FRACKING: No One Could Possibly Have Guessed This Would Happen...

Lancashire's future? Fracking has caused significant earthquake damage in the USA

 So tonight Cuadrilla have had to halt fracking operations at their Preston New Road site for the third time in two weeks after a third tremor abpve the 0.5 Richter scale trigger. The increase seems exponential - from 0.5 to 0.8 to 1.1 and while still relatively minor, their increasing power in such a short time has to be bad news for the shale-peddling carbonistas.

The area surrounding the site near Blackpool in Lancashire has seen 27 seismic events captured by the British Geological Survey in just 11 days. This compares to just two others in the entire rest of the UK over the same period - one in North Wales and one in the Norwegian Sea off the Shetlands. There were no seismic events in Lancashire in the 89 days prior to Cuadrilla commencing drilling.

While most of these are small, the incremental impact on the area if operations continue as planned for many years becomes sadly all too predicatble.

The only crumb of comfort in this could be that this litany of problems for Cuadrilla knocks future plans across the UK on the head and, quite aside from the appalling environmental impact of fracking, makes the whole project financially unviable for the profiteers who are prepared to sacrifice our country and planet for the sake of their bank balances.

Of course, the Greens and environmentalists who warned of this years ago, before fracking permits were opened up by the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary Ed Davey during the Coalition government, were denounced as hysterical fantasists and Luddites.

After all, who could possibly have guessed this would happen...?!

Source: British Geological Survey  https://earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes/recent_uk_events.html