Listening to Osborne waxing exuberant over Britain’s energy future because of his obsession with a fracking revolution in the UK to match that in the US, you might be excused for thinking that he had a trump electoral card. Any such idea is nonsense, for several reasons. The predicted fracking deposits in this country are […]
Posts Tagged ‘Fracking’
Nothing stands between Labour and election victory except its own timidity
Jan 25th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.A sad tale of ambivalence and timidity across a range of policies This coming Monday the remaining stages of the Infrastructure Bill will be taken in Parliament, including votes on the launch of fracking in this country. Cameron and Osborne have declared they are both ‘gung-ho’ to develop this technology to the fullest degree as […]
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Fracking: Osborne’s latest 18th century-style ‘folly’
Dec 2nd, 2014 by Michael Meacher.It’s a safe bet that Osborne’s Autumn Statement this Wednesday will hail a fracking revolution as the start of a new energy cornucopia for Britain. Like everything else politicians say 5 months before an election, it needs to be taken with a piece of salt. Only one shale well has been fracked in […]
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Falling oil prices could scupper UK shale production
Oct 19th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Last Tuesday the share price of Chesapeake Energy, one of the leading US shale oil producers, fell 29% in a single day. With internationally traded Brent Crude now trading at below $88 a barrel, a 4-year low and down from $100 only a few weeks ago, and the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate at below […]
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Is fracking the new poll tax?
Sep 29th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Just as Thatcher ploughed ahead with her ideological totem, the poll tax, in the face of clear evidence that it was deeply unpopular, so her modern-day acolytes around Cameron seem determined to do exactly the same thing over fracking, with very likely the same results. Despite the intense resistance demonstrated against Cuadrilla’s plans to set […]
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Osborne’s fracking oasis will rapidly turn into a wilderness
Aug 15th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The American story about fracked gas since 2007 and fracked oil since 2011 is that it will continue to surge for years, turning the US into a blissful energy Eden – and Osborne wants a slice of the action. But research undertaken by US experts in the field independent of the big oil and gas […]
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Why the Tories want Fracking
Jun 6th, 2014 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.While the bulk of the commentariat have picked up on the recall plans in yesterday’s Queen’s speech, the government’s single-minded pursuit of fracking has caused less excitement. Philip Pearson of the TUC sums it up: Removing the responsibility for companies to notify individual landowners of their intention to frack. Underground access: proposing changes to trespass laws […]
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Fracking may be coming to somewhere near you – without your permission
May 22nd, 2014 by Michael Meacher.It is scarcely credible that the government is including in the Queen’s Speech on 4 June the right for the shale industry to drill on your land without your consent. Such a gross infringement of the rights of private property would be unthinkable, especially for a Tory government, were it not to secure a bonanza […]
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The dreams peddled by the oil and gas industries turn out to be fantasies
May 3rd, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The one thing Osborne loves to tell us, constantly, is that the future of energy production lies in fracking and that he will do everything in his power to maximise shale drilling in Britain, even to the extent of allowing drilling to be carried out on private land without permission. However this oasis of future […]
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Without renewables, you get fracking and human rights abuses
Apr 24th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Britain as an island off the mainland of Europe potentially has greater capacity for production of renewable energy than almost the whole of the rest of Europe put together, mainly from onshore and offshore wind, wave and tidal power, and Scottish hydropower. Yet UK electricity production from renewable energy, though it has increased in the […]
