Protest involving nine people outside Cuadrilla’s fracking site at Preston New Road, near Blackpool, 1 October 2018. Photo: Katrina Lawrie
A group of anti-fracking campaigners blocked the entrance of Cuadrilla’s shale gas site near Blackpool early this morning.
The protest involved seven people locked together on the ground and two people on tripods.
They said they were taking part in solidarity with three men who were jailed last week for a 99-hour protest near the site in July 2017.
9-person protest outside Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road shale gas site near Blackpool, 1 October 2018. Photo: Debs Whiteside
9-person protest outside Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road shale gas site near Blackpool, 1 October 2018. Photo: Debs Whiteside
Lock-on protest outside Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site near Blackpool, 1 October 2018. Used with the owner’s consent
A group of anti-fracking campaigners travelling to a rally at the Conservative Party conference passed the protest and shouted support.
9-person protest outside Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road shale gas site near Blackpool, 1 October 2018. Photo: Ros Wills
9-person protest outside Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road shale gas site near Blackpool, 1 October 2018. Photo: Ros Wills
9-person protest outside Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road shale gas site near Blackpool, 1 October 2018. Photo: Ros Wills
9-person protest outside Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road shale gas site near Blackpool, 1 October 2018. Photo: Ros Wills
9-person protest outside Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road shale gas site near Blackpool, 1 October 2018. Photo: Ros Wills
9-person protest outside Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road shale gas site near Blackpool, 1 October 2018. Photo: Ros Wills
Lancashire Police said on its Facebook page it had set up a contraflow on Preston New Road. The force said:
“This will cause some traffic disruption so please avoid the area where you can and expect some delays if you are travelling through. We will re-open the road as soon as it is safe to do so. Local businesses are open as usual.”
At 7pm today, police began dismantling the tripod but the occupant locked himself to the tubing.
Categories: Opposition
Tagged as: Cuadrilla, Fracking, lock-on, nine, people, Preston New Road, prison, protest, shale gas, solidarity, tripod
DRILL OR DROP? 
Well, Jules, with two injunctions to be reviewed tomorrow, whether this “protest” really inconvenienced anyone is irrelevant.
Its seems some are quite willing to produce evidence for the Courts. It happened in the Weald just the same recently.
Absolutely no sense to it. If the Court takes account of such activity then to claim that an injustice has been done and a grievance caused will fall on deaf ears.
Power to the People!
The Majority of people today heated by Gas
The Majority of people today cooking on Gas
The Majority of Electricity today provided by Gas
YES Power to the People!!!
For those who haven’t yet heard about UK gas and Uk renewable energy.
As you can see there is no viable market for expensive, environmentally damaging UK pipe dream shale.
Government source
The overall demand for gas including heating gradually decreases and is replaced by renewables.
Natural gas use is projected to fall by 24% between 2016 and 2035. Currently, the amount of natural gas used for electricity generation approximately equals that used for cooking and heating in households. However, the amount of gas used for electricity generation is projected to decrease by 70% whereas the amount used by households is projected to increase by around 17% over this period.
By 2035 renewables will be producing 180 TWh of electric generation whereas gas will only be producing 40 TWh.
After 2025 our import requirements will be dropping
Click to access Updated_energy_and_emissions_projections_2016.pdf
Meanwhile output from the North sea is enjoying it’s third year of increased production
http://www.worldoil.com/news/2017/3/7/uk-oil-gas-output-set-for-longest-expansion-in-two-decades
At 465 TWh production was flat on last year, up just 0.3 per cent. While recent years have seen modest increases, the small rise in 2017 includes just under 9 TWh of gas from the Rough facility. This former long term storage site has been drawing down on last available reserves in preparation for closure, and production of cushion gas has been included in 2017 production figures. Not including this volume, gross production would have fallen by 1.5 per cent this year.
‘The Majority of people today heated by Gas
The Majority of people today cooking on Gas
The Majority of Electricity today provided by Gas’ and none of it shale gas, hurrah, Baldrick
The majority of energy powered today by gas will provide, cook and over-heat the planet; jog on….
Excellent peaceful protest.
The industry is a complete disaster. It has been, is, and always would be, pummelled by the resolve of well organised communities.
UK shale. A pipedream and an investors worst nightmare.
