Talks over whether to finally abandon Britain’s only fracking wells in three months have reached an impasse.
The two wells in Lancashire are to be concreted in by June 30th by order of the Oil and Gas Authority.
The company behind the wells, Cuadrilla, wants the government to resume fracking at the site to reduce Britain’s dependence on Russian gas.
The government says it cannot override the regulator.
But ministers have also said it “doesn’t necessarily make sense to concrete the wells at Little Plumpton, near Preston”, which are not currently producing gas.
They are urging the company to apply to the regulator for an extension of the June 30 deadline for sealing.
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The BBC understands Cuadrilla are reluctant to do so due to the financial risk of renewing their license – with no certainty as to whether they will be phased out again in the future.
Fracking was banned in 2019 over earthquake concerns, and the Conservatives vowed in this year’s general election that they would not support it “unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely”.
That remains the government’s official position.
But amid rising oil and gas prices – and Britain looking to become “more energy independent” after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a growing number of Tory MPs are urging the government to reconsider whether Britain could use fracking to power its own to produce gas.
No10 suggested the Prime Minister had agreed to look at it again to “see if it had any role to play”.
Downing Street sources told the BBC that with oil prices so high, there are things “we would have dismissed before that we cannot dismiss now”.
The government’s goal is still to switch to renewable energy sources, they added, but “in the transition period, we need to produce more of our own oil and gas,” and “in that context, we should look at fracking.”
Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan said that ministers’ recent “rhetoric” on the issue of fracking was inconsistent with their actions.
“On Wednesday morning I read in the newspapers that the Prime Minister had decided to concrete Britain’s only two shale gas wells amid an energy crisis and given his own assessment that Europe was ‘addicted’ to Russian gas a terrible idea,” he said.
“Later on Wednesday, the Business Secretary said in the House of Commons that it would ‘not necessarily make sense’ to concrete the wells.”
He called on the government and the Oil and Gas Authority to “officially withdraw their order to shut down the wells.”
“If we are serious about energy security, we must not concrete these wells as a very basic first step, and then we urgently need to lift the shale gas moratorium and use these and more wells to produce domestic shale gas,” he added.
The government says that while ministers can voice their opinions on fracking, they can’t tell an independent regulator like the Oil and Gas Authority what to do.
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