Appendix

1. Interviews

Basis voor de interviewvragen -Are you okay with me recording this interview?

Diagnostieke framing:

1. Could you describe your job in the [the party you represent]? for how long have you had this job?

2. What is your view on fracking? environmental problems (e.g. climate change) economic benefits involved risks for citizens

3. Are there any parties involved in the Lancashire fracking debate that have similar viewpoints as your party/organisation? in what ways?

4. And are there any parties that do have quite an opposite view? in what ways?

5. Who do you think will benefit the most from fracking? For whom do you think fracking will have the most disadvantages?

6. What would you describe as the main goals of your party/organisation in this decision making process?

7. Do you feel like there is any hurdle for your party/organisation to reach those goals? If so, what or who causes it?

Prognostieke framing:

8. What do you – as a representative of your party/organisation – see as the best possible outcome of the decision making process around fracking? 9. Which strategies will you use to reach this goal? e.g. social media, protests, blogs/websites, etc.

10. Do you think that your desired outcome will be appreciated by the wider public?

11. In what way do you think your solution is better than those of other parties/organisations?

Motiverende framing:

12. What motivated you to get on board of [the party you represent]?

13. How did your party get involved in the decision making process in Lancashire? Why is it important to be involved as a party in the fracking debate? * hier kijken naar het schaalniveau waarop wordt gepraat. Ook kijken naar vocabulaire (ernst, urgentie, doeltreffendheid of bezitsrecht?)

14. In what ways does your party try to attract more people that support your ideals? *ook hier weer vocabulaire van belang.

15. Did your position change over the last years? If so, why?

16. Which actors or events have been influential in shaping your position?

Beautiful Planet CaféBeautiful Planet Café is één van de 330 ondernemingen uit Lancashire die door Frack Free Lancashire is benoemd tot onderneming tegen fracking. Vaak gaat dit aan de hand van een bezoek aan de onderneming.

Het café is relatief anders vergeleken met de andere cafés in de binnenstad van Preston. Aan de voorkant van het café is een lantaarnpaal bekleed met gebreide patronen van alle kleuren. Bovendien springen de felle kleuren direct af van het relatief grauwe straatpatroon (zie figuur 1).

Figuur 1: Beautiful Planet Café

Bron: Auteur, 2016.

Bij binnenkomst werd ik direct begroet door elke klant en medewerker. Er hing een vriendelijke sfeer en bekend en onbekend wordt direct aangesproken. Een paar mensen speelden binnen een

muziekinstrument en anderen hadden het over (complot)theorieën (zoals dat de overheid fluoride in drinkwater doet om de mens onbewust te maken van wat er ‘werkelijk gaande zou zijn’, maar ook dat kinderprogramma’s bedoeld zijn om kinderen te hersenspoelen en ervoor te zorgen dat ze een mainstream leven gaan leiden).

Aan de binnenkant van het krappe café hingen veel tekeningen en schilderijen, de meeste daarvan oogden Boeddhistisch en/of spiritueel. Ook hingen er grote posters van Frack Free Lancashire op de muur, waren er enkele badges van Frack Free Lancashire in de etalages te bewonderen en was er een sticker met daarop ‘Frack off’ op de deur geplakt. Het was een mooi aanknopingspunt om mee te beginnen voor het volgende interview (31 minuten). Het is een interview met Tom (ik schat hem tussen de 25 en 30 jaar oud), één van de vrijwilligers van Beautiful Planet Café.

4 april 2016, 13:00 uur – Beautiful Planet Café – Tom

J = Joeri/InterviewerT = Tom/respondent

J: How did you come up with the idea of starting Beautiful Planet Café?T: I don’t know really, it wasn’t my idea. It was an idea of a guy called Brad. I’m not sure how he started really

J: Alright, and how did you get a volunteer over at this café?T: I just walked past some day and I thought well, let’s go for it.

J: In what ways is this café different than any other café in Preston?T: It is owned by the community, so it is not profit-orientated. It is also for the community. So people who ‘work’ here, like me, we don’t do it for the money. Our system is just that people can sit, relax and chat with each other for a minute while enjoying a cup of tea for not too much money, you know? We also signed the window for that. The food is also really cheap, vegan and organic. We are also concerned about sustainability.

J: All right, so I also recently saw you on the website of Frack Free Lancashire as one of the businesses who is against fracking. Why specifically are you against fracking?T: Well, it [fracking] just ignores all natural processes, isn’t it? It defies all reason on every level. The argument that it just brings jobs, jobs, jobs is all nonsense… It really is just a hydraulic machine, which can’t even bring any jobs with it, you know what I mean? It’s absolutely nonsense. They’re contracting the people of companies like iGas or whatsoever. The local people aren’t the one who will benefit but they are the ones who suffer. So it doesn’t make any sense – especially when we’ve got free energy technologies – which is now being suppressed. And we’ve got renewable energy. So we are not reliant on fracking, we don’t need any of those oils or gas. Obviously we are at a tipping point where we have to get a smooth transition. We obviously can’t switch everything off straight away, but we can use the wind and the sun to power our homes. There are even festivals which are completely powered on bicycle energy. There are lots of things we can do. Just at the moment we have this abundance of money. We are being thought that we have to work all the time and give our money back to organisations. We really should not be working all time, we should be in our communities and we should generate our own […energy?...]. That’s what I would like to see.

Obviously it is very difficult to do on our global scale, because not everybody is on that level. I do take an interest in all of our small problems and issues, but when you arrive from work at the end of the day you just get a blackout. In the end we are all human beings who are infinite. So there is no problem that can’t be solved by conscious evolution. So once we achieve that, there won’t be a debate about fracking because people that want to frack they don’t exist. At the moment there are people who think fracking will benefit their kids, their families, blablabla, material goods, but they have forgotten that they are infinite beings. So when they die, they will be like ohh what have I done, why was I doing all that fracking? Whoops. And the earth will recover and we will vanish, and whether our civilization will survive or not is in the long run.

Obviously we are here for a reason and we are chosen to be here right now, 2016, earth. We are going through a pretty interesting time, which is globalised. It is sending people to space, heavy industries and all that, it is very interesting. But unless we involve spirituality we are not going to be able to sustain through technological expansion. If we keep doing all this fracking and stuff, we will kill the planet. The gas has been here for billions of years and we will just destroy it all in a minute. Our evolutional line of homosapiens just got cracked. Or maybe not, maybe a few will survive, because that has happened before. It’s called civilization. Every empire with its monuments or buildings has another empire underneath it. It has happened before, so if we want it to happen again yeah we let’s keep fracking.

J: How do you mean it has happened before?T: The last time was during the last ice age. We had lost our quite advanced technological civilization. Maybe it was even more advanced than our own is right now, because we still don’t know what has happened 10.000s of years ago. Like, we still don’t know what pyramids are for. Let’s say I will find this laptop of yours tomorrow – then we can only be sure about its powers when we know how the software works, isn’t it? But that won’t work anymore. So we can only be sure about the hardware. Then we don’t have a bloody clue about the working of something, right? And you can’t decarbonise stone, so you don’t know how old it is. That’s why I think archaeology is just a soft science. We need hard sciences, like astrology and geography. They provide just facts. We now only take care about the soil, but we need to dig deeper. [… lots of talks about archaeology which is not really relevant…].

When the earth is going down, they are going to be all right and we don’t. You know, we are running out of food supply after three days. What will you do, will you go to the local supermarket? Of course you can’t. J: Who do you mean by ‘they’?T: Well, the indigenous people. People living in the jungle for example.

Anyway, a long story short, keep fracking guys and we will see what happens! When we talked about fracking and stuff, it was just really low level. You know, it has all happened before and we are all in it. People seem to have forgotten all of that. So, that’s my perspective.

J: Why do you think it is important for a company or business like your café to reject fracking practices?T: Because it sends out a message. That’s the right thing to do, no matter what. It is a message for the society. If business reject fracking – you know people do think business are being greedy or money orientated, which a lot of them are – but you get local businesses or community places

rejecting fracking, no matter what the financial application might be. It gives back a strong signal. The people don’t know what to think about it [fracking]. I feel sorry for them. I am really lucky, I am a musician fulltime, so I don’t mind working 60 till 70 hours a week. At the end of the day, my mind is cleared. But if you do have to work for like a real living, you come back home and think like pfff, and you need to rest for the rest of the day, you know what I mean? So you don’t have time to properly think about things like fracking. You only think about chilling out for a minute.

