Opponents of UKOG’s oil epxloration site outside the Broadford Bridge site in West Sussex. Photo used with the author’s permission
The exploration company, UK Oil and Gas, has applied for a wide-reaching injunction against anti-drilling protests at sites in West Sussex and Surrey.
Like several previous applications by onshore oil and gas companies, it is brought against “person’s unknown and seeks to prohibit specified actions, some of which are illegal.
But for the first time, it includes a clause to prevent opponents “combining by lawful means” with the main intention of hurting the company’s economic interests.
The injunction aims to cover oil exploration sites at Broadford Bridge and Markwells Wood in West Sussex and Horse Hill in Surrey. The order would also cover UKOG’s offices in Guildford.
Eviction of protesters at UKOG’s Horse Hill site, 2 December 2017. Photos used with authors’ permission
UKOG has designated what it calls “exclusion zones” on sections of road outside the site entrances, where it aims to restrict campaign activity against oil and gas developments. It also defines various actions, including taking photographs of contractors, as “unlawful”.
The application accuses protesters of “a wanton disregard of private property” and of attempting to intimidate supply companies from withdrawing their services at oil and gas sites.
The company said in a statement:
“Recent incidents have compelled UKOG to take this serious legal action to protect itself, its supply chain and landlords from threats and unlawful conduct from activists, who are intent on preventing us from going about our lawful business.
“The injunction does not prevent anyone effectively exercising their rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.
“The Injunction provides the High Court’s protection from unlawful actions such as trespass on UKOG’s land, unlawful interference with access to UKOG land, obstruction of the highway (including by slow-walking, lock-ons and lorry surfing) and obstructing or interfering with those suppliers working for the Company.”
If the injunction were confirmed anyone who breached it could be imprisoned, fined or have their assets seized.
The policing monitoring group, Netpol, today accused UKOG of trying to stifle opposition and severely restrict the right to freedom of assembly. (See Reaction section for full statement)
A web link to electronic versions of the application have been distributed by social media to individuals and anti-fracking groups.
The application is due to be heard at the High Court on Monday 19 March.
UKOG is now the fourth oil and gas company to apply for an injunction against protesters. Cuadrilla, Europa and INEOS have each been granted orders, which have been increasingly wide-ranging.
Details
Extract from the UKOG injunction application
The application comprises 42 documents and more than 50 videos. There are more than 900 pages of exhibits, which include online news reports, some repeated several times, along with social media posts, photographs, lease agreements, licences, consents and legal orders at other sites. The documents can be seen by using this Dropbox link
As well as UKOG, the claimants seeking the injunction comprise its subsidiary Kimmeridge Oil and Gas, and partner companies Magellan Petroleum (UK) Limited, Horse Hill Developments Ltd and UKOG (GB) Limited.
The order, if approved, would apply to “person’s unknown who are protestors against the exploration and/or extractor [sic] of mineral oil or relative hydrocarbon or natural gas by the claimant(s)” who are undertaking six different acts.
These include:
“Combining together using lawful means where the predominant intention is to injure the claimant’s economic interest”.
A spokesperson for UKOG said that acts which may be lawful are converted to unlawful behaviour if people act together with the predominant intention of injuring the company.
The draft order also seeks to outlaw:
- Entering the sites
- Obstructing the company and its contractors on the highway
- Preventing access to the sites
- Committing offences including obstructing the highway, criminal damage, interfering with a motor vehicle and compelling a person from abstaining from a legal action
If approved, the injunction would prevent a range of campaign techniques, including slow walking and lorry surfing.
Other prohibited activities, which are described in one document as “unlawful”, include photographing employees and contractors or publishing negative comments about suppliers with the intention of targeting them in a campaign.
Some of the actions referred to in the draft order are criminal offences. But some have been the subject of court cases where protesters have been acquitted, while others have not been included in previous injunctions.
