We caved in to eco warriors – now fracking’s impossible
Government tsar quits in frustration after 6 months
Natascha Engel claims the Government has caved in to the powerful environmental lobby, meaning there is ‘no purpose’ to her job.
She told her boss, Business Secretary Greg Clark, that the gas shale industry has ‘enormous potential’.
But in her resignation letter, she said eco activists had been ‘highly successful’ in encouraging ministers to curb fracking – which she said can create jobs and provide a cleaner alternative to coal and biomass. Miss Engel, 52, resigned following two weeks of protests by Extinction Rebellion which brought parts of London to a standstill. The group is demanding that carbon emissions are cut to zero by 2025. But the former Labour MP argued that ending fracking will cause higher, not lower, greenhouse gas emissions because Britain will be more reliant on imported gas. BRITAIN’S fracking tsar has quit after just six months – saying developing the industry had become an impossible task.
letter: She wrote ‘A perfectly in her resignation viable and exciting new industry that could help meet our carbon reduction targets, make us energy secure and provide jobs in parts of the country that really need them is in danger of withering on the vine – not for any technical or safety reasons, but because of a political decision.’ Miss Engel – whose role was to liaise between the Government, scientists, the industry and residents near potential fracking sites – claimed the bar for fracking to be given the go-ahead had been set too high. She said the key reason for her decision to quit was Mr Clark’s refusal to review a ‘traffic light system’ which halts fracking when a tremor with a magnitude of 0.5 on the Richter scale is recorded.
She wrote: ‘ A 0.5 tremor is much weaker than the rumble you might feel when walking above a Tube train. yet if a frack unleashes a tremor rated 0.5, operators have to stop what they are doing for 18 hours.’
She said this amounted to a ‘de facto ban’.
Critics claim fracking – pumping high-pressure water into shale rock to release gas – is bad for the environment because of the huge amounts of water needed and the potential release of dangerous chemicals.
But Miss Engel, whose official title was Commissioner for Shale Gas, said the debate was being dominated by a ‘small but loud environmental movement’ who ‘do not represent local residents nor the wider population’.
Britain has one active shale gas site near Blackpool, operated by energy firm Cuadrilla. It started fracking in 2018 but has had to stop several times after causing mini-earthquakes.
The Lancashire for Shale group said Miss Engel’s departure was a ‘damning indictment of Government dithering’ and called for ministers to re-examine ‘overly cautious rules on mini earth tremors’.