Policing at Preston New Road. Photo: DrillOrDrop
North Wales Police has confirmed it will not be sending more officers to police protests outside Cuadrilla’s shale gas site near Blackpool.
The force supplied officers at the Preston New Road site at Little Plumpton for a week earlier this month and a team of a sergeant and six constables will be on duty this week.
But North Wales Police has turned down a request for reinforcements for another four weeks and a statement today said the support would end on Friday:
“We regularly support colleagues across the region as and when we can and when asked. As a force we also benefit from their support and it’s only right, when able, we reciprocate.
“North Wales Police officers have supported colleagues in Lancashire between 9th and 14th July and then from 23rd to 28th July.
“However due to high demands in north Wales over the holiday season, we are unable, at this time, to offer any further support. Colleagues in Lancashire are aware of, and understand this decision.”
“Let Cuadrilla pay for their own security”
Arfon Jones, North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner. Photo: N Wales PCC
At the weekend, the North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner, Arfon Jones, an opponent of fracking, said on Twitter:
“No more @NWPolice officers will be going to facilitate Cuadrilla’s business in Lancs. Let them pay for their own security.”
In a statement today he asked:
“Why should officers from North Wales be sent to police and facilitate an activity where the activity is more or less unlawful in their own country?”
Mr Jones said he was unhappy about North Wales officers going to Lancashire but the decision to pull out was operational.
“I was told last week that there would be no further deployments after I made representations around capacity issues in North Wales and questioned how could we justify sending officers to Lancashire in those circumstances.
“I’ve now been told there will be just one more week of support in Preston and that North Wales Police have refused a request for a further four weeks of reinforcements.”
Mr Jones said he was an environmental campaigner before he was elected Police and Crime Commissioner. He said:
“I have opposed fracking as I considered it a danger in many respects but mainly because of potential pollution of water.
“I was a prominent member of Frack Free Wrexham and campaigned strongly and eventually successfully to prevent IGas carrying out exploratory drilling at Borras.
“I was also prominent in lobbying Welsh Government to issue a moratorium over fracking in Wales which they did and will continue to lobbying them utilise new powers delegated to them over energy to ban fracking in line with other European countries.”
Direct action
The North Wales force is one of several providing officers to Lancashire to police the protests at Preston New Road. Last week police from Cumbria were outside the site.
The officers are deployed under a so-called “mutual aid” system, where one force provides assistance to another. This is usually in response, or expectation, or a major incident. It began at Preston New Road on 10 July 2017.
This coincided with 24-hour policing at the site in response to a month of direct action by the national group, Reclaim the Power. It said the actions had resulted in 16 working days of blockades of the site entrance.
Lock-on protest at Preston New Road, 24 July 2017. Photo: Reclaim the Power
This morning four people, most from Oxford, used arm tubes to form a barrier against incoming vehicles. Supporters of the action dressed in red striped t-shirts with masks of the Where’s Wally character.
Alice Smith, who took part in the protest, said:
“We are here today because Cuadrilla are taking us for wallies by undermining local democracy and putting the environment at risk by pursuing fracking in Lancashire. But the real Wally is Cuadrilla as it becomes clearer that the fracking industry has no future in the UK.”
Four people were arrested this morning, two for allegedly obstructing the highway and two on suspicion of committing offences under trades union legislation.
Lancashire Police would not comment on the decision by North Wales to pull out of the mutual aid scheme. So far, the force has been also been supported by officers from Merseyside, Cumbria, North Yorkshire, West Midlands, Warwickshire and West Mercia.
Rising costs and arrests
Data collected by Lancashire Police has put the cost of policing the site from January-June 2017 at £846,502. There have been 182 arrests and 169 charges over the same period.
Cuadrilla said today:
“The right to protest should not supersede the right to work.”
Pat Davies from Preston New Road Action Group, which opposes Cuadrilla’s operations, said:
“Any policing bill should not be met by local people but by Cuadrilla. They should meet those costs in full.”
Categories: policing
DRILL OR DROP? 
Thankyou the North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner, Arfon Jones.
