Campaigners opposed to plans to drill and frack for gas in a North Yorkshire village have received a message of solidarity from a winner of the world’s foremost environmental award.

Yuvelis Morales Blanco was awarded the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize this week for south and central America for her campaign against fracking in Colombia.

In a video message ahead of today’s decision meeting on Europa Oil & Gas plans at Burniston, she said:

“From the Colombia Free from Fracking, we send a warm and heartfelt greeting to our comrades in the anti-fracking resistance in England.

“We send you much strength to keep resisting against this harmful technique and we send you great courage so that we continue facing this struggle, which we must always be in defence of life.”

As a young adult, Ms Morales Blanco helped to mobilize her community in Puerto Wilches against two drilling proposals, successfully preventing the introduction to commercial fracking into Colombia.

In 2024, the Colombian Constitutional Court, in response to a lawsuit by a local organisation, confirmed that the proposals had violated the right of the Puerto Wilches community to free, prior and informed consent.

Fellow 2026 Goldman winner for Europe, Sarah Finch, secured a landmark legal victory at the Supreme Court over climate emissions from onshore oil and gas.

There have been more than 1,600 objections to the Burniston planning application, which is due to be decided this afternoon by members of North Yorkshire Council’s strategic planning committee, meeting in Scarborough.

Europa Oil & Gas denies that its plan include fracking, describing it as proppant squeeze. The operation is designed to inject fluid at pressures high enough to fracture rocks to increase the flow of gas to the surface.

The volume of fluid proposed at Burniston is higher than that used by Cuadrilla at Preston New Road in Lancashire in fracks that caused earthquakes felt across the Fylde region.