Sheryl Mcintosh's Blog: Fracking: Small Tremors, Big Impact

At the start of the month I suggested the government may be about to lose its nerve on shale gas. Well now the actual fracking has commenced and we may shortly find out.

Because, inevitably, there have been tremors. Duh! Way too small to be felt, still less do any surface damage of course, but there they are, day after day, faithfully recorded and published on Cuadrilla's website. Interestingly, so far the MSM have been fairly non-inflammatory about it: even the Grauniad acknowledges that "the 0.8-magnitude event [the larger of the two more noteworthy incidents] was about 200 times smaller than the 2.3-magnitude tremor recorded in 2011 that led to fracking being suspended" (it's a logarithmic scale, and the 200x refers to energy released): but of course they also report Zac Goldsmith's witterings.

So. What next? If there's an election any time soon, I just can't see any party - including the Tories - being willing to endorse continued fracking. The supposed lesson of the 2017 GE hint on fox-hunting has been learned. Cuadrilla et al had better find something impressive PDQ, or it'll be curtains for at least two election cycles.

ND