Almost 40 Conservative MPs and peers have issued an eleventh-hour plea to Boris Johnson to reverse plans to seal two of the country’s only viable shale gas wells next week – insisting that Britain must embark on a “national mission” to secure its energy independence.
A letter to the Prime Minister, signed by 32 MPs and four peers, claims that pressing ahead with the fracking ban would play into the hands of the Kremlin, which they say wants to “stop us following this path to energy independence”.
Cuadrilla, the energy company, is due to concrete over its two wells in Lancashire on March 15, having been ordered to do so by the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA).
In their letter to Mr Johnson, sent to Downing Street on Saturday night, the MPs state: “We urge you to pause and conduct a review of this decision. At a time of such geopolitical strife, we cannot refrain from actions that would improve the position of the UK and its allies.
“We have seen how a reliance on imported gas affects the responses of other countries during the initial stages of Russian aggression.”
The intervention was organised by Craig Mackinlay and Steve Baker, the chairman and deputy chairman of the Conservative Net Zero Scrutiny Group, following an earlier letter sent to the Prime Minister before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr Johnson has yet to respond to the first letter, signatories to which included Lord Frost, the former Cabinet Office minister, who said that overturning the fracking ban would herald a “British energy renaissance”.
‘Lancashire isn’t Texas’
The latest letter is signed by more MPs, with backers including the former Cabinet ministers Lord Lilley and Esther McVey, and 2019-intake parliamentarians including lee Anderson, the MP for Ashfield.
Last night a source at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy resisted the call, saying the MPs should “get real”. The source claimed: “Fracking causes earthquakes, is hated by local communities, would take a decade to kick-start, and won’t even lower the price… Lancashire isn’t Texas; any shale gas we do find won’t be enough to lower the European price, and Cuadrilla aren’t exactly going sell their gas below market rate, are they?”
Last week, The Sunday Telegraph revealed that a report commissioned by the OGA showed that larger tremors cited by ministers when they announced the ban in 2019 affected just tens of buildings with, at the most, “slight non-structural damage”.
In their letter, the MPs state: “As you said last week, Europe has developed an ‘addiction’ to Russian gas. This has gifted the Kremlin considerable influence at the heart of our democracies and with it a literal war-chest of cash that we now see very brutally being unleashed upon the people of Ukraine.”
They add: “Filling these wells with cement as Europe stands on the brink of all-out war would send the wrong signal to our allies and to our enemies… Nato’s Secretary-General has previously warned the west that the Kremlin will do all it can to stop us following this path to energy independence.”
Last week, Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, also called for an immediate reversal of the ban, to help Britain “become reasonably independent in our ability to produce energy”.
