Back in March in Parliamentary debates on the then draft Infrastructure Act 2015, the Coalition Government gave a clear assurance that regulations would be introduced to increase the level of protection already afforded to national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and sites of special scientific interest by designating such areas as ones where hydraulic fracturing for shale gas and oil would be prohibited.

That was a particularly important assurance for the protection of the Wealden basin where the Government-commissioned survey by the British Geological Survey has identified potentially significant reserves of shale oil (but probably not shale gas). Much of the shale bearing strata lies beneath the South Downs National Park and a number of important AONBs and SSSIs, and most of it is reported by the BGS survey to be at depths greater than 1,200m.

Our concern arises from the fact that the draft regulations would only ban fracking within National Parks and AONBs at depths of less than 1,200m, and would not apply to SSSIs outside those areas at all.

In relation to the South Downs National Park (SDNP) and our local AONBs (in Sussex the High Weald and Chichester Harbour AONBs) the practical effect is that the draft regulations, in their current form, would provide no additional protection at all for these precious, and nationally designated areas as the shale oil is believed to lie at depths greater than 1,200m.

Given that the SDNP and AONBs were designated by statute for their landscape and scenic beauty, we fail to follow the logic that would deem all the surface infrastructure, additional traffic, noise and other disturbance and (in due course) pipeline damage to these specially designated environments to be unjustifiable at one (in practical terms irrelevant) depth because of the harm they would inevitably cause, but deem that same harm to be perfectly justifiable at another depth.

The proposal not to ban fracking (at any depth) within SSSIs designated for their special biological and/or geological characteristics and sitting outside the SDNP and our two AONBs seems no less cynical.

The explanatory memorandum and impact assessment accompanying the draft regulations purport to provide a rationale for the exploitation only of shale gas. However the impact assessment admits that the environmental effects of its proposal to allow drilling at depth in or under protected areas have not been quantified.

Oil is not a fuel on which the country’s energy generation capacity depends, and the Government’s case for exploitation of shale oil, as opposed to shale gas, has yet to be made. This difference is a fact recognised by the onshore oil and gas industry itself: Lord Chris Smith, who chairs UKOOGs taskforce on the regulation of shale gas and was previously head of the Environment Agency, said in March that the environmental case for shale oil in the UK is much tougher to make than for shale gas, and has acknowledged that there are “huge differences in relation to environmental impact and climate change effect” as between shale gas and shale oil.

Adoption of this draft regulation in its current form would involve a serious U-turn: one that will serve further to undermine the public’s already low confidence in fracking. It will also subvert public expectations created by the assurances given during the debates on the Infrastructure Act will not be met. Extensive exploitation of whatever shale oil reserves may in fact underlie the South Downs National Park and the High Weald AONB would have a grave and long-lasting environmental impact on very special and much treasured areas of our countryside. The original assurances given were needed and widely welcomed as people will simply not accept fracking in our national park, our AONBs or SSSIs.

We call for the draft regulation to be amended to ban outright fracking for oil beneath the Wealden basin. We have written to the Secretary of State in terms substantially the same as this letter urging her to reconsider the draft regulations and would ask you to let her know your opinion on the issue.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,
David Johnson, Chairman

On behalf of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, Sussex Branch CIO

PS: CPRE will continue to campaign nationally and locally for the most effective regulation of onshore exploration for, and exploitation of, shale oil and gas wherever it is engaged in, given its environmental and other hazards. We aim to work with Government, regulators and the industry to achieve this within the context of CPRE’s countryside protection objectives.