The Fracking invasion is unravelling bit by bit.
This really is a remarkable turn of events, I trust other police and crime commissioners will follow suit.
Now we hope there will be some reason and intelligence in policing policy
Chap how was previously an anti fracker said he likes it that police won’t be coming from his area, even though the reason they won’t be coming has nothing to do with him and they will likely come again in the future. Meanwhile pretty much every planning permission has been granted and every well drilled over the past few years. Every well that has been protested has been completed with no effect from the protests. If thats it unravelling you haven’t been paying attention.
The protesters have made noise at the gates, which doesn’t affect the operations inside and the oil price has crashed which has slowed things right down. Still, its all heading in the right direction.
182 arrests and 169 charges. Theres the reality right there.
lol
Ask iGas when they’re coming back to Barton Moss. They said Sept 2015.
While you’re at it you can ask them why they high tailed it out of Borras and Upton.
Fact of the matter is, like at Belcoo, when the coward frackers face a determined community they run.
Are you not getting a pattern yet?
And you STILL think full scale fracking will happen in the Isles?
What a Clown.
Hi. I’ve asked them and they say they went back and had tea and cakes and that you didn’t notice.
I see the pattern. Of course I do. The same people turn up at wellsites and are happy to live in a field. Mostly theres around 10 of them, though at most of the wells drilled over the past few years the number of activists bothering to turn up has been between 3 and 6.
You’ll have noticed that they have to keep living in fields and will have to for years to come sitting at the bottom of some lane convincing themselves that slowing down a lorry for 2 hours thats arrived 2 days before the stuff its carrying is needed is affecting anything at all.
“The right to protest should not supersede the right to work.” Nor should the right to work supersede the rights of citizens of this planet and future generations to live. Cuadrilla’s priorities are interesting!
I’d say the same about the people living next to the mines providing mineral resources for wind turbines and batteries, but then I remember I like renewable power and I love batteries in all sorts of stuff. So, you know, I want my stuff and I’m happy to import, or, if the geology Gods are smiling, I’m happy to build the mines in Lancashire or North Wales 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
It’s all me me me.
Indeed. Instead of massively reducing energy use at the very least I want massive mining in Africa and then shipped off to China for large scale refining and processing. Get the stuff to Germany, or factories on the other side of China, and process it again with some of the most dangerous chemicals known to man – stick it in a bath of sulfur hexafluoride of which 1 tonne of emissions is equivalent to 25,000 tonnes of CO2. Give me that dip over and over and fabricate me some green green energy. Hundreds of tonnes of coal for the steel per wind turbine. I love it baby. Yum Yum. Global scale low energy density micro generation that doesn’t work for 1/2 of the time and 1/3 of the year. Smart grids that pull power from Eastern Europe to power Western Europe when the wind doesn’t blow and its the middle of winter and no-one told the sun not to drop its output 90%, only no-ones told Eastern Europe that they need to build enough wind turbines not only to power themselves, something which no-one is even close to doing, but they also need to build enough to power Germany, France, the UK, Spain and Italy too.
OK, I’ve written their embassies a letter each asking them to get a move on as there’s a risk my TV might not work in December 2040 so I think I’ve got it all handled now. Problem sorted.
Grasping at straws again. Pulled out for operational reasons and no other reason. The antis are getting as desperate as heck out there as they know exploration is only weeks away.
Cuadrilla did make a school boy error with not providing 24/7 security to protect the big rig and now getting held up over the holiday period.
Ineos has the resources to avoid these types of mistakes.
UK Shale exploration is inevitable.
Why?
Why what?
Your last statement. Why is UK Shale exploration inevitable?
Do you understand what exploration means?
Looks like you’re shirking the answer.
We seem to be stuck here.
‘Cuadrilla did make a school boy error’
Many would say a serious technical blunder.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preese-hall-shale-gas-fracturing-review-and-recommendations-for-induced-seismic-mitigation
It seems fracking and relentless earthquakes go hand in hand
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4722410/Oklahoma-pummeled-earthquakes-eight-years.html
The BGS were correct when their report states that repeat earthquakes are likely to occur if you frack the Bowland shale.
