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The Environment Agency on Friday gave the second go-ahead to Cudarilla’s Lancashire shale gas projects of the last month, with permits granted for its Roseacre Wood site.
This follows the mid-January approval of the developers plans to extract shale gas at its Preston New Road site nearby in Lancashire. Both sites fall within Cuadrilla’s shale-rich Bowland exploration license, of which British Gas parent company Centrica holds a 25 per cent stake.
The Environment Agency said it has “rigorously assessed” the fracking applications and has granted the permits on the condition that Cuadrilla protects groundwater, surface water and air quality as well as ensure the safe storage, management and disposal of wastes.
Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan said that the agency’s rigorous review “unequivocally demonstrates that, as we have committed, our proposed exploratory operations will be carried out responsibly ensuring the local environment is protected.”
The controversial process of extracting shale gas from onshore reserves through fracking came under fire from the House of Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee last month, with the MPs calling for the Infrastructure Bill to “explicitly bar the fracking of shale gas”.
Since the EAC report the Environment Agency’s Philip Dilley has told MPs that tighter fracking rules are not needed. Giving evidence to the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Efra) committee Dilley said that under the existing regime, the risks “are relatively easily mitigated or avoided by doing things competently”.
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