Calls to extend freeze on fracking to coal seams

AN alliance of community and environmental groups has called for the Scottish Government’s moratorium on fracking to be extended to cover underground coal gasification.

Almost 30 organisations and individuals, including residents’ associations, academics, Friends of the Earth and Unison Scotland, have made the plea in a letter to energy minister Fergus Ewing. Campaigners welcomed the moratorium on unconventional oil and gas developments announced by Mr Ewing last month but say it does not go far enough.

The letter to Mr Ewing says they are “gravely concerned” that underground coal gasification, a technique which produces gas from coal seams underground, is not included in its scope.

Energy company Cluff Natural Resources is drawing up plans to extract coal from under the Firth of Forth.

The company says a study has found as much as 335 million tonnes of coal near Kincardine and is now seeking permission to build the UK’s first deep offshore underground coal gasification project to extract it.

The letter said: “We strongly urge you to extend the scope of the moratorium and related work to this experimental technology.”

Mary Church, Friends of the Earth Scotland head of campaigns, said: “It makes no sense for a country with ambitious climate targets and the means to achieve them with renewables to flirt with such a risky for m of ener g y production.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said it was taking a “careful, considered and evidence-based approach to unconventional oil and gas and fracking”.