The reports about the damage this industry causes keep flooding in.
The big players are not interested.
The little players are running on fumes.
More communities are saying no.
‘All out for shale’ has not and will not be happening.
No. As it clearly states in the article, the earthquakes are caused by injecting wastewater
Al, don’t inject facts into the discussion in such a manner. It throws John Powney off and gets in the way of “story time.” LOL
I can’t believe anyone is still confusing waste water injection for shale gas fracking. Do people not have a brain?
So what’s happened here? For operational reasons some police won’t be coming from Wales for a while. Nothing said about the future or anything like that. An anti fracker in a political position in Wales said Caudrilla’s own security should be left to deal with the protesters. That seems to be the end of the story. I wait to see if the national news picks it up.
Another interesting announcement is the Faraday Challenge for £246 million into research innovation and scale up of battery technology.
For those of you not familiar with Michael Faraday FRS; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867 he was another early genius who was not considered a “gentleman” by his less….remarkable….peers, he invented the terminology we use for electrode, anode and cathode and discovered the electrolysis effect and also benzine amongst other things such the relationship between electromagnetism and light.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday
We stand on the shoulders of giants, but some of us apparently are in distinct danger of falling off?
All the Queens policemen and all the Queens tax payers, do not want to put the humpty dumpty tory private protection racket….sorry….policy together again.
Private security have no powers of arrest or detention on suspicion, only irrefutable proven evidence, and there are plenty of cameras around. Any private person can arrest them for assault, or indeed anything the private security can do, only the police can arrest on suspicion and police highways. As soon as a private security person enters public property, they are subject to common law and have no police powers.They cease to have any official capacity at all.
Game, set and neighbourhood watch.
What are you bumbling on about? The police ain’t going anywhere!
So easy……
Nonsense. Corn futures are down 1.64% at 371.25 and if you check on wiki you’ll find that Martin’s Cove is a historic site in Wyoming and is 55 miles (89 km) southwest of Casper. There was a settlement in 2006 following a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU developed from the National Civil Liberties Bureau (CLB), co-founded in 1917 during World War I by Crystal Eastman. Crystal Eastman is Crystal Catherine Eastman (June 25, 1881 – July 8, 1928).
Seriously easy.
Uuhh….. yeah…..and the relevance is……?? Wrong number perhaps?
The 7 Welsh police will return to Wales, to deal with Welsh sheep, and will be replaced by police from other forces to look after the PNR sheep. (Just in time for shearing and dipping.) That’ the way the mutual aid system works. Feel sorry for the Welsh police who will not get all those arrest bonuses. Others will gain at their expense. Hey ho-that’s capitalism for you.
I wonder if Afron Jones tells business owners in his jurisdiction that they should be responsible for their own security in the case that criminal acts are perpetrated against them? As usual, anti-frackers are full of contradictions.
Hmmm, criminal fracts perpetrated against us? Perhaps we should demand 60 policemen to protect us?
Seems fair.
I’m happy to build you a cage you can all climb into? We can call it a ‘protector protection area’ just to make you feel safe.
Love it, GBK!
Ya’ll would have to come out to play first from behind anonymous multiple id razor wire cages and remove a blinker or two, or three or four?
No my dear poor deluded boy, we prefer to sit outside in the fresh air outside the physical and mental cages for our entertainment and enjoy the captive cabaret acts.
Perhaps we should offer to monitor the frack earthers ourselves with just a few police advisors, free tea and cakes of course.
We will be strict but fair, something that has been lacking up to now, and the majority of police can go home and do the job they are paid to do by the tax payer.
Not act as tax payer funded free private security for an unwelcome invader.
We could march up and down in circles outside,
Left! Left! left left left! And you could march up and down inside?
Right! Right! Right right right!
Or we could march in synchronous harmony, one leg each?
Right! Left! Left right left!
That way we don’t fall over and we learn to live in harmony?
“We will be strict but fair, something that has been lacking up to now”. Yeah cause up to now you’ve not been fair so I’m glad you’re in agreement on that one.
