Drilling Rig Arrives As Resistance Grows At Notts Fracking Site

The drilling rig, delayed by a lock-on outside the gates earlier in the day, has arrived at the Tinker Lane fracking site near Blyth, in the Bassetlaw district of Nottinghamshire. Fracking company IGas Energy is preparing to drill a well on its East Midlands site, and the local community (see Frack Free Tinker Lane), supported by groups from across the region and beyond, are resisting these plans. In production fracking in the region could see thousands of wells drilled across the region, if not stopped.

The first parts of the drilling rig have begun to arrive on the site, but the rig (an Drillmec HH220 previously used by Cuadrilla, and by IGas at Barton Moss) consists of over 100 lorry loads of equipment and will take over a week to set up. Even then it will require constant resupply during the weeks of dilling. Every one of these lorry movements can be stopped, delayed, and disrupted if there enough community resistance. The company has plans to drill a verical test well at Tinker Lane site, on farm land near the A634, as well as two test wells, including one horizontal well, at its nearby Springs Road site in Misson, is inside the old MOD rocket site (now Jacksons arms dealers).

The licence blocks covering the area, PEDL 140 for Springs Road and PEDL 200 for Tinker Lane, are operated by IGas Energy but chemical giant turned fracker Ineos owns 40/45 percent of the licences. The area is in the Gainsborough Trough, a geological formation where the Bowland Shale is thought to contain gas that could potentially be extract. However, exploitation would require coating the area in thousands of fracking wells.

These fracking companies speculative business model means that they need good results from these test to get more investment, but that includes not just what they find under ground but the level of resistance they encounter. That is where communities across the country come in – by making the frackers plans as difficult, slow and expensive as possible!

For information on how to get to the sites see the Springs Road site page and Tinker Lane. Come down and support these communities if you can! Or find our what fracking support sites might be near you.

Join the fracking resistance and support threatened communities! Join or form an anti-fracking group where you live. Read up on how you can fight fracking where you live.