Globe and Mail: Anti-fracking campaign dampens British buzz over shale
The walk from the village of Balcombe to the drill site takes less than half an hour on a footpath that winds through the dense West Sussex forest, past a farmyard, and then down the overgrown verge of a rural road. It reaches the spot where a group of anti-fracking protesters encamped and police converged in a high-profile standoff last summer.
The drilling company hired by Cuadrilla Ltd. is gone now – as are the police and protesters – though the company has received a county licence to return to test the oil flow in the well that was drilled in August last year. When it does, it will be met by a determined group of villagers who remain busy appealing permits, meeting with media and engaging with the international movement that seeks to put the brakes on industry’s effort to expand North America’s shale gas/tight oil boom.
Cuadrilla is at the forefront of Britain’s effort to replicate North America’s shale gas/tight oil boom – an ambition strongly endorsed by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. If successful, the development of unconventional gas and oil reserves could eventually offset the declines in North Sea production and reverse Britain’s growing reliance on imports.