Make sure you keep posting on here when the Gas starts to flow.
By the way John when U.K Shale Gas is piping into your house, will you turn it off???
Or maybe I’m completely wrong, do you not use gas?
Please don’t answer that on your mobile, as 40% of that phone is produced using oil and Gas. Use your Computer, er maybe not; same again I’m afraid. Don’t use electricity to answer either as 40% of our electricity is being produced by Gas. Errrr, running out of options… Wait… Write a note, don’t use a plastic pen though. Then put the message on a carrier pidgeon. Perfect. One more thing make sure the bird feed hasn’t used any fertilizer to grow it…. Oh no, you think of a method…
If all you antis didn’t enjoy or survive without using Gas I would take you all seriously instead sitting and lying down in front of a Gas facility wearing plastic clothing giving the thumbs up to someone taking a photo on their plastic phone will haunt these Putin puppets for years after the U.K produces shale Gas for everybodys benefit including the 9 plastic people in front of the site when all the wagons drove past 2 protestors the other day…
After being thoroughly cold the first thing those 9 will say when they walk through the front door is
“stick the heating on I’m freezing!”
Parp Parp. Here comes the pro frackers who don’t want to import anything. Easily seen. They drive all British Morris Marinas, dress in tunics woven from the finest British rodent fur , and only eat seasonal British vegetables. Home would consist of British wattle and daub hand formed round a bent willow frame.
Importing gas from Norway means we are beholding to a Nation who at first glance may appear hostile to some.
That axe does look sharp!
Think you have the axe of blatant hypocrisy to grind…
Just his house price axe….
Keep digging your own graves, best pro fracking PR you can get.
The Establishment’s view on possible harm inflicted by gaseous emissions in England from the fracking process is that there is a mass of conjecture but no facts until AFTER a full on fracking program has run to maturity.
Accordingly they are forcing this onto the residents and environment of the Fylde to create data for examination.
The residents and environment of the Fylde are being treated as receptors similar to the servicemen in nuclear testing in a bygone era.
Therefore we are not happy and welcome any help in closing this evil industry down and disposing of the equally evil and heartless Tory government.
Many thanks to all who have spent time, money and effort n this endeavour.
Update on German protests in the Guardian. Bet they wish they had more home produced gas – then they could stop burning home produced lignite….
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/01/german-minister-backs-plan-to-cut-down-forest-to-build-coal-mine
“But the energy minister said Germany, which sources nearly 40% of power from coal, would still need its coal plants in the early 2020s. That is partly because Germany is also due to shut its last nuclear power station in 2022. “At end of the decade there is more possibility to shut coal [plants],” he said.
The coal exit commission, whose members range from energy companies to Greenpeace, has been tasked with agreeing dates for phasing out Germany’s reliance on coal power stations, ahead of a UN climate summit in Poland this December.
Observers think that a compromise cut-off date at some time in the 2030s will be the most likely outcome.
Bareiß told an industry audience in London that getting off coal would be a “very expensive transition” but it was necessary and would “work in the long run”.
He cautioned that Germany could not move too fast on renewable energy projects, because of multibillion-euro upgrades required to take power from windfarms in the country’s north to the south. Those upgrades are behind target, causing bottlenecks and “large costs”, Bareiß said at the BNEF Future of Energy summit.”
I am currently Offshore NW Australia working on a Gas project. A proportion of this Gas is being sold to Germany LNG.
The German energy mix is an example of intermittent renewables unable to supply the energy needs and thus having to import Gas from here in Australia before being even deeper in Putins pocket when Nord Stream 2 comes online. In the meantime still decades away from ending the horrific burning of Coal…
Kishney – good to see someone doing a useful job and contributing to society and the global economy. Any offshore wind on the North West Shelf?
You would need a very very long power cable to connect offshore wind NW to Perth…
Paul
All they had to do was reverse the closure of nuclear power stations and cut back on lignite.
But … they do love their coal.
