The UK government has said it is reviewing low volume fracking operations in the onshore oil and gas industry.

The comment came in a revised response to a parliamentary petition, which called for the operation to be banned.

The petition was launched by residents of Burniston, in North Yorkshire, where Europa Oil & Gas Limited is seeking permission to carry out gas drilling and proppant squeeze, a form of lower volume fracking.

North Yorkshire Council is scheduled to consider Europa’s application next week.

Lower volume fracturing is not prevented by the moratorium on associated hydraulic fracturing, introduced in 2019. The moratorium affects only operations using more than 1,000m3 of fluid per fracturing stage or 10,000m3 in total. Opponents have described this as a loophole in the law and called for a wider ban to include lower volume fracking.

The petition, which got more than 10,000 signatures, first had a government response in November 2025.

This said the government was “aware of local concerns raised by the petition” and was “keeping regulation under review”.

But the parliamentary committee that oversees the petitions system asked the government to revise its response. The committee felt ministers had not responded directly to the request of the permission.

The revised response was largely unchanged. But the penultimate paragraph suggested a small change of government approach on lower volume fracking. This said:

“the government recognises concerns from local communities regarding low volume fracturing and the fact that it is currently treated differently, and is therefore currently reviewing the position with regard to low volume hydraulic fracturing.”

The revised response also appeared to change the government’s position on the number of lower volume fracking operations.

Previously, the energy minister, Michael Shanks, said in a letter to Burniston’s MP, that lower volume fracking was “commonplace in other sectors such as the water industry as well as in conventional oil and gas production”.

A freedom of information request last year revealed that 13 water companies and the Environment Agency had no records of any form of hydraulic fracturing operations on water wells in the public supply over the past 20 years. The government declined to reveal the source of its “commonplace” claim and the issue is now being considered by the Information Commissioner.

The initial petition response said: “low volume hydraulic fracturing activities take place in the context of conventional oil and gas operations and can be used for a variety of purposes”.

The revised response described the operations, including proppant squeeze, as a “small number of these activities”.

Full responses