Protest outside Broadford Bridge exploration site in what would be in an exclusion zone. Photo: Broadford Bridge Action Group
On the exclusion zones, the draft documents are confusing. One seeks to prohibit protesters from:
“Demonstrating in furtherance of the campaign at the sites or in the vicinity of the sites”
Demonstrating is defined as:
“carrying out any activity as part of or in furtherance of the campaign or protest against the lawful use and/or development of the sites.”
Another document qualifies this by saying:
“save that no more than 6 protestors may at any one time demonstrate within the Exclusion Zone provided that no obstruction or other act occurs as prohibited in this order”.
No one was available to clarify this at UKOG or its solicitors, Hill Dickinson LLP.
Reaction
A spokesperson for Broadford Bridge Action Group said:
‘”This attempted action by UKOG is an affront to democracy. Local people like us have a right to voice our genuine concerns about the potential impact of unconventional oil exploration on our communities and water supplies. Trying to use the High Court to silence debate and stop lawful activity is in no one’s interests and could fracture our society beyond repair.’
“This comes at a time when (buried under that announcement the other day about housing planning) the government instructed council planners to look favourably on oil and gas developments. Meanwhile a government inquiry closes on March 15th asking whether all planning for oil and gas should be taken away from local authorities and decided at the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol and ultimately then by central government.“The inquiry (from the Communities and Local Government Committee) also asks whether all permitting of oil and gas activity should be done by one central body. (Currently it is split between the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive, and the Oil and Gas Authority, as well as local councils for Planning permission.)“All these moves will make it easier and quicker for the oil and gas industry to get planning permission to drill wells across our landscape – because the geology they are now targeting needs a lot of wells to tap it commercially. This is the latest in a string of changes to law, regulation and planning guidance that facilitate the onward march of onshore oil and gas drilling.”
Kevin Blowe, of the policing monitoring network, Netpol, said:
“This latest interim injunction is another attempt by the onshore oil and gas industry to stifle opposition and severely restrict the right to freedom of assembly.
“The sweeping nature of the injunction is extraordinary. By seeking to prevent any interference with UKOG’s “economic interests” – a term that could mean almost anything – the company seems to suggest that the only “acceptable” protests are those that have no cost impact on its business and no effect on its share price.
“Anything else risks the potential threat of expensive legal action against local campaigners, even if they are “combining together using lawful means”, something that is a fair description of how every campaign group has ever operated.
“We have put campaigners in Surrey and Sussex in touch with experienced lawyers and are looking to provide support for initial legal advice through our Activists Legal Action Fund“.
Balcombe resident, Kathryn McWhirter, said:
“Local communities feel bullied and oppressed, by our government and by the oil and gas companies. We have a legal right to peaceful protest. We have a right to campaign against industrial activities that are to us clearly detrimental to the environment, to human health and to the climate. Our regulators, planners and councillors who issue permits for these oil sites seem too politically driven, too under-resourced or too afraid of being sued. Someone has to take a stand.
“Communities do not want oil drilling, whether it involves fracking or acidising or not. We do not need more onshore gas, we certainly do not need more onshore oil. So much damage will be done. Acidising and/or fracking will require a very large number of wells across our landscapes.“Labour has pledged to ban fracking. Yet Conservative planning committees in the South East blindly follow their party’s line and condemn us to accept the oil industry into our villages and countryside. We are defending our health and our environment, our planet and generations to come. Protest is our human right.”
Keith Taylor outside the Broadford Bridge site. Photo: Office of Keith Taylor
Keith Taylor, Green Party MEP for south east England:
“This is an absolutely outrageous move by a firm that has no social licence for its environmentally-destructive drilling operations and, instead, is seeking a draconian injunction to bludgeon local people’s right to peaceful and lawful protest. It is worth remembering that peaceful and legal protest is just that; peaceful and legal.
“In a free and democratic country, a company’s economic interests should never supplant citizens’ fundamental human rights. This injunction is not only practically unenforceable it is also chillingly anti-democratic. It presents an obvious and clear breach of the Human Rights Act.