Tell you what pocket rocket why don’t you just head back home n put your feet up and let us big boys take care of the situation ourselves. You lot are a mere hindrance consisting of a tiny little band of stereotypes amassing several hundred, possibly a couple of thousand when taken nationally.
What are you going to do when the exploration commences? And the even bigger question of what are you going to do if we strike it rich? Moan and groan and that’s it. We have the power not you and thank goodness for that.
GBK. Dont be so sure. Cuadrilla is running behind schedule and struggle to get things running and they still may come up with a dry well and it is all over for UK shale.
Not fair peeny? Since when has invasion and desecration bee fair? Cries of “no fair” are so sweet? Throwing the pretty toys out of the cradle? How sad? Never mind Whiney We, it’ll soon be over. Then we can send the bulldozers in and intensively deep clean and fumigate the sites for a couple of centuries and meanwhile forge ahead with rational intelligent non polluting energy production alternatives that will last well into the foreseeable future. We can then look back on this temporary aberration of fossil fuel insanity and laugh that since the discovery of fire, certain secret fire cultists were so mesmerised by the pretty little red flames, they didn’t notice or care that the forests were burning down?
That primitive obsession to burn anything and everything and charge for the privilege will become a thing of the mad polluted past along with the COD control freaks that went with it.
TW, you are seriously delusional if you think: A) that there will be a dry well – we know the pay is in the deposit, it’s just a matter of flow rate and time; and B) that one or two wells is going to produce a “go/no-go” decision. There are billions of dollars waiting to deploy here and there will be dozens/hundreds of wells drilled before the majors decide definitively whether it is viable.
One way to tell. Every business does something anyone can disagree with. Selling sugar – diabetes and tooth decay. Purchasing stock from anyone using a combustion engine – climate change. Tending to injured cats – risk of extinctions from over predation due to carless people not thinking about what the millions of pets do every day when we let them out while we go to work.
See, its easy to get on your high horse about something. All we need to do is pick anything at all, call it a political protest, and head down to his area to cost his police hundreds of thousands while we have a bake sale and sing song.
Funny how none of us are standing in my garden with signs saying “Say no to Tiddles” isn’t it Mr Scales? Maybe we can all see that fracking is just a little different?
And while you are being “robbed” by protesters, your police chief will tell you that it’s your problem and that you need to hire security guards to take care of it.
People will continue to use fossil fuels and moans about how we should stop exploiting it and provide no real practical solution for its substitute. Just like money people all want it but dont want to work for it.
It looks like the damage to Cuadrilla’s main rig has caused at least 6 months delay and cost to the company. They have achieved their objectives.
The alternatives all ready exist and have done for ages, no amount of recidivist imperatives will change that.
Yes, that rig? Do you imagine we really don’t know that was a false flag attempt to divert attention away from delays to the share holders and put the blame on someone else and demonise the protesters at the same time? How prey do a couple of old ladies and councillors damage a rig so seriously it takes six months to repair?
What’s the betting it was damaged through incompetence and they are trying it on with the insurers whilst simultaneously demonising the protesters? Nice try!
Laughable isn’t it? What A Pitiful Carry On! Sid James, eat your heart out! Hyaah hyaah hyaah!
Keep On Carrying On Up The Frack!
Laugh? We nearly did!
[Edited by moderator]
Of course it was incompetent by Cuadrilla to let the rig get damaged. After all it is their bread and butter. Still can’t see what the alternative you are talking about.
How would you know from inside that toxic haze of rhetoric?
Trying to divert again? Standard tactic, sad really.
Cuadrilla needed to explain away the delays, some PR stunt did the rest, transparent as unpolluted water.
A few pensioners and councillors could not damage any rig, what with? Lemon drizzle cakes? Walking frames? Sheer fantasy for the benefit of the police, the insurers and the propaganda machine, simple as that.
Nice try, but no more pathetic PR excuses please?
