The company which operates the mothballed oil site at Balcombe in West Sussex has been accused of misrepresenting history in a comment on fracking.
In a formal statement to investors yesterday, Angus Energy said fracking had never been proposed or employed at the Balcombe site.
The company was responding to a High Court ruling last week, which dismissed a legal challenge to its testing plans at Balcombe.
But Angus Energy’s statement apparently overlooked a letter, written 12 years ago to government officials, which said the plan for Balcombe had “always been” to frack to establish whether the oil reservoir was commercially viable.
Today, Frack Free Balcombe Residents’ Association (FFBRA), which opposes oil operations in the village, criticised Angus Energy’s statement as misleading.
FFBRA’s vice chair, Louise Delpy, said:
“It is sadly not a surprise to us that this disingenuous company is misrepresenting history to itself, its shareholders and our community.
“The statement ‘The Company notes that in the 40 years of this site’s existence there has never been any hydraulic fracturing either proposed or employed’ is factually incorrect.”
Ms Delpy said Angus Energy “seemed for forget” that Andrew Price, a director of the then operator, Bolney Resources, wrote to the Department of Energy and Climate Change in 2011 saying the company would ‘need to rely, to a significant degree on being able to undertake hydraulic fracture stimulation(s) of this unconventional reservoir’.
The letter also said ‘without the ability to undertake hydraulic fracture operations Bolney will not be able to attempt to achieve commercial production’.
Bolney Resources later became Cuadrilla Balcombe Ltd and Cuadrilla confirmed to Balcombe Parish Council that Mr Price’s letter, made public in 2014, was genuine.
In it, Mr Price also wrote:
“Bolney’s exploration plan (and reason for acquiring a 75% interest in the PEDL) has always been to drill (a) well(s) (vertical and/or horizontal) targeting the Kimmeridge Shale and to hydraulically fracture stimulate several select intervals within this unconventional reservoir in order to establish commercial production rates and to establish and develop a significant recoverable resource.”
Ms Delpy also said West Sussex County Council noted in 2013 “that under the planning permission WSCC/027/10/BA Cuadrilla can use hydraulic fracturing at this site”.
She said:
“Maybe there have been too many changes in ownership and management for any of the operators to remember. It makes us wonder what else they will be happy to, or perhaps more worryingly naive enough, to mislead us about?”
We asked Angus Energy to support its statement to investors.
We were directed to a Youtube video of a conversation, recorded by Core Finance yesterday, between Angus Energy’s new chief executive, Richard Herbert, and Malcolm Graham-Wood.
Mr Herbert said:
“We have never intended to frack this well. There has been maybe some miscommunication in the past. … This field can be produced without hydraulically fracturing the reservoir and that is what we would like to do.”
Mr Herbert also referred in the conversation to the site’s position in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty:
“We are very mindful we are in a very sensitive area. We have to operate in a very respectful way and a careful way and we believe this is achievable.”
On working with local people, he said:
“I would like to think that, having resolved things on the legal side, that we can find an accommodation and that people will come to realise that Angus Energy will operate in the right way and will do all the right things.”
He said a well test in 2018 was “inconclusive”. “We didn’t get clarity on what the local flow rates would be”, he said.
He said the company was looking at a “few hundred barrels of oil a day at current oil prices” for the well to be commercial.
Cuadrilla drilled a deviated well at the Balcombe site 10 years ago, accompanied by near daily protests. It handed over operations at Balcombe to Angus Energy in 2018.
The well test carried out that year encountered unexpected water. The coiled tubing equipment failed and only two flow tests were carried out before planning permission expired. Company statement
Since then, there have been no operations at the Balcombe site. There has been a moratorium on associated hydraulic fracturing in England since 2019.
- In March 2021, West Sussex County Council’s planning committee unanimously refused planning permission for the most recent well test. After an appeal by Angus Energy, a planning inspector approved the company’s proposal in February 2023. The legal challenge was brought by FFBRA and heard at the High Court in July 2023. The group is considering an appeal following the dismissal of its request for a judicial review.
Categories: Industry, Opposition, slider
DRILL OR DROP? 
What a load of hypocrisy/irony. Here is an organization that deliberately uses Frack Free within it’s title to mislead, knowing that there is no plan to frack at this site and the process of fracking is precluded in UK. Yet, they think there will be enough gullible souls to get excited. Alternatively, perhaps they just have concluded it is only the gullible souls who are likely to be convinced.
I know there is a lot of this sort of thing about but I would suggest there should be more attempts at informing the reality than misinformation about it. (The BBC seem to have their own problems with this. It should not be that difficult to separate news from misinformation.) Quite simply, whereas I as an observer have some sympathy with genuine Nimbys, once they start to distort it turns me away from their cause.
I wish the operator good luck with working with the locals and trust some of them will actually be interested in what is really intended and then happening. No wonder it was 6-0.
