Preacher gives

to carry out exploratory drilling in Dumfries-shire. It has also identified two major shale gas fields at Airth, near Falkirk.

The British Geological Survey suggests UK offshore reserves of shale gas could be five to 10 times the size of onshore, perhaps over 1,000trillion cubic feet, putting the UK in the top 20 countries with shale gas reserves worldwide.

Already the shale gas revolution has shamed the wind industry by showing how to cut carbon emissions for real. We must stop the trendy protest army in their tracks and send them and their windmills packing. Shale gas could solve our looming energy crisis.

Struan Stevenson is a Conservative MEPfor Scotland and president of the climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development intergroup in the European Parliament.

A leading preacher has voiced support for the controversial practice of shale gas extraction by fracking.

Free Church of Scotland minister the Rev David Robertson said he had “no problem” with the technique if it led to cheaper and more abundant energy and the science and technology was “good”.

He said critics should not be so “quick to judge” and questioned whether fracking caused any more harm to the environment than the North Sea oil industry, or damaged the landscape any more than windfarms.

Fracking is the process of drilling down into the earth before a highpressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas inside.

Mr Robertson, minister at St Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, spoke out after the Church of England in Lancashire, where a number of fracking sites have been proposed, claimed the technique might risk the future of “God’s glorious creation”.

“There are tens of thousands of people in Scotland in fuel poverty who cannot

NO FRACKING HERE: Balcombe in West Sussex is the

Rev David Robertson: “I am all for it”