Independent: How lobbying works – and why this Bill won’t change a fracking thing
As anti-fracking protesters march on the drilling site in the Sussex town of Balcombe, some environmental campaigners will doubtless question how the previously little-known method of extracting shale gas came to be regarded as the key potential solution to Britain’s energy problems.
They may not be surprised to learn that lobbying is a major part of the answer.
At the end of 2011, the chairman of the drilling company Cuadrilla, Lord Browne, arranged a series of meetings about fracking with senior ministers in the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The former chief executive of BP – who holds a formal advisory role in the Cabinet Office – is understood to have picked up the phone at his Chelsea home and called the then Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, to raise the matter. MORE