This summer my family made three different visits to England’s South Coast, for one reason or another. During our travels we saw the coastline from a variety of angles, and at one point I was struck by a strangely industrial site on the horizon. My son and I were looking at the view from a castle rooftop, and these spiky gantries looked very out of place amongst the greenery and the middle class holiday homes. We were in a national park, so it was particularly unexpected.
Had we just spotted one of England’s elusive oil extraction sites? I’m aware that there are some in the region, but I wasn’t able to confirm it on the map. The friends we were with didn’t know that there was any onshore oil in England. We don’t like to make a big deal about it, apparently.
I thought of this incident when I saw this new map from Friends of the Earth. They’ve plotted all the fossil fuel sites in England and Wales. There are the oil derricks of Dorset and Hampshire, gas wells in Lincolnshire, the last few coal mines still working in South Wales.
The map also shows places where new fossil fuel extraction has been licenced, colour-coded in red. The current Conservative government has been rubber-stamping new fossil fuels with glee in the last few months, and there are plans for more of them – even coal. This is despite the warnings that there is no room for new fossil fuel extraction on the way to net zero. Even the International Energy Agency acknowledges this.
Most of the news headlines about new oil and gas have been around activity in the North Sea, such as the announcement about Rosebank last week. But there’s activity onshore too, and that gets less attention.
So take a look at the map. See what’s happening near you. You might be surprised at what you find. And we might be hearing more about some of these places – especially the ones where new activity has been licenced in national parks and in Conservative constituencies. Once companies have a licence to drill for oil and gas, they still need planning permission, and some of these sites may become household names in the years to come as people wake up to the fact that it’s happening nearby.
Even if there isn’t any new activity near you, you can sign the petition to ask the government to stop new investment in fossil fuels.
The Earthbound Report 