J: How did you get in contact with Frack Free Lancashire?T: I have no idea, I think it’s just very organic how it all just comes together. Everyone who comes in here, 99 percent of them are against fracking anyway, they don’t need to be informed about it. So I think it is just a natural crossover. I am sure the guy or girl over at Frack Free Lancashire knows Brad though. Maybe they have sabotaged fracking machines together, or they have met each other at a protest or something. Or when the fascist and racist people come in town, they will come together as an anti-racist group, you know. It is the same fight really.

The fracking stuff is great, but what are we trying to achieve? Here have a look at this most important picture of the wall [shows me a picture of someone meditating with war, urbanization and pollution going on over at the background. The one who is meditating is fulfilled with brands as McDonalds, Shell, Nike, Facebook, X-Factor and other big corporations]. Once you remember we are infinite beings and think about the fact that our live on earth is spiritual – not just physical – there is life after death. So you can’t just be disconnected from the world. You know, you can live in a cave or something, but you will still be in touch with the earth really. You can’t just disconnect, you’ve got to fight the fight, you know? You can’t pick your battles I think. After live just follows another live – it’s just reincarnation.

J: Okay, I’ve got another question. What do you think will be the outcome of the decision making process around fracking in Lancashire?T: I think it will be rejected. Because they are getting paid to talk about it. I know a few of the councillors, they tell me things. They get paid just to discuss it [fracking]. So they just get money to talk with gas companies about fracking. It’s all about money. So you know the budget cuts and everything, the gas companies just slash it all down. All the councillors are all against it. The public here is pretty well against fracking. Because, no offence, but you’ve got to be really * stupid to poison the environment for a couple of jobs and energy we don’t really need. We are indeed in a crisis, but we’ve got the solutions. Tesla was already killing that stuff in the 30s, man.

J: Alright, what is in your opinion the most successful manner to gather as much opposition against fracking as possible?T: Good question really. Ehm, we get a lot of ordinary people like grandma’s and stuff occupying the fracking site which is really interesting. Most people don’t have the time for that stuff, but some of they do. And when some of us are really passionate about something, we just make time if we need to. Even if they [government] would approve fracking, we would reject it by occupying the fracking site. They can’t arrest thousands of people.J: Do you think social media can be useful too next to these protests? T: Well, I do yeah. I never see any pro fracking stuff.

J: Yeah indeed. I was wondering, which parties have been influential in shaping your view on fracking?

T: Well, not really. Frack Free Lancashire is necessary in providing information about this fracking topic and deblinding us from the fracking cons, which [fracking] is a really bad idea, it is about putting chemicals into the ground, no discussion needed. Let them to that, that is cool. Let Frack Free Lancashire and Greenpeace spread the information, that’s good, also for me personally. So it is basically about this decision: let’s put chemicals into the ground, or use renewables. Hmm, what should I choose? It was a thirty seconds decision, just like leave the chemicals aside.

J: What do you think about the way the decision making process have been going lately?T: Ehm, I am not really a 100 percent sure. I know it has been rejected here, locally, but the government wants to shut it down nationally. But yeah, they are criminals, and they have no authority over me. I am responsible for my own being and I totally disagree with what they are doing. And if they go ahead with it, we are going to sit on the ground and physically stop them from doing that. They are criminals in every sense of the world.

J: Do you mean the councillors?T: No, not the councillors, because most of them are against fracking. Well although some of them are criminals, at least not all of them. But I think most of them are good people. They are just ordinary people, mostly the local councillors. I was talking about the high people of governments, people who are running the show as criminals. You know, the people who are getting the money out of it. Cuadrilla too. It is just a joke men, it is an absolutely joke. I don’t agree with them, that’s why I didn’t vote at the last elections. I don’t give them any authority.

J: Did you think the decision making process was transparent for local citizens?T: I have no idea, I don’t know. I found it great that they rejected it. I thought they were going to approve it.

J: Yeah, but that was last year right? Now the decision around fracking has to be made again within a couple years. T: Again? Well I thought they already made it. I tell you, if they do approve fracking, shit will kick off. They don’t have any authority over us. But I wasn’t really aware that was going on. They are just irresponsible criminals.

Mystery Tea HouseMystery Tea House is een vergelijkbaar café of theehuis als het Beautiful Planet Café. De eigenaren kennen elkaar tevens goed en twee van de klanten uit het Beautiful Planet Café waar ik eerder die week contact mee had gehad zaten nu in het Mystery Tea House. Ook hier wordt niet op winst gedraaid maar op liefdadigheid zoals de eigenaresse me vertelde. Een andere overeenkomst met het Beautiful Planet Café, en praktisch de reden dat ik het theehuis bezocht, is dat ook dit theehuis op de lijst van ondernemingen staat die tegen fracking in Lancashire is. Dit is ook waar te nemen uit de Frack Free Lancashire stickers op het raam en de flyers van Frack Free Lancashire en Friends of the Earth die op de toonbank liggen.

In het theehuis hangt, net als in het Beautiful Planet Café, een erg gemoedelijke en open sfeer. Bij binnenkomst wordt je vriendelijk begroet en wordt je gevraagd hoe het met je gaat en of je iets te drinken wilt. Ook werd er interesse getoond in mijn accent en werd gevraagd waar ik vandaan kwam. Al gauw kwamen we op een gesprek over Amsterdam, een stad waar de eigenaresse al meerdere malen was geweest.

Hoewel het theehuis veel overeenkomsten toont met het Beautiful Planet Café zijn er ook enkele verschillen. Het grootste verschil is naar mijn mening dat het theehuis meer Afrikaans over komt in tegenstelling tot het Beautiful Planet Café wat een meer Aziatische indruk geeft. Al gauw kwam ik erachter dat dat ook te maken heeft met de eigenaresse die vrijwilligerswerk doet in Gambia en veel interesse toont in Afrikaanse culturen. Een ander verschil met het Beautiful Planet Café is dat de klanten iets minder contact met elkaar lijken te hebben. Een mogelijke reden daarvoor zou kunnen zijn dat de opstelling van tafels en stoelen wat meer gespreid is over de gehele ruimte dan het geval is in het Beautiful Planet Café. Bovendien zijn er twee verdiepingen en is de benedenruimte over het algemeen al groter dan het gehele Beautiful Planet Café.

In eerste instantie wilde ik een interview houden met Natalia, de eigenaresse van het theehuis, maar helaas vond ze 15 minuten te lang duren voor een interview en vertelde ze me dat ze zenuwachtig werd als het interview werd opgenomen. Vervolgens benaderde een man van zo’n 25 jaar (genaamd Jordan) me dat hij wel bereid was wat vragen te beantwoorden ten aanzien van fracking. De eigenaresse reageerde daarop door te zeggen dat ze ook bereid was om af en toe een antwoord aan te vullen of tussendoor een vraag te beantwoorden. Het onderstaande interview is dus met beide personen – een klant in het Mystery Tea House en de eigenaresse ervan.

7 april 2016, 17:00 uur – Mystery Tea House – Jordan en Natalia, 23 minuten

J = Joeri/InterviewerN = Natalia/respondentJO = Jordan/respondent

J: Natalia, I recently saw the Mystery Tea House on the list of one of the many businesses in Lancashire who is against fracking. Why do you reject fracking?N: Because I am representing this company, Mystery Tea House, and I am loving nature and I love our planet and I believe in human family, so that’s why I am against. Because drilling holes and flushing the earth with chemicals is no good for anyone, so I am against it, definitely. JO: And, with anything what they take out of the earth, what do to put back in it?

J: Well, yesterday I had an interview with Bob Denett, and he said he did some research and found that they wanted to fill the holes they created with fracking will be filled with nuclear waste. JO: That is not going to make anyone happy, because they are going to make people ill and ruin the country as it is. With fracking, I never been properly in the anti-fracking, I’ve heard about it, but I’ve done a bit of research and saw what it did to land. Fires in water and stuff like that, it is just not right. All generations have ever done is taking and taking and taking from the earth, and they will get to a point where the earth will be like that [steekt middelvinger op]. You know, we’ve had tsunami’s, and that’s all because we’re taking, we’re taking. We are not putting anything back at it. We don’t need it, we got renewable energies. Why do we need more gas? There’s no need for it whatsoever. We got solar panels, we got wind turbines. It is free. The earth does it for us, so why […]? It’s this company’s money. J: What Cuadrilla actually says is that fracking is a way to make a clean transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies. What’s your opinion on that?JO: We have to jump from fossil fuels straight to renewables. They’ve been here for hundreds of years. They will be here for hundreds for years. The first thing which comes to mind is just renewable energy. You know, why? Money! N: Big corporations!JO: Yeah, big corporations benefit of this fracking. Not one of these small companies around Preston or in England will benefit. Big major companies: banks, bankers, they all benefit and you know, will put it in the ground.N: Banksters!