“I offer my wholehearted support to those residents and campaigners now forced to muster the legal support necessary to ensure this challenge to our civil liberties is rejected out of hand. I would urge anybody who cares about the health of British democracy and human rights to do the same.”
“£100,000s spent on security”
Stephen Sanderson, UKOG Executive Chairman. Photo: DrillOrDrop
In a witness statement, UKOG’s Executive Chairman, Stephen Sanderson, said the company had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on security at the sites.
He said the bill at Broadford Bridge from August 2016-November 2017 was £542,000. The estimated cost for security at the site for January 2018 was £64,000.
At Horse Hill, Mr Sanderson said security costs during drilling in 2014 were £450,000 and during flow testing in 2016 they were £122,000. The security budget for 2018 was £636,000, he said.
The Markwells Wood site, on the West Sussex-Hampshire border, has no planning permission in force and there is no reference to security costs at this site.
Mr Sanderson said:
“protesters do not discriminate between fracking companies and conventional oil & gas exploration companies”
Referring to a visit by opponents to UKOG’s Guildford offices in July 2017, Mr Sanderson added:
“This incident highlights the wanton disregard that some of these protesters have to private property rights, whether it is trespassing on our private operational land or trespassing on our office premises.”
“Targeting the supply chain”
“Slow walking” lorries outside the Horse Hill site in Surrey. David Burr/Alamy Live News
In another witness statement, James Court, of UKOG’s consultant, Eclipse Security, said:
“Over the past 12 months, it has become a tactic of anti-fracking protesters to target the operators supply chain in an attempt to disrupt their businesses.”
Mr Court said his company had worked for Europa and INEOS Upstream and monitored protests across the country.
He added:
“It is clearly the object of the protesters to attempt to intimidate those companies (such as haulage companies, fencing companies and skip hire companies) into withdrawing from their supply operations.
“Unless stopped, this form of protest against suppliers and sub-contractors will continue.”
In their witness statements, Mr Sanderson and the company’s solicitor, Kevin Lee, both quoted a sentence from a six-page letter by the Lancashire Assistant Chief Constable, Terry Woods. This was written in September 2017 to Ken Cronin, Chief Executive of the industry body, UK Onshore Oil and Gas.
Mr Woods said:
“Whilst I believe the majority of protestors are there to peacefully demonstrate there are others who resort to criminality and utilise a variety of tactics and methods which cause significant disruption to the community and operators.”
Mr Lee said:
“the scale of this problem cannot be underestimated. [sic]”
Updated 7/3/2018 with the addition of a statement from UKOG, small amendments to the headline and opening text and the addition of the point that some actions mentioned in the draft order have been the subject of court cases where protesters have been acquitted. Also updated to add quotes from Kathryn McWhirter and Keith Taylor MEP
Categories: Legal
DRILL OR DROP? 
Before I became interested in this subject I honestly had no idea that it was possible to write your own law in this country as long as you have enough money for expensive solicitors.
This will NOT go down well with Mr and Mrs Undecided. The British public will put up with an awful lot, but having their rights trampled over isn’t one of them.
I think we should be taking back control LOL
Well there’s enough of us, maybe it’s time to pay for an injunction to ban any legal business that damages our rights to protest. Furthermore, an exclusion zone of 10 miles around each property.
If the injunction were confirmed any employee of a drilling company, contractor, sub-contractor or director of said company who breached it could be imprisoned, fined and have their assets seized.
Re-thinking….our stance on this issue. As one of the Mr & Mrs undecided as referred to by the ‘Refraction’ comment I am now moved to side with the drilling company over this matter. Given the evidence presented and additional costs of security and safety it would seem that the protestors are full of their rights but short on their responsibilities towards lawful business of any contractor or supplier concerned. Drilling for oil and gas will not be stopped. I am more concerned at securing safe permission rights and no fracking (which there isn’t at the sites in question’) through making sure planning applications are thoroughly scrutinized and complied with. That’s where our energies must be concentrated.
It put me in mind of this from the 17th Century when they were doing the Enclosures:
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back
Brilliant!
