UK's last two fracking sites ordered to close
Britain's last fracking sites are to close after the regulator ordered the wells to be sealed over.
Two wells at the Preston New Road site near Blackpool will be filled with concrete and abandoned, eight years after owners first produced shale gas at the site.
Cuadrilla, which owns the site, said it would start work on plugging the two exploration wells with cement next month in a process expected to last six weeks.
The company has argued that shale gas from the wells could help the UK's energy independence at a time when the country faces strong competition for international resources and has committed to ending oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.
Analysis by Cuadrilla of National Gas data has found that the UK's gas stockpiles are down more than a third on last year's level.
'The UK is heavily reliant on natural gas to keep the lights on, to heat our homes and to provide cost effective energy to British industry,' said Francis Egan, the ceo of Cuadrilla.
'Keeping these wells open doesn't cost taxpayers a penny, but once they are concreted over then we lose easy access to supplies of shale gas that could be used for decades to come.'
Fracking is the process of injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into cracks between rocks in order to release the trapped gas.
Cuadrilla began drilling at the Lancashire site in 2017, producing the first shale gas the following year, but work was halted over safety concerns.
A moratorium was placed on fracking in 2019 after a seismic event of magnitude 2.9 during operations at the site and a subsequent investigation, which found that it was not possible to accurately predict the probability or magnitude of earthquakes.
The ban was briefly lifted by Liz Truss, and an order for Cuadrilla's site to be decommissioned in 2022 was revoked after the energy crisis provoked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Later deadlines imposed by the North Sea Transition Authority, the industry regulator, at the end of last year, were passed and a new deadline of June 30 2025 was agreed in December.
Critics have pointed out that any shale gas produced in the UK would be sold on the international market.
Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, said the decision to decommission the Preston New Road site was 'gross negligence, both financial and for energy security'.
'We have hundreds of billions of pounds of taxpayer-owned shale gas we should be using,' he said. 'We should adopt Trump's slogan: 'drill baby drill'.'
Fracking advocates have struggled to win support among the general public, with backing for the industry at just 25 per cent in the Government's public attitudes tracker in 2022.
The same tracker last year found that over half of people disagreed with the UK ramping up production of its own oil and gas.
Ami McCarthy, the head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said: 'The best way to increase the UK's energy security and reduce risks related to gas storage supplies is to get off gas.
'A fully renewable energy system, with sufficient storage, wouldn't encounter these issues and, more importantly, it would cut emissions helping to tackle the climate crisis.
'This final throw of the dice from Cuadrilla is almost laughable, but the joke's over and it's time for the shale gas company to pack up and frack off for good.'
Lord Mackinlay, the chairman of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, said: 'Back in 2022, I asked the previous Conservative government not to commit the madness of concreting up a promising and valuable shale gas site.
'Thankfully, they listened, but now Labour appears willing to close off an incredible opportunity to secure home-grown energy supplies. It seems crazy to salt the earth in this needless and reckless way.'
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