J: So they won’t take any responsibility for the local problems it causes for citizens?JO: No they won’t, not at all.N: They don’t care about us, they just […]JO: Well, think about it. They put nuclear plants all over the country, which causes radiation, what will hurt people. They are not taking responsibility, they are not getting fined for it. They are not getting to jail for it, and people are dying because of the radiation, because of the chemicals and their products. And then they try make new chemical plants, new nuclear plants, here and all over the country, and we don’t need them!

J: I got one more question for Natalia, if that is possible? How did you get in contact with Frack Free Lancashire?N: They’re our friends, because we are very blessed to be in Preston, because the beautiful community around here. And people know each other and they are really trying to put together different communities against big corporations and now is this big campaign that our legal name is illegal. J: How do you mean that?N: Well, people are born with a certain name. But if you don’t even like that name, you just can’t say like ‘oh well, I’ll just change it’, you know? Your parents choose the name of you, but you have a free spirit. So this way they can legally find you for things. We are agreeing by being in the system, by agreeing your name. But we can’t change the name, haha.

J: Jordan, did you participated yourself in the decision making process of fracking too?JO: I haven’t actually put any kind of vote in it, because I haven’t got anything to do with things which has to do with anything, because everything the government does, I’m not a part of that. I’m a

person of the earth, not of them. I have my own product of me. J: So you haven’t visited a protest or anything too?JO: I don’t want them to do it. They shouldn’t be digging from the earth. The earth has given us everything we got, why take from it? We don’t need the gasses, we have all the electric cookers and fires. We don’t need the gas. You know what I mean?J: But most of the electricity which is being made comes from power plants which still need fossil fuels right?N: Solar panels and wind turbines, back to the nature, back to the nature!JO: That’s what we need, we need to get back to where we were originally. N: Yeah Nicholas Tesla, he was a legend. He had a beautiful soul. He was against big corporations. JO: Firstly, we wouldn’t have this problem if it weren’t for the governments. The governments took away our free energy, so that they could make money from copper, metals and I think gas buildings here and there, pipes going underground. J: But how did they took away the free energy then?JO: Well, if someone made something, that will make free energy, and you won’t, because a company that owns billions of parts of gas, they’re going bankrupt because you don’t need them anymore. I got something that can jeopardize your business. So what do you do? You get rid of the competition, don’t you? That was what happened to Nicholas Tesla too. I believe he made a dynamo, the things you put on bikes. Well that, and it will carry on and creating electricity and creating electricity. You don’t need anything else. They got rid of that and of them, so that they could have nuclear power, gas. N: Yeah, the knowledge of free electricity was suppressed because no other company will benefit. No one. JO: The companies will get bankrupt, the banks will get bankrupt and the Rockefeller’s will get bankrupt.

JO: It is like when that thing went off at the Fishergate centre [winkelcentrum in Preston] during the protests. It was the day that we were getting signed for fracking. In Lancashire County Council there was a big meeting going on. And then there was a big dumpster at Fishergate that someone has put a bomb in. And then it was someone’s little incinerated device, that some white kid had put in to make a distraction, so that it gets signed of so people can go fracking! Distractions! You’re looking at a picture, but you’re not looking at everything on the outside. J: When was that?JO: It was at the Lancashire County Council, maybe 3-4 months ago. Against fracking! N: Yeah it was basically whether fracking will go ahead or not. JO: It just happens to be at the opposite side of the road of the Lancashire County Council and then boom they’ve got signed, “yeah we have approved for fracking”. Distractions! You put something in front of someone to distract them from anything else that is going on around them.

J: To which extent have you followed the decision making process around fracking?JO: I’ve heard lots about it, but I never really followed it. I know it is wrong and it should be banned, but like I said I am not involved because you know. N: We went to protests as well. There was police and stuff and they were damming us with ashes as we were standing. And they said “I’ve got children, I don’t want fracking to go ahead as well!” So even the police was admitting that it is not good as well. I think we need to educate people more I think and that is very important. Because most of the time people are happy inside their own boxes,

inside their comfort zones: they watch some telly, maybe they talk to neighbours, maybe they don’t do that even. They really like to have their own peace of mind, but on the other side there is this big ignorance and they maybe not even realize that they don’t put anything out there [fracking] and they’re not seeing what’s happening around us. They just forested us to just be lazy and let them in. And really often they are pro-fracking as well, because again, it is all orchestrated a bit.JO: You know, most of it is all mainstream media saying “oh this is the right to do”. But when people don’t know it, like someone says to you “that’s a wall, and you can’t get passed it”, you think you can’t. But it really is just a bit of water and sand, so yeah, you can just go passed it. They tell you you can’t .

[klant komt binnen, ongeveer een 5 minuten break].

J: Jordan, I was wondering, what do you think will be the outcome of the decision making process?JO: Well it depends on what the decision is. J: Yeah, but what do you think it will be? JO: I definitely think it will be rejected, yeah. If they don’t there’s something wrong with the planet, there’s something wrong with England. We can’t go ahead with it, we just can’t. Because at the end of the day, it is not just about the gas industry, it is about they’re taking people hands. Because they are coming over and say look out peer, here you have 5000 pounds for your land. You know what I mean, their land will never be fertile again, because the gas is going through it. The livestock is all down. And then we get more GM food, you know, we don’t need any of these genetically modified food. That’s all I’ll stem down too.

J: Natalia, can I ask you one more question? Why do you think it is important for a company like years to be against fracking?N: Well, we’re not really a company. I do prefer it myself to call it a community, or a family. We want to like bring people together. But again, we are aware of the negative effects of fracking, and because we are loving nature and we really think that here in the western world we hide ourselves from the nature a lot, so we are more like saying out loud that we are against it [en toen kwamen er meer klanten binnen en werd het redelijk druk dus was het beter om het gesprek hier te eindigen].

Bob Denett – Frack Free LancashireBob Denett is een co-founder van Frack Free Lancashire, een organisatie die zich inzet tegen fracking in Lancashire sinds er zich aardbevingen hebben voorgedaan in gebieden nabij frackingsites.

6 April 2016, 11:15 uur – Frack Free Lancashire – Bob

J = Joeri/InterviewerB = Bob/respondent

J: Could you describe your job in Frack Free Lancashire for me please?B: I am the co-founder of Frack Free Lancashire. And myself and the co-founder, a friend of mine, she came up with the concept of the branding. So we branded, we created the brand Frack Free Lancashire. And we created all the literature for the campaign and we drove the campaign, we managed the campaign. As a result of that, we achieved over 30.000 signatures in about 6 months. So since then, we just continually provided research and badges all over and that sort of stuff. And also coordinating protests, demonstrations, and yeah […] that is what I do.

J: I also saw on your site that 330 businesses in Lancashire were against fracking. How did that went off? B: Well actually, it was more than that, but those are the one that has signed up to that. J: How did you get in contact with those parties?B: Mostly by just going in the shops, although a lot of them contacted us. Because I run the website, so we get contacts going in through the website all the time. The other ones we just went by and asked them if we could paste a sticker or if they wanted to have a badge and if they were down to sign up for it. Because the industry they have an organisation that is called ‘North west Energy Task Force’, which is supposedly businesses that are pro-fracking. But they are all businesses who have invested interest in fracking. They are involved in such a way that they can make money out of it in the future. They are financially interested in the future. So we created our list that is businesses who are against fracking, whereas the Northwest Energy Task Force all have invested interest in it. Some of them don’t even exist. They communicated this list of 450 Lancashire businesses while some of them are not even businesses. I guess there are approximately only 100 of them existing in Lancashire. Some of them were academics, and one of them was a priest. So we published our list to counteract. All they do is lie in this industry. Unfortunately, a lot of people believe them. All of these companies are provided by Cuadrilla, so they have linkages with each other.

J: Is Frack Free Lancashire next to doing protests also involved in the decision making process? Has your party been to any Inquiry or something like that?B: We went to an inquiry indeed. There were 22 days of that. I did not go every day. But there was one from Frack Free Lancashire every day, yeah. J: All right, and how did you experienced the decision making process?B: In the public inquiry I think we have got it in our favour. I think the planning inspector, who held the inquiry, she was in our favour. But the government already said that if she does, they just override it. J: And how was Cuadrilla Resources involved in the inquiry?