Excellent Refracktion! Welcome to the club!
Yes it reminded me of last weekend when the Country nearly ran out of energy 21st Century
The Labour Party wanted shale
And then they dropped to a Tory Hale
The people they wanted warmth and fuel
The haters they enjoyed being cruel
No Warmth for you…
We’ll rely on foreign shores for our due
And damn the carbon that will ensue
Not in my back yard mate
Great Britain self sufficient we’ll hate!
3000 people die each year in the U.K from fuel poverty, I’m sure they would enjoy a good poem to keep them warm…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cold-weather-uk-winter-deaths-europe-polar-vortex-a8224276.html
So, Kish, you have just outed yourself; bless
Another call-centre avatar….you must be getting overtime for this…..
Yes;
The ruse was good for a while,
Though no longer will it make us smile;
Your indifference matches the rest,
And your rhetoric empty at best.
Shame;
That you tow the company line
False facts and plenty of whine,
But no longer do you need to hide,
Behind buddies to promote genocide.
So;
Put your fingers deep in your ears
As the UK rings to victory cheers
Cos it’s over the shale it is dead,
And now I’m off to my warm comfy bed…nighty night…….
For the avoidance of doubt….again
Fuel poverty – a post modern term to describe a category by the governance. Definition of fuel poverty. Person or persons unable to afford to heat every room in their home (fuel type not specified); includes all mansion owners down on their luck…..
Poverty; a state caused by lack of money due to own or outside influences, induced by job loss, mis-management of money, low wages/pension/benefits; consequence unable to pay ALL living expenses including food, energy (due to inflated prices) and basic needs.
But you know that.
Nice Sherwulfe, another one for the book!
Nice Kisheny, welcome to the club also, its the heavy one with the nail in it?
Was that one of Shaw’s?
His majesty is like a dose of frack?
Potentially profitable, but ultimately suicidal?
Enclosure is considered one of the causes of the British Agricultural Revolution! Top Marx on where you’re coming from comrade…
I appreciate your veiled political viewpoint but turning back the clock to have a viewpoint on the future from times gone past???
Left foot forward = Socialism then second left foot forward = Communism… Not for me thanks, pick another cause thanks…
‘Enclosure is considered one of the causes of the British Agricultural Revolution!’ – yes, the beginnings of economic slavery….
You missed the point of the poem Kisheny; keep up 🙂
Just a reminder, energy produced form UK shale;
today = 0
tomorrow = 0
next week = 0
next month = 0
Last 8 years = 0
That’s ‘from’ not ‘form’, damn you predictive text…..
So let’s not play games for the audience with meaningless stats like that, waste of your time… Better than that so you are (Yoda)
See you didn’t go past next month?
Yes missed that out on purpose, well picked up. History lesson? No I’m shooting from the hip from todays prospective not going through th emotions to give you guys an easy ride…
You need to get some perspective KIsheny. 😂
It’s quite immoral you to be sounding off about fuel poverty as a rationale for UK fracking, when even Cuadrilla themselves admit that any impact on the cost of fuel would not be significant.
You don’t have to be a Marxist to see that those opposing enclosures were right. You don’t have to be a Marxist to realise that buying the law is wrong, and you don’t have to be a Marxist to see why UK fracking is not going to have any significant price impact.
As to “to have a viewpoint on the future from times gone past???” – isn’t that rather the point in studying history?
There are always going to be ways that protesters can slow, frustrate and stop the hugely damaging fossil fuel industries. There are Human Rights laws, and the law of Ecocide is progressing nicely. The petrochemical industry will find itself in the dock before long. Not soon enough.
Get ethical jobs folks.
Well said Refracktion, Sherwulfe and John Cossham, if ever i saw one, this is yet one more deflated ball jammed into their own crammed goal.
Suicidal really.
Noticeably Theresa May seems to want to do away with European human rights in favour of her own laws , the timing of this injunction and also the government’s plans to give more weight to planning for onshore oil and gas companies suggests that there has been a hell of a lot of envelopes changing hands. Far too convenient.
