think fracking should be a part of our energy mix and I have made this clear to Ministers in Westminster.
My issues are primarily two-fold, first of all, I remain unconvinced that the practice is safe and that would not cause harm to communities across our constituency. I know fracking is commonplace in the United States, but the United Kingdom has a considerably higher population density than the US, so it would be unfair to make comparisons between large rural fracking states such as New Mexico or Colorado and constituencies like Bolsover. It is also worth noting that Texas, the largest fracking state in the US and one of the least densely populated, has had a dramatic increase of seismic activity in both frequency and magnitude over recent years – causing significant damage to local properties.
Secondly, the UK has no gas supply issues and even if we lifted the fracking moratorium tomorrow, it would take up to a decade to extract sufficient volumes. Even then no amount of shale gas from hundreds of wells dotted across rural England would be enough to lower the European price any time soon and private companies are not going to sell the shale gas they produce to UK consumers below the market price.
Ultimately, I believe it would be complete madness to turn off our domestic source of gas in such an uncertain world, but onshore fracking is not the solution. I believe reinstate the moratorium is the right, and necessary decision, and I will continue to work with my neighbours and colleagues, Lee Rowley MP and Alex Stafford MP, to strongly oppose fracking.