B: Well, Lancashire is their biggest license area. It is 476 square miles, while all the other areas they are licensed at are smaller areas. Cuadrilla also owns other licenses in other areas, but I think if we beat it here, we can get it finished in the UK. Because our local authority, Lancashire County Council, rejected the implications, it empowered other local authorities to do the same. Every week there were more and more local authorities saying ‘no we are not accepting fracking’. So everybody is watching the process here. I even go as far to say everyone on earth is watching to see what is going on here, and particularly in Europe. If it is rejected here, than I think it will be the end of it in the UK. And I think that will affect Europe as well, certainly in the time being. I think the government is screwed in this period.

J: Ok, so I know you are against fracking. But could you elaborate your point of view a bit more?B: My view on fracking is that it is dirty, it is dangerous, it is dangerous to the environment, to the land, to the water and the people and the livestock. So it is a really polluting industry. And we don’t need the gas, we don’t need fracking, we’ve got enough gas on shore. In the North Sea, the Irish Sea. Just all around the UK coast we have enough natural gas to last us for hundreds of more years. I am not suggesting that we should burn it, I mean we should leave as much as possible in the ground. This isn’t actually about gas, I never believed it was about gas. And we did a lot of research in the early days and we discovered that they were planning to extracting chemicals from the condensation that comes up with the gas. Chemicals that they currently get from oil. But they have to crack the oil, so they have to heat it in different temperatures to get Petrol, Diesel or other chemicals. So we thought that’s where the profit was. Because it was uneconomical when they started, but with the oil price where it is it is completely uneconomical now, so we thought okay maybe they’re going to make their profit out of the chemicals. But then it still isn’t economical: it costs a third of a billion pounds. So that would be almost half a billion euro’s to set up a fracking pad to production. That has to take a lot of recovery. And then we discovered that there are plants to dispose our nuclear waste. Now in the UK we probably have biggest the nuclear waste stock pile in the world. And they are trying to decommission Celarfield, which is just north from here and that is where most of it is stored, and they don’t know where to put it. They also want to build four new nuclear power stations. And European Law won’t allow them to do that unless they can demonstrate a suitable disposable solution for the existing nuclear waste. And there is a company which just moved into Kirkham that have a patent for, or well, a specialist inter vivification (niet helemaal zeker, zie 12:44) into nuclear waste in glass to put down boreholes […]. So they’re going to use the boreholes to store nuclear waste. They will take the glass and the chemicals, but the average life of a fracking well is maximum 4,5 to 5 years. That’s absolutely maximum, because 67 percent of the gas comes out in the first year. Then this will be reduced by 35 percent by the year after that. So they’re going to have to drill an awful lot of boreholes to get as much gas as they say they are going to get. And in Lancashire that amounts to something like 40.000 dwells. And at least 5000 of those will be here, in the Fylde, because this is where the sweet spots are. There is no sense in it except for making money. And the sums of money involved in nuclear waste disposal are absolutely staggering. They are as big as the GDP of the UK, the money involved. So we believe that that is the end game, that is why the government is pushing. J: So you are saying that the government is pro-fracking because of the usefulness of the fracking holes for disposing nuclear waste?B: Yes, absolutely, yeah. Well, last year at the 25th of January they passed an act in the parliament called the ‘Infrastructure act’, and in that act it said that any substance can be left in the redundant

boreholes. They tell us all sort of fairy tales about they’re going to use the boreholes for thermogenic heat and stuff. But the end goal is to put nuclear waste down their boreholes. So they take the gas, they take the chemicals, and when the bore hole is redundant after a few years’ time they start putting nuclear waste down. It is absolutely dangerous.And the UK is 400 times more geologically folded than the US is. They have caused earthquakes here in 2011. And they are planning to drill through a fold [een geologische plooi] in Preston New Road. If they get the permission for Preston New Road, they will drill through a fold there. So the risk for causing more earthquakes is huge. And if there is nuclear waste down there […] it is really too bad to even think about.

J: Do you think that there are any parties, companies or organisations involved in the Lancashire fracking debate that have quite a similar viewpoint as Frack Free Lancashire?B: Well, we have quite a lot of support from people at UCLAN, there are lots of businesses, the local councillors are against it, so when we started fighting it there were perhaps 40 to 50 people in the whole of the UK who were against it, now there are millions of us. A lot of those are thanks to us, because when we started it just took off and people were contacting us from all over the country.

J: And which parties do have quite the opposite view?B: Well, now only those that are actually involved in the industry. You know they got invested interest. I tell you what, there are only two types of people that are pro-fracking: there are those that now nothing about it and they believe all of the public relations, and they believe that it will bring jobs, that it will bring cheap gas etcetera., and those that have any form of invested interest, like Cuadrilla and any other company that do want to make money out of it, like iGas. iGas is almost out of business thanks to us. Not really because of Frack Free Lancashire, but because of the anti-fracking movement. Shale prices are dropping now.

J: When has the anti-fracking movement started?B: In the middle of 2011, when the earthquakes started. It was then that we understood that it were them who caused the earthquakes and that they were fracking. As soon as someone said they were fracking I was on it and I started doing more research. I absorbed technical information and so I became aware of the technical aspects of fracking. I just carried on researching it. Even if the government say ‘yes we are going ahead with fracking’, they won’t frack in Lancashire again. We will stop them, absolutely, we will stop them. J: How do you want to stop them?B: Direct action.

J: Who do you think will benefit the most from fracking?B: Well, if it goes ahead, the drilling companies, the operators and their shareholders are the main people who benefit from it, because that is just the way they operate. Every site is a separate company, so Cuadrilla are proposing a minimum of 800 sites in Lancashire. It will be more, but they are sticking to the figure of 800. But I believe there are 2.500 to 5000 wells in Lancashire in the Fylde. Each of the pads they set up is owned by a separate company. So if they don’t get the gas out or when they reach the end of the gas at any particular site, they will liquidate the company. And all of the funds for these companies are tunnelling trough to Cuadrilla Resources holdings limited, which is a UK raised company and all of their businesses are off shore. I did research work last week on all of

the companies and I just thought I do a quick check because we do take into account the finances. And Cuadrilla Resources holdings has a net worth of 15.4 million, that is pocket money for that industry, it is loose change. But when you look at all those six or seven other companies, they all have a negative net worth. One of them has a negative net worth of 19.8 million. And if you sum up the negative net worth of all the subsidiary companies, they cover up to minus 45 million. And if you take that 15.4, then you come up at 39 million. So they are 39 million in the red, as a group of companies.J: But how come that they aren’t bankrupt yet? B: They keep spending money and they keep spending money on PR and equipment, buying local businesses and stuff like that. And they use the money from all the small companies, so if everything goes wrong, they just liquidate those companies while Resource holdings will still have a net worth of 15 million pounds. It is not even a big company, they employ 32 people in the UK. That is just the way this industry operates, they outsource everything: the drilling, the workforce will be contracted. All the transport, all the plant wire will be subcontracted. So the costs will come from the subsidiary companies and the payments will come from them too. And they will always keep these subsidiary companies in depth, so if everything will go wrong, they just liquidate the company. We call it here: ‘privatizing the profit, and socializing the costs’, because if they walk away from the site someone will have to restore that site. That will come out of our taxes. The damage they do to the roads will come out of our taxes. So who benefits? Not the people, just the company and their shareholders.

J: What would you say to the people who have arguments like “fracking brings jobs”, or “we need the gas”?B: Well, I already said we don’t need the gas. We’ve got gas in the North sea of the northern islands, at the Shad land Islands and we’ve got gas just right here [wijst naar de Irish Sea]. And British counts discovered a new field gas here two years ago that they haven’t tapped into yet. They recently discovered another one in the North Sea. Like I said, there is sufficient gas off shore to last us for a hundreds of years. But we need to leave it where it is and need to transition over to renewable energy. So, jobs. The PR says they’re going to provide a 64.000 jobs, but Cuadrilla owns Environmental Impact Assessment, which they did for these two sites here, says that there were only 11 jobs per site. And because they only got a small number of drill rings in the UK, that means that those 11 jobs will move. So when they drilled and got a drill in production and move on to another one, the drill site and those jobs will go with it. We have an operational gas site here already, but it is conventional gas, and that is already in production and been running since 1993. They produce electricity on site, so they burn the gas and transform it to electricity for heating your home for example. That site is managed by one part time semi-skilled worker. So, if they do get to go ahead and they do get to drill on 5000 places in the Fylde, it only takes a few people to manage those 5000 wells.