Hi Jono, its another avoidance tactic isnt it? Offload enforcement onto the law courts and hence the poor misused police and then its the operators that are to blame for it all? Not the government who sanctioned this entire fracking debacle in the first place?
This government obviously practice the old and tried and trusted time honoured (but not honourable) art of never being actually responsible for anything that could blow up in their face?
Too late, we know they started this dirty ball rolling and we will make sure the resulting devastation and civil outrage ends up securely in their “court”.
Go under your stairs John and turn your gas off please. It’s a start, post it and we will all do the same…
Come on John make a stand…
The only gas on here is coming from you , has being on TV gone to your head ? I saw you or was it just interference ?
Well, refracktion, that works both ways-as the antis found with their, so far, failed attempts to overturn the INEOS injunction through a multi millionaire.
The antis have supplied the documentation to the Courts and for the exploration companies to utilise. Did you really think they wouldn’t?
I suspect John’s first sentence will add to the large dossiers, but there have been a huge number already documented and detailed, plus filming, arrests and many more instances of harassment.
I am a little surprised this action has not happened earlier. Either the companies were holding back whilst they accumulated more and more evidence, or the antis activities have not been as disruptive as they would like to believe.
The sheer arrogance is of these companies. They are seeking to ban LEGAL protest. “Combining together using lawful means” Surely the clue is in the word “lawful.”
Fracking is proving to be not only destructive of communities and the environment but also the freedoms to protest which should exist in any civilised country.
Except Pauline that UKOG are not fracking! I’m not sure that querying the semantics of what they are trying to obtain the injunction for, and then confusing them with a different company altogether would work with the Courts.
Just chucking out the word “fracking” is not going to obtain much leverage.
Not fracking at the moment you mean. If this injunction goes through they will be able to do exactly what they want and in the knowledge that sweet fanny Adams can be done about it . This has been the plan all along. There have been very few holdups at Broadford Bridge and no person known or unknown has entered the site. Security bills were made up of men in black opening and closing the gates , maybe UKOG should cut the wages of these James Bond wannabes to save money on a well that won’t produce commercial quantities of oil without stimulation beyond the current planning permission.
OK Martin. I’ll change that to the pampered oil and gas industry, who believe it’s acceptable to change our long held laws with vast amounts of cash, are destructive to the freedoms to peacefully protest that should exist in any civilised country. This is the beginning of a very slippery slope.
Martin Collyer “UKOG are not fracking!”
In case you genuinely don’t realise this your government has redefined fracking in such a way that 88% of fracked wells in the USA would be classed as “conventional”.
I’d prefer to go with the scientific definition of ‘unconventional’ reservoirs, which is a permeability of less than 0.1 mD. Since Kimmeridge Clay ‘limestones’ have a permeability of 0.005 – 0.03 mD they are poor quality reservoirs which require stimulation to make oil or gas flow.
You can go with the May government’s doublespeak if you wish, others are happy to use the term fracking as shorthand for the variety of types of stimulation that are required.
You may also want to investigate the US shale bubble before you back these penny share companies with your own money and learn a tiny bit about UK faulting.
It is the fracking companies that are losing the plot. We are a democracy, and people are waking up to the freedoms that these companies seek to rob us of. Clean air. Good health. A stable climate. Local accountability. Being able to walk on local footpaths without fear of intimidation. Keeping said footpaths open. Being able to progress along the highway without being surrounded by coppers, forced to reverse when you have legal priority on a narrow bridge, or having your car keys seized by overzealous police who wave through the fracking convoy. Seeing convoy after convoy through a quiet village that said no to fracking. The village preschool close saying its the fracking convoys have driven them out of business. Yet now Third Energy have packed up and there is a landowners blockade. It is now a question of when, not if, the fracking companies and their investors recognise that the writing is already on the wall.
Just a load of nimby cabbage eater protesting about something they know nothing about.
