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A decision on an application by fracking firm IGas to monitor groundwater has been delayed by at least a month.
In June this year IGas made a planning application to Nottinghamshire County Council for drilling up to 12 boreholes across four locations on land off Springs Road, to help establish existing groundwater conditions, with a view to undertaking fracking in the area.
The application was accepted by Nottinghamshire County Council in July and a senior planning officer at the Council told Utility Week that the target determination period was 13 weeks, or before 15 October 2015.
But today, a separate spokesperson for the Council said the “next available date” it could be determined would be 17 November, although this has “not yet been confirmed”.
“Obviously we’re given target determination periods, but if issues arise that require further information, or we negotiate things with the applicant’s agreement, then we will take a few extra weeks to determine the application. If this [application] is going beyond the 13 weeks, it would be with the applicant’s agreement.”
A spokesperson for IGas told Utility Week: “It’s their determination so we’re waiting for them.” They confirmed that the Council asked the company for extra information but only because it’d had “quite a few” responses to the application.
“It’s pretty routine, I think [the Council] is being very thorough on it for obvious reasons, but as far as we’re concerned it’s just going through the process.”
“This is a monitoring application for boreholes, it’s pretty straightforward, so it will be determined when it will be determined,” they said.
Yesterday, UK Onshore Oil and Gas chief executive Ken Cronin told Utility Week that the number of fracking applications which reach the planning stage looks set to increase over the next six months after the Oil and Gas Authority confirmed that 27 onshore blocks from the 14th Onshore Oil and Gas licensing round will be formally offered to companies.
The UK government recently put in place measures to fast-track shale gas planning applications, including identifying councils which repeatedly fail to determine oil and gas applications within the 16-week statutory timeframe, with subsequent applications potentially decided by the communities secretary.
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