That is what I meant with ‘all they do is lie’. Last Friday, it was the fifth anniversary of the first earthquakes in Lancashire because of fracking. And there was an article in the local papers, and they interviewed Francis Eagan, the CEO of Cuadrilla, and he said we won’t have any further accidents like earthquakes, because we won’t drill through any folds anymore. Well, Preston New Road, there Environmental Impact Assessment says that they are going to drill through a fold, AND they are going to frack that fold. And Francis Eagan said two years “we’re going to drill trough a fold in Preston New Road to demonstrate that this can be done safely throughout the rest of the Fylde”. That goes in with what he said this Friday. All they do is lie. And what I said, unfortunately a lot of people believe those

lies. There won’t be any huge number of jobs. And it is a booming bust industry as well, as you’ve said. If it produces 10.000 jobs now, those 10.000 jobs won’t be there in another 5 years. It is about short term money. It is about grabbing the profit now, then get the hell out of here. You know when they prosecuted the banks for PPI insurance, for misspelling insurance? A lot of small companies popped up and they reunion and said we will recover your PPI. But that is what this industry is doing. There is an opportunity here to make to quick bucks. So lots of small companies will all get in there and discover the gas, they get it in production and they sell it to a bigger company or if there is no gas they liquidate. J: So Cuadrilla will only be profit-orientated without taking the responsibility for any social or environmental costs?B: Yeah, exactly.

J: Alright. Of course I know that you are against fracking, but what exactly is the goal you have in mind for the decision making process? What would be the best outcome?B: The best outcome in my opinion would be to reject fracking all together. And then I start working on getting rid of the whole of the fossil fuel energy industry. We don’t need to burn fossil fuels. My generation has kind of allowed this to happen. That’s why I fight against this, I got 10 grandchildren who will all grow up in a polluted world and I want them to live in a decent future. I drive my vehicle you know, but we are where we are, but we need to transition into a much more clean energy led future: electric cars, renewable energy sources. Fracking just has to be rejected all over the world. It has to be. If we are going to achieve the climate change targets, we’ve got to do it, otherwise there will be more disrupted weather, tsunami’s, tornado’s, earthquakes. It is just going to destroy this planet. Methane is 80 times more polluting than carbon. And I did some research a couple of weeks ago, I went round four sites all over the UK with a portable gas detector. Two of the sites, which are nearby here, one of them is restored, which is the one where the earthquakes happened. I was getting high methane readings and I can pin it down to the site, because I didn’t just walk on and take a reading. I took four readings, all of which I took into account the wind. I was getting a zero reading upwind of the site, and quite a high reading downwind of the site. That proves that it is not just background methane which I read. I was getting 20.000 parts per million, which is really high. It should be as close to zero as possible. But when the site is working, they enclose it to protect it. They started using these big steal metal barriers, so that would enclose most of the methane. So a worker exposed to that for 8 hours is going to get ill. One of the sites still produced 10.000 parts per million. But because it was enclosed, the workers are way more exposed to the methane than an outsider like me. I was ill after only half an hour of exposure to it. I hope the research will help them. I am going to do a much bigger project around the country, I won’t tell you what it is, but it is similar. I keep saying we’ve got to stop this. Before we are going to destroy this planet, the planet will destroy us if we don’t stop. The extinction of the human race will start if we don’t stop with what we are doing.

J: What strategies will you use to reach the goal of letting fracking be rejected in Lancashire, the UK or even all over the world? B: Well, we are constantly lobbying politicians, either on the national or the local level. We have protest camps on the active sites, and in some cases we’ve pre-empted or taken over a site before they can get to it. That slows them down. Cuadrilla has spent like 250 million pounds on a site, while they haven’t had a cubic meter of gas. Because of us: we slowed them down, we caused them problems, we got Lancashire County Council to reject their applications. And of course we are also

using direct actions where we can. I am not going to discuss strategies with you or anybody else, except in private.

J: Do you feel like there is any hurdle or hinder for Frack Free Lancashire to reach those goals of rejecting fracking?B: The biggest hurdle is the Tory cabinet. They are insisted that they are going ahead with it. I think if the planning inspector comes on our side, and says “I think fracking has to be rejected” – and I think she will – the government they won’t got a problem. They got enough problems as there are at the moments: the UK referendum, sings of rebellion in the conservative party. And we also got this Panama Papers things as well which is putting this government under pressure. If they just say “Yes we are just going to override it [fracking wordt toegestaan]” than that is just a big finger to democracy. And I think that that will be so public, it is not something you can hide, that it looks like a time when Thatcher was in power and she was trying to impose the poll cards. We regretted on the streets, and I’ve got to see that those riots were caused by the police, not by the protestors. The police had tried really hard to provoke us: sexually provoking women on the streets, kicking me in my stomach, punching people, trying to provoke us. I think this government will end up with riots. If this EU referendum – I think we’re screwed whichever way this referendum goes – if it goes against Cameron, he wants to stay in the EU, then he is gone anyway. Because they won’t allow him to stay if he wants us to be in the EU, because he is pro. So it is going to be an interesting year.

J: Last year fracking was rejected, but then all of a sudden it became a subject of the political agenda this year again. What is your opinion on that?B: I think it is extremely undemocratic. The whole thing is undemocratic. Everything this government is doing, but the shale gas thing in particular. The anti-fracking movement has been the fastest growing and the biggest protest moving there has ever been. We are with millions of people and thousands of local groups. Frack Free Lancashire was created for this, as an umbrella for all of those organisations and this campaign. If somebody needs help they just give a shout and we all help. We all come together and join forces.

J: Do you think that your desired outcome will be appreciated by the wider public?B: I think so, absolutely, yeah.

J: In what ways do you think your solution is better than those of other parties or organisations?B: Well, stopping fracking has to be to everyone’s benefit. It is for the planet’s benefit and the people that occupy the planet. Cuadrilla and the other companies that are operating they don’t care. They really really don’t care about the local people. They are completely shut it off. They refer to us as vulnerable receptors. We are just receivers of services. I was reading something about private healthcare. Healthcare companies refer to their patients as service users, so they do dehumanise people. And the people in both these industries they don’t care. They are only interested in their goal: money. These people are so focused on making money and becoming millionaires, that they just don’t care about the environment, and don’t care about the people. The buying over of smaller companies certainly has to do something with this. That is what companies like Cuadrilla are doing. They find a gas source and then sell it to other companies and walk away with no responsibility or whatsoever.

J: What is the main reason you founded frack free Lancashire?B: We had a lot of members at the public who were contacting us and were asking “how do we

object to fracking?” Because lots of people had never rejected against any application in their lives and didn’t knew how to do it. So that was basically our start, we need to have all of the groups out on the streets. We had some meetings, but they only attracted small audiences. We tried knocking on people doors. We decided to go out on the streets and set up our small tent. We drove into Blackpool and we set up right in the centre of Blackpool a couple of tables, loads of loads of brochures, cards and stuff like that, to get people’s signatures. And people were coming to us, like “where can I sign, where can I sign?” The goal was to gather as many possible signatures as possible to reject fracking. We got an access of 30.000. And Friends of the Earth was running a petition as well, and they got another 14.000. So we goth around 50.000 signatures in less than 6 months. J: And Greenpeace, were they involved too?B: Well, actually, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth work together and that’s where the 14.000 came from. Both of these parties helped us a lot with lots of funding. So we could produce lots of materials, like shirts and hoodies and badges and black cards, window stickers and car stickers.

J: How did Frack Free Lancashire get involved in the decision making process around fracking in Lancashire?B: Because we had these two planning applications coming up – the ones we rejected last year – we formed groups in the actual areas were people were opposing to fracking, and we coordinated our objections and we bought in expert witnesses – and this is where the funding came in – to present to the local council to say this shouldn’t go ahead because: health, noise, geology, earthquakes, pollution – all experts on these subjects – and we bought them in and they presented to the Lancashire County Council. And that was a couple days before the actual planning Inquiry. And then we did another presentation on the actual day of the inquiry. We’ve had a full day where we could do presentations that were limited to half an hour. So each person could do with 30 minutes, or all those presentations could be broken up into smaller slots. So we did quite a lot of work on that. And then on the day of the hearing, each person that wanted to, could do a 4 minute presentation. Basically they were summaries of the ones before that. So we spend a lot of time lobbying Lancashire County Council. We bought experts in, lawyers, geologists, experts on chemicals, and obviously it did the job, because they listened and they rejected the applications.