I looove cabbage
Was it worth writing that Ian ? Did you manage to think it up on your own or did you need help ?
He needed help, I would have said lettuce but would have to spell check it?
I think there was too many ooooooooooooo in love also?
Please stick to facts Ian. Insults that scarcely reflect any form of reality do you no credit whatsoever. It is clear that many protestors know a lot and have invested much personal energy and time in gaining an understanding of that which discomforts them. They simply disagree with you. That in itself can hardly be held to establish that their views are any less worthy of consideration than your own. Injunctions that discard legal principles that have been tried and tested in many courts of law are a worrying development. At present you appear to favour such injunctions, presumably because they are in your interest or align with your personal beliefs. HOWEVER, once a precedent for undermining our carefully considered laws in favour of the temporary financial interests of a very small number of people is established it won’t be very long at all before pretty much everyone is impacted upon. The vacuousness of your comment is clear once one takes on board and registers the fact that it is YOU, and others that hold similar views, who are not prepared to tolerate legal protest in YOUR backyard. Cabbage by the way is an extremely nutritious vegetable that we would all do well to eat more of. It contains powerful antioxidants that inhibit the development of many cancers and it also a remarkably rich source of vitamin C, which is vital to the efficient functioning of many of our life sustaining organs, including the brain. Food for thought? Or an unpalatable truth? Very best wishes, Jonathan.
Cabbage is the issue, no problem. Let shale gas by produce fertilizer to grow more?
Fertilizer Made with Natural Gas Is Lifting Our World
http://naturalgasnow.org/fertilizer-made-natural-gas-lifting-world/
Why, it was only yesterday that I was reading a rant from a pro-fracker complaining about run off from agriculture and how this meant fracking was low impact by comparison. The arguments on your side do seem to be very circular. Gas and its by products like plastics and inorganic fertilisers do seem to be something we need to be weaning ourselves off rather than mindlessly using more and more of.
There is obviously a huge debate to be had about the impact of industrial farming and the need to find more sustainable ways to produce huge volumes of food, and how we deal with an apparently remorselessly increasing global population. I don’t think “more of the same” is the answer we are looking for somehow.
Quoting Natural Gas Now eh? That’s a credible source 🙂
“Natural Gas Now is “owned and managed by Shepstone Management Company” run by Tom Shepstone, a former Energy In Depth employee. EID is a shale gas industry front group created in 2009 by the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA). ,,,“I’m pleased to say I’m funded by various members of the industry and landowners who understand how incredibly important natural gas development is to rural area like the one I live in,” Shepstone told DeSmog when asked who funds his work. “I don’t disclose my individual donors, of course.” (https://www.desmogblog.com/2015/09/18/naturalgasnoworg-energy-in-depth-tom-shepstone-gasland-study)
Fertiliser made from gas?
Yes we see plenty of that here on Drill Or Drop?
Well, Jonathan, that was interesting but somewhat obscure. Firstly any injunction is determined by the Courts so a bit difficult to see how “legal” rights are being eroded. I think most people would see the Courts as balancing the legal rights of all in the community, not allowing a small minority to control those rights. If you find it difficult to believe, just check John’s post indicating his desires.
If UKOG can not provide sufficient evidence to the Courts they will not obtain the injunction. If they do, it means the antis have provided sufficient evidence.
Well Martin, it is stating the obvious to say that a legal injunction is determined by a court. However, even though they may take account of the public interest, the purpose of an injunction is not balancing rights as you claim. It is to provide a remedy when there is no other adequate remedy at law.
From that perspective it is hard to understand how a reasonable judge can grant an injunction which curtails my lawful rights as this one would appear to do. If unlawful acts are committed, the law (by definition) has the means to deal with them. Replacing the law and its proportionate penalties with temporary “law” with disproportionate penalties because you can afford to do so is neither equitable nor good community relations management.
Do you think the industry have now accepted that they will face opposition at every turn and that they will never have a social licence to operate so they have nothing to lose by this type of action, or are they just stupid?
just stupid……