Controversial fracking ban to be tested in the courts
The Scottish Government’s ban on fracking is set to be tested in the courts today.
A legal challenge brought by Petrochemical giant Ineos and Aberdeen firm Reachcsg is due to get under way at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.
Ministers are being taken to court over their decision to convert a moratorium on the controversial gas extraction technique into an indefinite ban. Grangemouth owner Ineos is seeking a judicial review of the “unlawful” ban, arguing there were errors in the decision-making process.
A legal challenge to the Scottish Government’s ban on fracking is to get under way today.
Petrochemical giant Ineos and Aberdeen firm Reachcsg are taking Scottish ministers to court over their decision to convert a moratorium on the controversial gas extraction technique into an indefinite ban.
Grangemouth owner Ineos is seeking a judicial review of the “unlawful” ban, arguing there were “very serious errors” in the decision-making process.
The Scottish Government previously said it made the move in light of “overwhelming” public opposition to fracking. Four days have been set aside for the case to be heard at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, beginning today.
A moratorium on the technique had been in place in Scotland since 2015 and in October last year energy minister Paul Wheelhouse said planning regulations would be used to “effectively ban” it by extending the moratorium “indefinitely”.
At the time, he said 99 per cent of respondents to a public consultation backed the ban.
Announcing the legal action in January, Tom Pickering, operations director at Ineos Shale, said: “The decision in October was a major blow to Scottish science and its engineering industry, as well as being financially costly to Ineos, other businesses and, indeed, the nation as a whole.
“We have serious concerns about the legitimacy of the ban.”
The company, which owns two fracking licences in Scotland, said the ban on unconventional oil and gas extraction would result in Scotland missing out on economic benefits, including about 3,100 Scottish jobs and £1 billion for local communities.
Environmental charity Friends of the Earth Scotland (FOE Scotland) last month submitted a public interest intervention in the case.
It will argue that the fracking ban is lawful and necessary to meet Scotland’s legally binding climate change commitments. The organisation’s lawyers believe it is the first public interest intervention granted in the Court of Session on environmental grounds.
FOE Scotland’s head of campaigns, Mary Church, said: “We are getting involved in Ineos’s judicial review of the fracking ban in order to put forward crucial climate change arguments in support of the ban that otherwise would not have been heard.
“Our intervention argues that the Scottish Government is required to ban fracking so as to urgently cut greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, in line with legally binding climate targets.
“We are confident that the process to ban fracking was robust and fair.”