J: Okay, I was wondering, fracking affects people on all scales, like from the local to the global, which scale or scales are most important for Frack Free Lancashire?B: Obviously, as our names says, we are mostly local. But some of us as individuals has a lot of outreach to other areas where they have sold licenses now and we help them making groups. I am involved with the international side of it. I spent a week in Spain last year at an international meeting. The opposition around the world is phenomenal. You know, we’ve had quite a battle here, which isn’t over yet, but we’ve had it easy in the UK and Europe. In South America in fact, three weeks ago, they killed a leader of an opposition leader in Columbia. That is because they are standing up on the big corporations. We are a little bit safer here, but they are bugging of our phones, the industry is spurring into one of my friends for demonstrations that took place. It is about intimidation. The police seems to be working for the corporations, they tried to intimidate us. But we are nog going down, we are with many more people than they have. Eventually, they’ll have to back down, because we will win this fight.

J: In what ways does Frack Free Lancashire tries to attract more supporters of their ideals?B: We get into the media as often as we can. And we’ve got the website, the Facebook page, and if

there is an area which is under threat, we get out there and we help them to form a local group. So we do a couple of talks, take some resources along with us and maybe help them with their first couple of public meetings, and then we let them work for their own. But be there for them, to give them assistance whenever they need any. And it worked, we started with 40 or 50 people, and now it is millions. There are 500 local groups in the UK now and it just grows. It is my constant topic of conversation. If I talk to someone I will bring the topic of fracking eventually. And if they don’t know about it, I will give them education and let them do their own research. J: So it also grows through hear-say?B: Yeah, it just grows and grows.

J: Which other actors or maybe events have been influential in shaping the position on fracking of Frack Free Lancashire?B: We’ve done a lot of work with Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, although it took them three years to really get on board. They didn’t get on board properly. We had some contact with them, and they gave us pockets of help, but they didn’t get on board till 2014. Funny enough since we started Frack Free Lancashire, they came on board after they saw our big support.

Dot Kelk – Friends of the Earth

Dot Kelk is werkzaam bij Friends of the Earth Central Lancashire. Het is een non-profit organisatie die valt onder Friends of the Earth, maar dan kunnen de medewerkers/vrijwilligers zelf kiezen waar het geld aan uit gegeven wordt. Omdat fracking in Lancashire zo een groot ding is gaat een groot deel van het geld dus daar naartoe.

Ik had Dot al enkele keren eerder ontmoet. De eerste keer was bij de documentaire ‘Groundswell Rising’ in het Mystery Tea House. Friends of the Earth had die documentaire georganiseerd, en zij was samen met een andere medewerker daar aanwezig van Friends of the Earth. Na een kort gesprek en mezelf te hebben geïntroduceerd stelde ze voor om nog een keer samen te komen bij de workshop om milieuprotesten te voeren in de County Hall. Eenmaal daar vroeg of ik of ze bereid was om een interview met me te houden. Ze was wel bereid om het te doen, maar vertelde dat ze redelijk zenuwachtig kon zijn. Toch leek het me het beste om echt Dot te interviewen omdat het simpelweg een representatief persoon is van Friends of the Earth, die ik tot nu toe al heel actief te werk heb zien gaan.

11 april 2016, 11:00 uur, Student’s Union in de UCLAN.

J = Joeri/InterviewerD = Dot/respondent

J: Could you describe the job you have in Friends of the Earth for me, please?D: Well, technically it is not a job. I’m a volunteer. I’ve been with FOE now for 16 or 17 years as a local volunteer worker. So basically we do everything, whatever campaign is running. J: How did you get involved with FOE?D: They had a speaker one night from FOE when the original group couldn’t keep going. So two of us went along and we got interested and we joined and we stayed in ever since. So that was an whole other group. But at the moment we do exactly the same thing, trying to revitalize the group, because two of the oldest members just left. J: So how many people are active in FOE Central Lancashire now?D: At the moment just five. We need at least another two to be viable.

J: What motivated you to get on board of FOE?D: People always asking me that, and I really don’t remember, except, as long as I can remember I’ve been interested in wildlife and nature and it’s just been a gradual thing. And I think it was important that one of the main FOE people came to Preston. It was quite a big thing then. So it was a good opportunity to go and listen to them speak. And you’re going to ask what is name is now, but I can’t actually remember.

J: And as a representative of FOE, what is your view on fracking?D: I am a representative for the local group [FOE Central Lancashire]. I am completely opposed to it, not just locally but everywhere. I just think it’s, the amount of fossil fuels that is in the ground now, cannot be burned without climate change to beyond limit. So no matter what protections you put in, it is still not viable for that reason.

J: So, do you think we have to transfer to renewable energy?D: Yes. I mean, some people say you’ve got to get rid of all the gas, but I’m a bit more realistic, but it is just my view. I think we will be using gas for quite a long time to come, because everybody got central heating, which is running on gas. There is enough gas available to do that anyway, we don’t need the additional fracking. And certainly as we produce electricity, I’ve always thought it was incredibly wasteful to burn one fuel to produce another source of energy. So the sooner we get our electricity produced by renewables, the quicker we can reduce our emissions. But I believe we will still be using gas as part of the mix. J: Do you also think we have to change our lifestyles?D: Yeah, it’s all tied up with consumption, massive overconsumption. I think people instinctually feel that, even if they are not environmentalists, particularly around Christmas time. And even more here than in the Netherlands. The absolute overwhelming focus on consumption is breath-taking in the UK. And people know they shouldn’t be doing it, but they don’t know how to not doing it. They’ve got children and they want presents. Most of the profit for the year for companies is earned in the month December.

J: Are there any parties involved in the fracking debate that have quite the same view as FOE?D: The green party is the main party. The labour party has been a little bit on the fence. Some labour party members are really outspoken against it, like the MP for fleedwood, Cat Smith, while others are a bit sitting on the fence. One or two are in favour of it, but as a general rule the labour are more against it than the conservative. J: Do you think more people are against fracking than pro-fracking in the County Council?D: It’s been very evenly divided, but it’s tipped in at the favour of the against in the last decision making. There were enough people in the conservative side that voted against to reduce the balance. There are not too many, because it is a labour dominant parliament anyway, but in the conservatives they don’t want fracking. And when it comes to planning decisions or the comity, enough voted against fracking. J: Are there also any companies or organisations which do have the same view in the fracking debate as FOE?D: Well Greenpeace is working with us. There are obviously various environmental charities that have a view on it, like the Lancashire Wild Life Trust, the CPRB, which is for the protection of rural England, and a lot of them are against it. Church groups like Christian Aid are against it. The reasons are very different, some of them are for wildlife, some more because of a sense of justice and consumption and everything. I think probably FOE and Greenpeace, but particularly FOE have gone against it on the grounds of climate change. That’s our overriding reason. But there are a lot of other reasons why you could be against it. Like loss of biodiversity, landscape biodiversity, damage to the water table, toxic fumes and under earth tumour’s. Although I don’t know, it [earthquakes) happened, and it might happen again, but, and to the local people that’s a really big concern, you know in the bigger picture it is not as big as climate change. J: And are there any parties, companies or organisations which do have the opposite view?D: Yes, the North West Energy Taskforce is pro-fracking. In theory, the North West Chamber of Commerce is supposed to be, but not all its members we consulted is against it. But in the North West Energy Taskforce there is. The universities are in a hard situation. Blackpool and Fylde College University they have gone for fracking, because they have been promised that energy department and finance, so they have backed it [being against fracking]. UCLAN is trying to get not one side of the

other. There was a chap who was well pro-fracking here, he was in environmental studies quite weird enough. He left and went to another university.

J: Who do you think will benefit the most from fracking?D: Well, the oil and gas owners, the shareholders in the oil and gas companies. If it got going the government will get taxations from it. There’s supposed that there are some minor compensations for people living close to the fracking site. A certain amount of money can be distributed if it’s successful, it’s a percentage of the money which is earned with fracking. It depends on the gas company. The company in Yorkshire, INIAS, is offering more than Cuadrilla. It’s all dependent on the actual site being successful. Most do try to provide encouragement. J: Who do you think will have the most disadvantages from fracking?D: Well, obviously the people in near proximity. I think Lancashire is unusual and severe as we provide so much agricultural food. Our crops provide Manchester and Liverpool and the big cities. And it is essential that they are not ever contaminated with, you know, people trust them. Although I think the farming and agriculture they have a lot to do if something goes wrong and the water and the land is contaminated by a chemical spill. So we’ve been trying to get them [farmers] to realize this. We haven’t gone through yet, some of them have, some of the farmers know what it will mean. But that’s what we’re currently working on. J: So do you go speak with them from door to door, or […]?D: They got one lady who is a farmer and they’re very active talking at the Farmers Union. And we have had a lot of support, because outside of the County Hall, last year when we had a big campaign, there was about 12 tractors came. So there were loads of farmers for the various reasons I mentioned. So yes, there are gradually coming on board. But, I think I haven’t said that, farmers are continually struggling for cash. And so the companies could offer them money for seismic monitors on their land. And they offer them money to allow them to drill on their land. And if you haven’t have a lot of cash, it is very tempting. J: Do you think more farmers are pro-fracking or anti-fracking?D: It is hard to put a figure on it. It is divided the community between farmers that definitely don’t want it, and the farmers that do. It is quite pronounced really.

