DRILLING DOWN INTO FRACKING

• Published in: The Estates Gazette 2015-09, p.90-92
• Main Authors: May, Caroline, Richards, Emilia
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Climate change; Commercial real estate; Consent; Drilling; Earthquakes; Groundwater; Hydraulic fracturing; Licenses; Planning; Shale gas
• ISSN: 0014-1240; 2059-5123

Caroline May and Emilia Richards survey the legal landscape and explore the government's cautious commitment to fracking Hydraulic fracturing for shale gas ("fracking") is a controversial issue worldwide - simultaneously condemned as a harbinger of environmental pollution and earthquakes, and promoted as the solution to dwindling conventional energy resources. A developer will also need to notify the Health and Safety Executive ("HSE") and seek approval for its well design and operation plans, and notify the Environment Agency ("EA") of its intention to drill (which may then result in the EA issuing a conservation notice under the Water Resources Act 1991). The greater priority at central government to ensure planning applications for fracking are decided without delay is probably in response to the difficulties that developers have experienced in obtaining permissions to date, as demonstrated by the recent unsuccessful applications submitted by Cuadrilla Resources Holdings Ltd. Cuadrilla, whose fracking operations in Blackpool were suspended in 2011 after they were suspected to have caused or have contributed to earthquakes in the area, had two applications for planning permission to carry out fracking in the Lancashire area refused in June 2015. According to the government, this measure would "enable groundwater monitoring to be put in motion much earlier in the planning process, and provide early reassurance that the environmental impacts are being properly considered".