What is not to like…
1. No fracking chemicals ( as used in USA )
2. No frack waste
3. No flaring ( no need to burn a few thousand tonnes in the open air )
4. No venting ( shallow deposits … gas left many years ago )
5. Cannot use it in a car
6. Cannot be used in planes
7. No pipelines to install
8. Concentrated ( not spread out, back to back wells).
9. No list of the harmed due to it being mined.
10. Not causing an Ethane a Spike, nor any fugitive emissions.
11. Not used in the production of plastic in UK
12. Power stations next to site ( or close ) so less road and rail haulage.
13. Produces power ( via a power station )when no wind and at night.
14. No waste water injection a la oil
15. No worries about fracking an aquifer
16. Easy to restore the site ( it’s just a big hole )
17. Electric powered machines to extract it
18. No link between opencast lignite mining and tremors
19. Not radioactive
19. No subsidence ( for opencast ).
20. No explosion risk in your home from lignite
21. The forest can be cut down, made into wood pellets and exported to the UK as renewable energy ( it will no doubt be re planted.
22. Fully supported by Greenpeace as a transition fuel.
So on and so forth.
It does produce lots of CO2 in comparison to hard coal and gas fired power stations.
But we in the UK do not have any such deposits, nor large deposits of hard Coal suitable for opencast extraction.
Ho hum.
So it’s gas for us, after all, to bridge the gap ( plus nuclear, be it ours or French ).
Germany tried fracking but had a too high clay content which collapsed around the sand in the hairline fractures hence no gas recoverable.
If they could have physically achieved fracking they would be doing it right now instead of getting Gas from Australia & Russia!
Achieving absolutely nothing. An own goal methinks.
They can always buy gas from USA and UK. Paul!
The first has already been set in play. The second may (notice the word), follow shortly after.
It’s the biggest Brexit bargaining chip yet to be put on the table.
U.K shale Gas making the U.K self sufficient for decades to come and excess Gas helping our European neighbours so they are out of Putins pocket and not paying him to build his War Machine on their doorstep…
Resistance is fertile, keeping up the good fight reducing fossil fuels and plastic! Long may it continue.
If those 9 protesters didn’t like plastic why are they dressed head to toe in plastic?
Causing delays on a blue light route
Well done???
“Head to toe in plastic”, are u sure? Their shoes/boots, maybe not? Underneath the waterproofs could be that “hippie” organic cotton/ hemp? It’s patently ridiculous to say u can’t protest fossil fuels and plastic pollution when alternative waterproof items aren’t readily available? Of course there are many alternatives to plastic if the political will is there and fossil fuel industry’s stranglehold is weakened to make it more widely available. Mycopackaging from fungi, polylactic acid (corn starch), bioplastics from algae and many other forms of plastics are possible. These can be made more biodegradable and without toxic elements. Like renewables, battery storage, insulation and energy efficient houses requiring virtually no heating, these are all technologies available now, but nothing is happening fast enough. This is the point of protest, to become a pain in the rear to the status quo powers of short-term profit at the expense of a habitable planet. For pro-frackers it seems it’s “give me convenience and obedient fossil fool sycophants or give me death”. However, what really sums up the farcical hypocrisy and race to the bottom was recently echoed by Texas oil refineries wanting the government to build sea wall defences due to sea level rises as a result of them driving extreme climate change: you couldn’t make it up! The long term costs to the environment, health, house prices, dwarf any short-term benefit from onshore fracking and then we’re left with the same problem: not enough renewables that we should’ve invested in much earlier at the expense of fossil fuels. Tax breaks and subsidy for a rapid transition to renewables, but fossil fuel polluter pays for environmental and health costs. But this shambles of a government couldn’t organise a turd in a compost toilet.
You mean Norway (lovely people) who generate so much income out of gas and oil they literally don’t know what to do with it after they have funded superb public services, John??
You wouldn’t be a Norwegian by any chance simply wanting to maintain that?
Don’t worry, they will, but why would a country that could be more self sufficient in their own oil and gas provide them with that? They have plenty more customers on their doorstep. Whilst we are at it, why not close down salmon farming in Scotland and just buy it from Norway? (Except much of the salmon farming industry in Scotland is already owned by Norway.)
The project I worked on Hywind off Peterhead was a Statoil job. The funny thing is the subsidies we in the U.K pay for the project will enrich Norway even more.
All the Gas they sell us and now they benefit from the 9% of our energy bills we pay extra in green tax, unbelieveable.