J: What would you describe as the best outcome to come of the decision making process?D: That the inspector reviews Cuadrilla’s appeal, and that Greg Clark, the communities minister, supports the inspector and accepts her recommendation and bans fracking in Lancashire. J: So you also hope it will be rejected on the national level, right?D: Yeah, I believe everyone is watching what is happening in Lancashire right now. If this [fracking] goes ahead, it will just be a mad rush everywhere. So they’re all waiting. It’s not just Lancashire, but Lancashire is just the vital point. Lancashire is at the heart of it. The other companies are warming their way in. I shouldn’t use subjective language. But over in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire they’re meeting councils without allowing the general public to attend and they’re giving them all the advantages as they see it financially to allow they to frack. So they’re not standing still. They’re busy working on it now, and other companies. Nevertheless, they’re waiting for this decision. They know it’s going to matter for them all. J: What do you think will happen if fracking will be accepted?D: That’s what we said at the meeting [van de workshop afgelopen zaterdag], you can still appeal against it. There is a recourse of appeal to parliament I think, and another course of appeal to the European Union. But by that term, it might be possible that we might leave Europe. Because the

European Referendum comes before the decision in Lancashire, so if we voted to leave Europe we haven’t got that protection. We can only appeal to the parliament. But at the moment we can appeal to Europe. The EU are protectors, I mean there are a lot of bad things going on, but most of the environmental laws in the UK are responsible for the EU. I think we should stay in.

J: What strategies will you use to reach or have you used to reach the outcome of rejecting fracking in Lancashire?D: Well. There is a whole range of strategies. The very first I did, me and a lady who works at FOE, we went to West-Lancashire were the first fracking rig just appeared overnight. And we met some of the local people there and we attended the first public meeting, which was actually well attended at that time by the local people. Than after that, Hellen and I went up to the Fylde where we knew the rig was going to go. And people around there knew actually zero about fracking, nothing at all. So we just raised awareness around shops in Little Saint-Annes. You know, what is fracking and that kind of stuff, to ask shopkeepers to put them in the window. Very few would, some did, a lot didn’t know what it was and didn’t want to do it. J: How many years ago is this?D: About five years ago. And then we called a meeting and the people from the first fracking site they came up, because they knew a bit more about it than we did. And it was quite well attended and the people that were attending that meeting went and all started their own groups. It’s going like that. And then they teared down another place, and that place made their own group again. So it is just like a spiders web, it’s going out. Every area is just kind of semi-independent, but we are all in it when someone’s need support. J: Do you also use a lot of social media?D: Yeah, absolutely. Loads and loads. Because to begin with, we couldn’t get anything in the press. That’s not quite the same now, and so yeah social media was amazing. Facebook and Twitter, and we formed and joined membership email. So that we could corresponded with each other. But it was a closed group, so you had to tap two people so that you could join it and you had access to all the information. And that’s still running.J: Do you also attend protests?D: Yeah, we did lots of them. Stores on black markets and stuff, some squares, possessions. Anything at all where we could make an impact really. And outer that a group formed, the fracking Nana’s. Have you met them, Tina with the blonde hair? [zij was aanwezig bij de workshop die afgelopen zaterdag]. They kind of joined and formed their own group. They took on an identity on their own. They have been amazing, they travel anywhere with the rest. They just take food with them usually, and cakes, and get talking to people. So that’s another aspect. And then you’ve got people like Bob, Bob Denett [zie andere interview], who is incredibly knowledgeable on the engineering side. Every fact is just at his fingertips. He will give talks to people and explain. There are a lot people like him. As time goes on, they become increasingly knowledgeable. Really detailed knowledge. J: Yeah indeed, when I spoke to him he had all his facts straight. He said like, “oh 33 percent of this and that” […]D: I like to go and listen to him, because I can’t do that. But I like it, because I learn such a lot from him. And there are other people than that who over the last five years have developed the most amazing knowledge and they use it in good advantage. You know, we also write to councils and members of the parliament, everything we can think of. Because there is a whole range of people from what you’ve might think of, middle class ladies right to the whole side of public quite far on the

left. But they all come together in their different ways to oppose fracking. And by and large, it works. Occasionally, there is a disagreement because there are so many people in it right know. But generally speaking anybody does work together. Even though there are sometimes different people, so that is our strength.

J: Do you feel like there is any hurdle or hinder to reach the goal of rejecting fracking?D: Yes, the government is a main hurdle, ha-ha. Because they are pro-fracking. J: Are you speaking about the national government, or the county council?D: The national government. Greg Clark who is the minister for local communities and development, he and an environmental minister, signed a letter you probably know more about, saying they supported fracking [http://leftfootforward.org/2016/02/leaked-letter-shows-governments-undemocratic-approach-to-fracking/]. That letter was leaked out. But he is the one who is going to make the decision, so I don’t see how it can be democratic if you have already stated your opinion. That’s the big hurdle. I think the local council now is convinced. And they’ve also been upset by the pressure being put on them by the national government. So they feel their authority is being undermined. They tended to be against for that reason, yeah. Because before the decision was taken [last year] there was another letter from George Osborn (?) which was leaked out, saying he wanted the fracking. It made it quite clear to the local councils that this is what they want. But the local councillors feel that their authority is being taken away. So I suggest human nature what it is, but obviously they have been sending that. So that is how it done to me. J: You also had a petition, right?D: Oh gosh, so many petitions. Many petitions, letters and thousands of people signing it. We would hand them in in big boxes to County Hall and then we get a photograph and put it in the newspaper and stuff. Thousands of letters, thousands of petitions. J: And also a petition together with Greenpeace, right? With around 14.000 signatures.D: Yeah, we did that as well. We also collected a business list [die van Frack Free Lancashire met 330 businesses against fracking]. We visited Lancashire businesses and asked them if they would sign up to our anti-fracking list? They did sign them up. This was to counteract with the Northwest Energy Taskforce, who said that all these different businesses signed up pro-fracking. But a lot of those people it turned out where actually from the outside area. Big companies that worked elsewhere but may have had a link with Lancashire. Not only that, but we contacted every single one of them, two years after they done it, to make sure if they were happy to stay on the list. And I’m quite sure that they actually all by a few were against. So we were really careful with this list. But that was quite difficult to do, because you can imagine shopkeepers are quite stressed with doing anything and taking a stance in with chances in the future in mind.

J: Do you think that your desired outcome of the decision making process will be appreciated by the wider public?D: There will be some that will object, because they will say “we’re losing all these jobs and investment”, which we deny that will happen anyway. They will bramble and will try to make us appear as sort of left-wing… what they call tree huggers. But then there are a lot of people who will be glad. I think at the moment it is approximately 50/50 in polls throughout the country. It depends on the survey. They argue that the silent majority will be pro-fracking, but you can’t make that conclusion. So, at the moment it is almost evenly balanced. But the thing is, if you ask another question and say “how much do you know about fracking?”, the group who admit they don’t know much about it are more likely to be pro-fracking. Once you know about it, you can’t not know. Which

is why there is very little education on mainstream television. We’ve got to go out and find it or you’ve got to be able to use social media. And a lot of older people they wouldn’t use social media so they can’t get that sign of it. It’s a big problem.

J: In what ways do you think your desired outcome is better than those of other parties or organisations? D: How do you mean?J: Well, for example, what would you say to the supporters of fracking who come up with the economic benefits or it brings jobs arguments? In what ways is your outcome better than those?D: Right, the jobs argument has been greatly accentuated. I don’t know all the figures, but I know there is a document I read in which Cuadrilla admit that local jobs will be around 11 per well, which is not many. All the information from the US has shown that it is outside engineering and drilling experts that travel with the fracking companies. They go from site to site, and when the site is done they go to another. It’s not the local people. They might get jobs in the canteen and all, there will be some environmental jobs I suppose. Things like that. But for the actual fracking it is not going to be a big big industry. People say it will be like the old mines. Somebody said to me “we do need it”. Even if you accept that they were good, which they weren’t in many ways, there won’t be a big population in a town making a living from living, it doesn’t happen that way. And also Cuadrilla said that most of it will be done by machines and computers, once it is up and running. There is a document FOE had produced [zie map], just on the jobs side. But yeah, people need jobs, of course they do, but there are so many jobs in renewable energy. In fact, more in renewable energy. If the government would just give that the tax base that is given to the fossil fuels we could be building a lot of important stuff instead of importing it from China. You know, we could be making it. And we will have so many employed in renewable energy then.

