Cuadrilla, the company leading efforts to produce shale gas commercially in the UK, plans to seek an extension to its planning permission at a site in Lancashire so it can carry out further fracking.
The private company intends to resume fracking at its Preston New Road site near Blackpool within the next few months but time is running short as its planning permission expires at the end of November.
Cuadrilla said on Monday that it will write to Lancashire County Council “within the next month” to request extra time but insisted it will not seek to adjust any other terms of its current planning conditions, which dictate that up to four wells can be fracked at Preston New Road and the site must be decommissioned and restored by April 2023.
Cuadrilla did not specify in a statement on Monday exactly how much extra time it will be seeking but a spokeswoman suggested it would probably be around 18 months.
Frances Egan, the company’s chief executive, said the current planning conditions require all drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations to be completed within a period of 30 months from the date the first well was drilled at Preston New Road.
“By the end of November . . . we are in fact likely to have spent no more than 21 months in total drilling or fracturing on site,” Mr Egan said.
The company has only managed to partially frack one well at Preston New Road and argues that regulations governing the nascent fracking industry risk strangling it before it has even got off the ground.
Rules known as the “traffic light system” dictate work must be suspended if fracking causes an earth tremor of 0.5 or more on the Richter scale.
Cuadrilla hopes that by fracking further wells at Preston New Road it will be able to gather sufficient data to persuade regulators to carry out a review of the traffic light system, which has been branded “unworkable” by Ineos, the UK petrochemicals and energy company that also wants to produce shale gas in the UK.
However, Cuadrilla’s request is likely to be strongly opposed by environment groups who argue shale gas has no place in a country that is trying to end its contribution to global warming by 2050.
