Lock-on and lorry protests at entrance to Bury Hill Wood oil site near Leith Hill in Dorking. Photo: still from live video by Ross Monagham
Opponents of drilling for oil near Leith Hill in Surrey have stopped a delivery to the site by blocking the entrance.
At about 2pm, a man and a woman locked their arms together through a tube to prevent access to the site at Bury Hill Wood near Dorking.
Another man climbed onto a lorry which was attempting to deliver a portacabin.
At about 4.15pm, the haulage company withdrew from the contract. The man on the lorry came down and the delivery left.
The lock-on protesters remained for several hours because they said there were reports of another attempted delivery.
At 7.30pm, the campaigners said the protest was over.
The man on the lorry said:
“The objective of this action was to raise awareness of the fight against fracking and acidising in England, to draw people’s attention to the right to legal protest and the ways to do it.
“I am happy with what I set out to achieve, which was to get this haulage company to stop supporting the fracking industry.”
Jackie Carter, Company Secretary of the haulage company, Crossways Transport (International) Ltd, said in a statement:
“We are a very small family haulage company, with just 3 trucks, and were under instructions from Mobile Mini to make a delivery to Lancing and Dorking today.
“All we get given are a contractor and address and at no time would we have been able to know what type of site this was.
“Unfortunately when the driver came down the road and saw what was going on he immediately sent us a photograph and proceeded to find out what actually was happening and reported back to us.
“We then telephoned Mobile Mini to say that we were not prepared to make the delivery on their behalf and wanted permission to leave site. We have obtained this permission from them and the driver and truck would like to leave site in a safe manor.
“We have no intention of supporting any companies involved in fracking and would appreciate if you could forward to us a list of any known sites so that we can be aware of any addresses we might be given in future.”
Planning breach?
Jenny, who was taking part in the lock-on, told DrillOrDrop earlier that the protesters took action because they believed a delivery would be made today. This morning, portaloos and a caravan were moved off the site and there were no welfare facilities for the remaining security staff.
The campaigners believed the site operator, Europa did not yet have planning permission to bring in heavy goods vehicles like the one attempting today’s delivery.
Jenny said:
“We are prepared to stay for as long as is necessary: until the delivery company pulls out of the contract or the police remove us.”
Lock-on and lorry protests inside the Bury Hill Wood oil site near Leith Hill in Dorking. Photo: still from live video by Ross Monagham
Long-running legal dispute
The Bury Hill Wood site in the greenbelt and Surrey Hills Area of Natural Beauty has been the focus of a long-running planning dispute , dating back to 2009 when Europa Oil and Gas first said it wanted to do exploratory drilling.
The company got planning permission in August 2015 after two public inquiries and two court hearings.
But many activities on the site must wait until Surrey County Council approves a traffic management plan for the site. The decision on this plan has been deferred twice and Europa has appealed to the planning inspectorate because of the delay.
In October, the county council approved Europa’s application for additional fencing and temporary buildings, including a welfare cabin. But this decision is being challenged by a local campaign group, Leith Hill Action Group, which has sought a judicial review.
This post will be updated with new developments.
Categories: protest
DRILL OR DROP? 
Does a Europy security guard not creep into the woods, defacate, and creep out again?
Secure Europy faeces? Sounds about right?
I think the Europy security guards have finally found a use for those eviction/evacuation notices?
Well done, Jackie Carter, Company Secretary of the haulage company, Crossways Transport (International) Ltd
‘“We have no intention of supporting any companies involved in fracking and would appreciate if you could forward to us a list of any known sites so that we can be aware of any addresses we might be given in future.”’
In the interest of transparency this list should be passed to all prospective contractors to enable them to make an informed decision. This is not the first time this has happened.
Now while we are discovering all these hitherto invisible rotting white elephants in the room, there are many other previously hidden discoveries being made across the world.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/matter_energy/graphene/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/matter_energy/energy_technology/
Renewable energy systems all have depended upon storage problems, insufficiently efficient battery systems and general resistance losses from conventional electronics, centralisation of production and distribution through ageing and deteriorating cables and the sheer inefficiency of cutting back power generation to the point where it becomes inefficient, then boosting it to cover power surge demand.
Well the answer has been knocking around for some time. The sun, the earth and the electromagnetic environment of nature produces all the energy we need and much much more, it always has done, it always will do.
The concept has been understood since Nikola Tesla, but the technology to do that safely and efficiently has only just been achieved.
I am sure many of the old ohandgee guard will rebel at the name Tesla, but that doesn’t matter, people were murdered for daring to say the earth revolved around the sun, or that we evolved from apes, or that the universe has existed for more than 6,000 years.
But now we know different, with the possible exception of the re-emergence of the flat earthers, or even worse, the frack earthers?
I saw this demonstrated myself earlier in the year, and now it seems many free open source details from individuals and organisations are ready to talk openly about it.
[repeated paragraphs removed]
That may be graphene, it’s an easily made material which still has stability problems but laboratory tests have revealed it’s almost sci fi characteristics. We may be looking at the answer to all our energy problems.
It’s made from the most common material on the planet, carbon.
What this material appears to be able to do is derive energy directly from the electromagnetic environment, be it sunlight, heat differential, radiation or conduction, it has almost zero electric resistance for storage storage and one of the plans i have seen is for toroidal rings that flow energy around and around until needed and can be recharged by that same generator motor action. The possibilities are so far reaching the mind just cant take in what the true possibilities are.
Graphene may be as big a game changer to the human race as the discovery of fire, since when we seem to want to burn everything. It’s an easily made material which still has stability problems but laboratory tests have revealed it has almost mind boggling properties and characteristics. We may be looking at the answer to a great deal of our energy problems.
