Horse Hill Community Fracking Blockade (South East)

Support is needed at Horse Hill fracking site north of Gatwick Airport where a new occupation has begun as threat of further testing looms. A vertical exploration well was drilled in October 2014, which passed through a number of shale formations, including the Kimmeridge Clay. With a number of active fracking sites in Surrey and Sussex going through various stages of testing, the threat to the region is growing rapidly. This occupation marks a significant expansion in resistance to fracking in the Weald Basin, while threatens not only the local community around Horse Hill but the whole of South East England.

Fracking company UK Oil and Gas Investments (UKOG), part of the Horse Hill Developments consortium, is pushing exploitation of tight oil from the Kimmeridge Clay shale formation, and is now pushing forward with plans to flow test the well for unconventional tight/shale oil. This is data gathering to support attempts to finance much larger plans to frack whole swaths of Sussex and Surrey. Exploitation of tight oil would mean drilling hundreds or thousands of wells across large areas of Sussex and Surrey.

These developments are part of a plan to frack the Weald, coating a large part of Sussex and Surrey, in thousands of wells at typical densities of 4-8 wells per square mile. The companies presently involved do not have the billions needed for this however, and are currently involved in gathering data to facilitate such investment. If this creeping drilling and testing is not vigorously resisted the consequences for communities across Sussex and Surrey will be dire. The address of the currently occupied site is Horse Hill, Horley, Surrey RH6 0HN. Please come down to the site if you can.