UK Gov "Top Priority" - Making Sure Laws Protecting Parks, Nature Don't Hold Back Fracking
The government has made it a “top priority” to ensure protections for national parks and sites of special scientific interest do not obstruct fracking across the country, according to a leaked letter from ministers.
Fracking in both protected areas was ruled out by the government last year, in the Infrastructure Act, although campaigners pointed out that companies could still drill vertically outside park boundaries and then horizontally beneath them. But it appears ministers are working to ensure that even those limited protections do not get in the way of fracking companies.
“One of our top priorities will be to examine what work is required to ensure that the safeguarding provisions in the [Infrastructure] Act do not inadvertently create fresh barriers to exploration and to minimise the delays that the requirements in the act have introduced,” three ministers wrote to the chancellor, George Osborne.
The letter, dated 7 July 2015 and signed by Liz Truss, the environment secretary; Amber Rudd, the energy secretary; and Greg Clark, the communities secretary, was obtained by Friends of the Earth. It shows that just days before the government laid draft regulations for the protections in parliament, with ministers on 16 July promising “world-class environmental protections”, they were privately saying they would work to ensure they did not cause problems for industry. The regulations were later passed in December.
EDIT
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/01/uk-ministers-make-it-top-priority-to-ensure-nature-laws-do-not-hamper-fracking
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