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This is a typical no news Green misleading story.
I find it frustrating that people can be so easily terrified by scare stories perpetrated by special interests that they will sacrifice their own best interests. Take Fracking for example. The idea that this might cause earthquakes, water pollution etc is one such story. Seriously people it’s a hydraulic pump, like you’d use to jack up your car. Unlike the explosives we used in coal mines, it’s not going to be a problem. The special interests have latched on to the term “Fracking” and built it into a bogeyman when in fact the main risks associated with Fracking come from the exhausts of diesel engines used to run the pumps. In other words you’d be in the same danger if you lived near a road. The cleanliness of onshore gas compared to oil and coal is the main reason we should be pushing for it. Not to mention the 50 years supply beneath our feet. If we invented airliners today, these people would be pushing for them to be banned because one fell out of the sky.
Don’t be taken in.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/how-has-fracking-changed-our-future
Oh dear, just like your misinformed rhetoric, that NGM article is a decade out of date! If it was such a nailed on certainty, then why did Ineos, who said in 2017 they were going to ‘fire the starting gun’ on fracking,’ not take advantage of the planning permissions granted to drill at Harthill and Marsh Lane?
” Nailed on Certainty” ? I’m not sure what you’re alluding to here. Are you implying that there’s a good chance there’s no gas here ? I’ve no idea why Ineos decided not to go ahead in 2017, do you ? but I do know that in 2022 they offered to drill a test site to allow future decisions to be made based on scientific data, not the irrational fears of a misinformed minority.
Click to access BEISInducedSeismicityReportOR220501A.pdf
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61060721
What is wrong with the scientific research already done, including the £8million investigation by the Research Councils? (What? You weren’t aware of this?? What is it they say about repeating the same mistakes expecting a different outcome? ) Professor Al Fraser of Imperial College, formerly a vociferous advocate of UK shale gas summed up the situation pretty well in 2021
We know where it is
• We know how good it is
• We know how complex the geology is
• We can characterise the geochemistry of the shales
• We know more about fracking & induced seismicity
• Importantly, we know it won’t work
• Could we have known this 10 years ago and avoided a lot of
wasted effort and money?
Click to access Al.pdf
So the argument is moving from ” Don’t even try to extract gas from here because it’s dangerously toxic” to “Don’t try to extract gas here because it’s too difficult”.
So we should WALK AWAY from a potential resource which MIGHT heat our homes, power our industry and create thousands of jobs for decades. Or should we allow a private company, using their own cash, to run a test project to determine the facts ?
https://www.ineos.com/businesses/ineos-shale/why-shale-gas/
After all the NERC research might turn out to be correct. I think the public have a right to know.
As I have already stated, said private company had planning permission to drill exploratory wells Harthill and Marsh Lane and never showed up. (Just ignore the hundreds of thousand of £££s the applications cost hard pressed local authorities, eh?) In addition, three years ago, Ineos wrote down it’s UK shale assets, so it would seem the frackers are the ones who did the ‘walking away.’
As well as drilling exploratory wells, the company could also have applied to carry out test fracks, as, despite the misinformation on the Ineos Shale homepage, both activities are exempt from the government moratorium, (Oh, and the link you provided is very dated. It doesn’t even mention the 14th round of PEDLs which Ineos obtained in 2015, so likely predates that event.)
Never mind, all is not lost. The Coal Authority is currently developing an energy source that WILL, (note, not MIGHT) heat our homes indefinitely. Areas that could benefit include, let me see…oh yes, Marsh Lane and Harthill. Funny old world, eh? https://www.gov.uk/government/news/mine-water-heat-a-proven-success
Yes the project to capture heat from old coal mines is a great success which hopefully will be recreated elsewhere but recognise that it could also be used to repurpose any deep well such as depleted onshore oil and gas wells, where the hard work of drilling has already been done. Apparently the heat increases by 25 degrees C for every kilometre below ground.
Not to mention, either Graeme, that once that nasty fracking really took off in USA, global oil prices that were around $100/barrel and desired, and controlled by OPEC, dropped rapidly even whilst OPEC were trying to defend against USA moving from a huge market for imports to self sufficiency and then a major exporter.
Remember the Scottish referendum and oil prices, and what has happened since, and now finally taken a war to adjust?
The same people who whinge about fracking have been benefitting from their standard of living for many years, then whinge about their standard of living dropping as oil returns towards $100/barrel, with a possibility it will go to $150. Such is life (?) I note the last UK inflation figures show they have not fallen as fuel prices rose again. An awful lot of collateral damage required by a few, but no responsibility accepted. Such is an easy life (?)
P.S: Meanwhile the $ appreciates and the Euro and Sterling decline against it, as $ seen as “a safe haven” with events developing in Middle East. Wonder why??