Vocal Voices

It has now been officially halted in the UK, but not banned as many had hoped. It can be restarted if and when it can be proved to be safe.

Hmm, I thought that was already the case and why drilling test sites were allowed to be set up in the first place - to prove the theory of safe gas extraction.

I am a bit ambivalent about fracking. There is no way on earth that the UK can transition to carbon free electrical energy production, well certainly not in the short or medium term. We are going to continue to use some form of fossil fuel production for some time yet and gas is by far the cleanest form of fossil fuel energy. So, we have a tough choice - import or produce our own.

I guess that in the long term it will be economics that will decide, and that probably means we will frack for gas whether we like it or not. It is best we get it right, so the pause in operations is welcome. However, I do not think for one minute that we will never do it.

To me, the problem is that we are not the wide open spaces of Kansas, we're the Preston New Road in Blackpool. Once houses started to be damaged by the minor earthquakes - and there must be some concern over the geology in that particular area to have created them of the magnitude they were reaching - it was a no brainer that Cuadrilla would have to be made to abandon the project.

Should never have been started in the first place

There's enough gas down there for years and years, and sooner or later it will be got out imo.