Latest jiggery-frackery
The Financial Times reported earlier this month that the coalition government plans that the Queen’s Speech in May will include plans to change trespass laws, allowing companies to explore for shale gas whether the landowner agrees to give permission or not. The FT reported a senior government figure as saying, ‘We want to streamline the rules and get this thing off the ground.’
Do we detect a trace of panic? Yes, undoubtedly. Just last week, on April 23rd, a jury in Dallas awarded $2.925 million to Bob and Lisa Parr, who sued a shale fracking company called Aruba Petroleum Inc. for causing a nuisance on the Parr’s property which impacted their health and ruined their drinking water. The jury agreed that Aruba Petroleum ‘intentionally created a private nuisance’ though its drilling, fracking and production activities at gas wells near the Parrs’ home between 2008 and 2011. The pollution from natural gas production was so bad that the Parrs were forced to flee their 40-acre property for months at a time.
The Parrs’ attorney, David Matthews, said he was ‘really proud’ of his clients for refusing to ‘take it anymore.’ His blog post reveals that the verdict included $275,000 for the Parrs’ loss of property value, $2 million for past physical pain and suffering by the Parr family, $250,000 for future physical pain and suffering (as the fracking will not stop) and $400,000 for past mental anguish.
Could a similar case be brought in the UK? Yes, it could. Although British landowners have no rights to the oil or gas under their property, the existing laws of trespass means they may sue companies who drill under their land without consent from the landowner. Five Sussex landowners are already using this right in a bid to prevent Celtique Energie from drilling for oil under their land. Celtique, in Gallic outrage, told the London Government that that such objections could strangle Britain’s shale industry at birth. Hence the panic-stricken rush to change the law.
In Balcombe, which led the fight against fracking last year, local people now plan to generate their own renewable energy. The choice is quickly becoming a stark one – do we go for short-term, dangerous fracking or invest in renewable energy? Cameron’s threat to enforce the quick money-making choice is a very real one. It’s a gift, of course, to the Scottish Independence campaign, but more immediately, if you want to join the protest, sign the current Greenpeace petition to protect our homes from fracking.