Everything from nano tweezers to grab bio molecules from water highly efficient photocatylists capable of recycling CO2, to nano wires just a few atoms thick?
Not unobtainium, but obtainium you might say. And no child slaves needed to dig toxic materials from dangerous mines, it can be made from almost any kind of carbon.
I saw this demonstrated myself earlier in the year, and now it seems many of the free open sources from individuals and organisations are ready to talk openly about it and just give it away freely. That is the commitment to furthering this human race forward in its present self made crisis.
And what are this government doing about it? Funding and investment into studying this amazing material properties? No, they want to fleece the tax payer for millions on small nuclear reactors, throwing their dwindling fragmenting bulk behind forcing fracking and its associated horrors down our throats.
I think MerCaptan May of the toxic tory titanic party has her blurred sights set on that pretty hydrocarbon iceberg and there aint no one gonna steer her safely into port?
EVERYBODY DOWN!!!! Ohh lummy! Ice anyone?
[Repeats in previous comment removed as requested]
Graphene, although developed in the UK is now on its way to you know where….
http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/chinas-president-xi-jinping-visits-the-national-graphene-institute/
Yes Sherwulfe, i think even the Chinese have realised where the future lay, it seems the Saudis are also clearing the decks for the next renewable non industrial energy revolution.
Unfortunately our own government and USA are still trying to perpetuate the “stick in the black mud” hydrocarbon dark ages? The earth can no longer sustain that poisonous legacy, it entire planet is choking on our infatuation with oil and gas and all its accompanying horrors.
The world is changing at last, 2017 turned out to be the year that all the veils of lies started to fall away, UK could and should, without the buroceatic burden of the EU, have been on the leading edge of that inevitable renewable energy wave, but our own governments autocratic inertia and oiligarchy dependence drags us all back again and again and again towards a fascistic protectionism of it’s own fear of losing it’s hegemonic privilege and power.
This is a video of “Chalk Girl” a 16 year old who wants to see Hong Kong retain it’s former promised culture and independence since the 1997 handover.
I was in HK myself that year, and have been back there a couple of times since.
Again there as here, the majority of people want change from the even more dreadful inertia of Chinese imperious freedom crushing heavy handedness there, and the increasingly bizarre heavy handed wrong footed recidivistic government here.
This insane fracking situation in UK needs to be addressed before we miss the leading edge of the renewable energy wave and get lost in the doldrums.
The “Chalk Mark” anti Barclays Bank/Third protest is a sign of that need to change sweeping the old systems away.
Like so many species in the past, we accept inevitable change or we get swept away by it.
Many of us need to be a part of that change, and I suspect its gotten to the point where we simply can’t afford to drag that dead weight of recidivist hydrocarbonista inertia with us anymore.
They have chosen their dead end path, we can shout and wave at them to take another path, all we want, they cant, or wont hear or see us anymore, so its time to move on and not look back.
Another Interesting documentary on the Rodin Coil dynamics.
Yet another remarkable step forward that needs to be followed up.
I met some of these people last year, almost by accident, but of course there is no such thing as accident is there?
The mathematics is beautiful, elegant and astounding. The implications are vast and life changing.
So much to work with to build a better world for everyone, not just a greedy few. So much to do, so little time.
Thanks
If you can’t win via legal route then just adopt an illegal approach, seems to be the general left wing mentality.
Ermm, what fracking??? Pathetic.
Perhaps you could show us where it says a lock on or lorry surf is illegal ?
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Holmewood is not a fracking site as you all well know. When will you protesters stop your fracking lies.Shame on you bullies.
88% of UK sites which are defined as “not fracking” would be defined as fracking in the US. Bury Hill is one of these sites: Europa plan to use ‘acidisation” rather than ‘fracking’ (under this new definition) – i.e. forcing through large volumes of acidised water at high pressure to extract ‘tight oil’ on this site. It remains highly controversial and poses a risk to our water supply and our health. There is more energy being put into extracting any possible oil or gas than there is possible energy to be extracted. There is no sense in this project nor in many of the proposed current oil and gas sites around the UK – they are merely a vehicle to allow small companies like Europa to increase their share price – but these companies do not have the deep pockets necessary to pay if contamination or other problems occur.
Think I’ll start an ‘anti everything’ collection on shutterstock. Gotta be wearing camouflage, look like need a good wash etc etc. [Edited by moderator]
GBK: You might want to give it the title Stereotype and Prejudice in the 21st Century!
I just wonder when Ruth and Paul start to get tired of covering such useless junk as this. Put all of that effort into something that will benefit the world.
Hi Kale not Shale, are you refering to your own post? Perhaps Drill Or Drop allow “such useless junk” because they have a far greater tolerance for poster petty potty abuse than is strictly deserved?
Also perhaps you could be more grateful to your over generous hosts Drill Or Drop for allowing you such temper tantrum Trump troll twitter tish tosh trash contributions that we all enjoy laughing at so much?
Such fun!
Ocean plastic pollution a growing problem. Time to make the polluter pay for the century long cleanup and product sales to be responsible for the safe disposal of packaging.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics/
this anti fracking mob has a lot in common with the remoaners where the few are trying to dictate to the majority the irony is the green power they claim will provide all our energy needs oil & gas just produce the windmill etc. just as the vehicles that transport them to their protest are guzzling the oil & gas they are protesting about .
Fabrication and intimidation, again. Wait for the “outrage” when it emerges from within the Ineos documents supporting their injunction. Not too clever, within the wider scheme of things. Perhaps a pamphlet is needed to explain the facts to the public? LOL.
Anne-suggest you see how they “define” football in USA! Good attempt if we were looking at semantics, but not valid within this topic.