A local campaign group is celebrating the formal end to shale gas operations near an important nature reserve in the Nottinghamshire village of Misson.

Official correspondence has confirmed that the operator, Star Energy, formerly IGas, has plugged and abandoned the Springs Road well and restored the site to its former condition.

Frack Free Misson said in a statement today:

“This concludes a long and arduous struggle to protect our community and environment, in particular the Misson Carr Site of Scientific Interest (SSSI), from the impacts of speculative industrialisation.”

One of the main concerns about Springs Road had been the impact of shale gas operators on rare and threatened wildlife on the Misson Carr wetland fen, including all five species of British owls.

Long eared owls on the SSSI had moved from their habitual breeding locations in 2018, away from the noise of the well pad.

The owls became a symbol of the campaign against Springs Road. Huge model owls were frequently part of protests across the country against fracking and onshore oil and gas.

In July 2021, Nottinghamshire’s planning committee refused an application from IGas to extend the life of Springs Road, once a bombing range and test area for cold war surface to air missiles. The company was ordered to decommission the well and restore the site.

But that work was delayed and Nottinghamshire planners took enforcement action against IGas.

Frack Free Misson said:

“It was only the persistence and pressure from local campaigners which resulted in the authority taking enforcement action, and for the first time in its history, invoking a planning restoration order to ensure that democratic decision prevailed.

“Campaigners can feel fully justified and vindicated in pursuing their cause to a victorious conclusion.”

The group added:

“Without the mutual support of such equally determined and committed people across the region and wider UK, this battle would have been far more arduous and intimidating.

“Frack Free Misson expresses its eternal gratitude and offers solidarity to those facing the ongoing threat of the onshore oil and gas sector in Lincolnshire, The Weald, Lancashire and elsewhere.”

Springs Road has been mothballed since 2019. IGas had previously said it planned to frack at the site if the moratorium were lifted. It also planned to drill a second well. IGas has described the site as nationally-important and the shale gas as a “very material world-class resource”.

There are just two remaining onshore shale gas wells in England. They are at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site near Blackpool in Lancashire.

Cuadrilla originally planned to decommission the wells by the end of March 2024. But it has since said work would not start until summer 2024. The company has until June 2025 to return the site to farmland.

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