The site was illegally entered and the criminals cut hydraulic hoses, smashed computer screens and took drills to computer equipment. The mistake was to perhaps take the activists at their word that they were peaceful; word-ish of course since hundreds of them have been arrested, but it is definitely a huge increase in their criminality to do an attack like that. It goes far farther than any of the illegal activities they have done so far, including the death threats, stalking people to their homes, harrassing families and ‘light’ attacks on staff and vehicles.
[Moderator:] As far as I’m aware, at the time of writing (25/7/17), no-one has been arrested or charged in relation to this incident, and there is no evidence as to who was responsible. [/Moderator]
Moderator – you mean with all of the security they ought to have had as a normal cost of doing business nobody has been charged? What will their insurers say? The loss adjusters must be having a real laugh at any claim they may have made.
“Cuadrilla to start drilling within a month” the Times, 25/7/17.
“Floating wind farm sinks into administration” the Times, 25/7/17.
Onwards, and downwards.
Meanwhile, those poor, ignorant PIs fooled by the “Ponzi schemes” for on shore oil exploration are ordering their new motors, before the other half catches on. A few obviously remembered the advice to DYOR, but came to a different conclusion than suggested.
Bwahaha!
“Drilling is expected to begin in the spring, with fracking in the third quarter of the year” January
“Cuadrilla has been battling for years to clear the regulatory hurdles against fracking projects and could begin the drilling stage of the project within the next couple of months” April
Do you realy believe what the Times says about fracking Martin. If so I have some magic beans you might like to buy.
One thing about this whole debate is exploration which does not mean production so not sure why either sides of this fracking debate got so excited about. Cuadrilla may drill a dry well and pack up or they have no backer to go to production. So it means nothing at the moment.
That is true, but moderate your concept of a dry well. This isn’t conventional geology. The reason shale is so powerful is that it produces much more than conventional oil and gas per well. On average an unconventional well produces around 3x what a conventional well does and contrary to popular (activist myth) belief the decline curves are highly equivalent between conventional and unconventional (what activists have been doing is comparing average unconventional to exceptional conventional – if you compare average to average they are the same). So put that together with shale geology being much much more uniform and so you get far far fewer dusters and it is easy to understand why shale has been so impactful on global energy markets.
Garry – you say “On average an unconventional well produces around 3x what a conventional well does” which surprised me so I tried to find more information. The first thing I found was this presentation (http://www.devex-conference.org/perch/resources/1105-devex-wed-fleming-auditorium-iain-bartholomew.pdf) which, amongst other things, compares conventional and unconventional wells and says that
Conventional wells – Typical gas recovered per well: 10 –100 bcf
Typical production rate per well: 10 –100 million scf/d
Unconventional wells – Typical gas recovered per well: 0.5 –10 bcf
Typical production rate per well: 1 –10 million scf/d (30 day IP rate)
This would suggest that on average an conventional well produces around 10 -20 x what a conventional well does.
Can you give us some source data for your claim please or are you muddying the water a little here by conflating wells and multi-well pads?
Whilst protesters have been campaigning about a small oil well site,have any campaigners thought about the
huge amount of damage inflicted on the countryside over many centuries by farmers?, For example destroying wildlife habitats by ripping out woodlands, chemicals, fertilizers and installing drainage. Not to mention the milk lorries and farm machinery that destroy our country roads creating potholes that make it difficult to drive along.
Really? Next time you see a 100 tonne LHV milk cart, its time to call Lactose Intolerance Anonymous (LIA) helpline?
Those evil farmers again? Growing all that evil food and forcing people to eat it or be threatened with legal harassment? You can see all that pollution with green vegetables and fruit, fields of nasty wheat and crops, and all those animals farting in deliberate gas chorus, just to pollute the atmosphere? Yeah evil, every single one of them?
Of course the o$€¥£&g industry is entirely clean and totally lovely and misunderstood sociofracks aren’t they?
Hmmm. Evil food.
Farmers have been being attacked for years by environmental activists and they are next on the list behind the energy sector as a decarbonisation target.
Interesting to see the same old diversion tactic is being trotted out, try to put all the attention on protesters whilst the real progenitors of environmental destruction and criminal damage carry on carrying on behind their razor wire cages, hoping everyone is looking in the other direction.
We see you.