Campaigners condemn fracking announcement

Fracking is inefficient and requires wholesale devastation of the countryside.

Campaigners have described a Government decision to give fracking the green light as a ‘hideous mistake’.

Last week the Government announced an end to the moratorium on fracking which had been in place since 2019.

The moratorium did not stop oil exploration applications in Sussex in all their unconventional fracking and acidising guises.

However, CPRE Sussex believes this apparent endorsement from the Government further jeopardises our precious green spaces and our crucial commitment to reducing the rate of climate change.

CPRE Sussex Director Brian Kilkelly said: “The people of Sussex do not want their beautiful countryside torn up, and pumped with poison, all for the sake of more climate wrecking fossil fuels. Allowing the limited oil reserves below Sussex’s wonderful countryside to be exploited for private profit will not fuel a single power station, will contribute nothing to our national energy security or to reduce energy costs. We will hold this government to their promise that licences will only be granted with the support of local communities.”

In Sussex, so far as is known, we only have exploitable oil reserves. These will not help reduce our gas imports. Fracking is therefore not only devastating for the countryside, it is also the least effective way of enhancing energy security.

Tom Fyans, Director of Campaigns and Policy at the national CPRE charity, said: “The brutal reality of fracking is that to get any meaningful amount of gas from the ground would require wholesale devastation of the countryside. Allowing fracking in the two southern Jurassic areas would be likely to have major visual and polluting impacts on some of our most valuable countryside and coastline, particularly the Jurassic Coast and the South Downs National Park. Shale gas deposits in the UK are located under major population centres. Huge swathes of the northwest and Yorkshire and large south coast resorts and ports, primarily in Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Dorset, would be directly in the firing line.”

Read more about CPRE Sussex’s work to oppose oil exploration and exploitation in all its guises at cpresussex.org.uk/what-we-care-about/fracking