J: How did your party get involved in the decision making process around fracking?D: By party do you mean FOE?J: Yeah indeed. D: Well, FOE have obviously had a whole history of campaigning. They help bring about the English Climate Change Act in the first place. So they were well versed in campaigning. Obviously in climate change. I would say, nationally, they [FOE] got involved [in the fracking debate] through a particular person, and that person was a lady called Hellen Rimmer, who actually belongs to the local group but also works for FOE. She came once to the Fylde to hand the leaflets out in the first place. The more we learned about it [fracking], the more she became passionate about it. But because it was a local problem, it didn’t immediately impacted FOE nationally. So Hellen, as a representative of the Northwest, pushed and pushed, brought more and more information and spoke to the energy consultant, Tony Bashworth, invited him up, he came up, he spoke to all the anti-fracking people of western-Lancashire, looked to the site and he came on board. And gradually from that, the policy was voted on one year and we became second in a list of about five, which is actually quite good really, because it is the national FOE. And then the more and more we learned about it they would send representatives from London to help us and give us advice. And then gradually they took it as a priority. Well, initially, I think it was Hellen who started it. Just one person. But that’s just my view anyway. So we got to the point where we are today where FOE provided ciliatures and lawyers to speak at the hearing, and experts and given advice to the local groups who were opposing. So they really have got absolutely involved in it. But that is the nice thing from FOE, because every little area has the opportunity to put their concern trough. And it can be voted on, you know?

J: Is fracking the main point of FOE Central Lancashire right now?D: It’s funny really, it had to become that, but it wasn’t really becoming that, because we have so many other things we want to work on. We’ve been working on renewable energy for years now, we’ve been working on a big campaign on preventing carry-bags. Disposal waste, recycling, creating of the bee worlds, that’s what I really want to campaign on. Anyway, that’s what I want to do, but at the same time fracking is so important. We really have to focus on fracking.

J: Fracking affects people on all different scales, starting from the local citizens around a fracking well to people over the world suffering from the effects of climate change. On which scale is FOE focussing mostly?D: Number one most important have to be climate change, because we cannot extract that amount of shale gas and combat climate change. But at the same time we recognise all the other concerns, and the local people concerns about industrialisation of the landscape. But I think, certainly from my point of view, I would guess FOE would agree, the most important thing is climate change.

J: In what ways does FOE tries to attract more people to support your ideas about the fracking debate?D: Well, social media is one obviously, through the local groups. Because we’ve now amalgamated to Frack Free Lancashire for example, although we’ve got our own identity. So whenever we go to do a store somewhere, we tend to combine the two. We go as FOE and tell people about the things we do, but we also do the fracking as well. So we kind of try to relate to two things. We’ve had a lot shown films, like the one you saw the other week, but we also reach out to other groups like Fairtrade Group and Global Justice. Whenever it is possible we’re linking with them to try and share each other’s members. Also once a year we have a big event, it is in Dubshire this time. In the past that was just for FOE, but now it is open to all environmentalists to share their views and members. So there is a lot more now to try and see what it is common. And I also think we need to work with church groups. In Preston there is a justice and peace group at the big church, who are really hot on climate change. So I think there is a really big scope to work with churches as well. It’s basically to find the likeminded people. But the next big step is to get them actually […] take the step of actually doing something. There’s a lot of national members of FOE who donate on a regular basis and get the magazine and share their ideas, but they’re not necessarily take that other step to actually meet people and stand up and I don’t want this or don’t do this. That’s a big thing. J: Is that also the reason why the workshops like this past Saturday are being organised?D: Yes, yes. We have another gathering in January, and then the groups across Yorkshire and down to Manchester and Liverpool are all invited.

J: Did your position on fracking changed over the last years?D: Yes, I think it is because I became more definite against it. When I first started I didn’t know a lot about it. I was more trying to see if there was anything good about it. But the more I read and the more I saw, the more I moved away from that. It is the knowledge about it.

J: Which other actors, or maybe events, have been influential in shaping your position on fracking?D: Ehm […]. Well, there’s a specific person. He’s a member of the Green Party, from Blackpool. He was the very first person who used the word ‘fracking’ to me. And she showed me a sort of grainy little video on her laptop, his name was ‘Philip’ […], well I don’t remember the surname. He explained to me what fracking was and that was the first time I heard the word. Since then, well obviously FOE

have been fantastic with providing information, but the Frack Free Lancashire group has developed and grown in such an authority with so many knowledge. Particular the two groups in Roseacre and Preston New Road. They have literally volumes [maakt een heel grote beweging met haar handen] of information about fracking, which they actually took to the hearing. It was all displayed across the back of the room. That was all compiled by them. So my knowledge comes from them. There’s also a women called […], well I can’t find the name, but she’s a blogger on this blogsite. I wrote it down for you. She’s amazingly informed and she send information every week, and I learn a lot from. Ah, Drill Or Drop it’s called. Tremendous amount of info. And another group called EcoWatch. They are amazing as well. So I get an awful lot from them now. So these are the four main ones: national FOE, Drill or Drop, EcoWatch and Frack Free Lancashire. That’s where I get the most information from. J: Do you also watch the Frackoff site? D: Yeah, also the Frackoff site! I’ve got my own site, but we share all social media, Facebook, we share our sites. So if anyone has got a link, we’ve share it on our Facebook site, so that everyone can see it. And Twitter, and whatever other blogs we’ve got. The information can be send to everyone within minutes. These are the main ways I get my information. I do try and scroll the net a bit, and see what non-commitment people are saying. So I do watch the other side, but I tend not to that as much. I’ve also got a contact in Australia. They’re also struggling to ban fracking in Australia. Their prime minister is very non-environmental. So they’re basically fighting the fossil fuel industry over there. So I share links with them and they’ve also got a Nana’s group, so I find out what they’re doing. So it’s become sort of European and international. Sometimes Americans come over too, to talk to us. We’ve had someone from Eastern Europe I think, which was the country that banned fracking I think. A young women came over from there to share information about what they were doing. So we’ve got contacts worldwide now. And of course some places it is a lot harder for them. You know, we try to ban fracking and we grumble for that, but they aren’t even allowed to campaign. It is a lot more risky to do it. So we are fortunate to be in a democracy so we can deal with it and grumble about it loudly.

John Swindells – Preston City CouncilDe Preston City Council werkt als volgt (http://www.preston.gov.uk/thecouncil/about-preston-city-council/council-works/): Er zijn 57 democratisch verkozen councillors, waarvan 32 van de Labour party zijn, 19 Conservatives, 5 Liberal Democrats en 1 Independent. De Labour party is het grootste, en heeft dus de controle over de council. De councillors komen eens in de drie maanden bijeen, maar komen in kleinere getalen bijeen in een Cabinet, die bestaat uit 6 leden. Daarvan is John Swindells er één van. Hij is de “Deputy Leader and Planning and Regulation Office Holder”.

Na een uitgebreide rondleiding te hebben gehad door de Mayor’s room en de vergaderruimte van de City Council wilden we gaan zitten voor het interview. Toen kwam echter de burgermeester langs en had ik een kort gesprek over mijn onderzoek met haar. Toen vertelde John dat hij ook een burgermeester was geweest voor een jaar.

13 april, 12:00. John Swindells, Deputy Leader and Planning and Regulation Office Holder.

J = Joeri/interviewerS = John Swindells/respondent

J: How exactly would you describe the job you have here in the Preston City Council?S: Eh, in line with fracking, or […]?J: No, just in general.S: I’m the Deputy Leader of the Council and my portfolio is involved in planning, and regulations as well, which has to do with anything related to the environment, health, taxes, licenses and etcetera, so. Anything where there is any processing and the city has tabulated (?) and such, yeah. J: Okay, and for how long have you had this job?S: About four years. And before that I was a mayor for only one year in Preston. It [mayor] doesn’t have many powers. The leader of the council has the power, so… yeah. J: What motivated you to apply for this job?S: I was previous chair of planning comity, and I’ve always been interested in planning – something my colleagues found I had grasp for detail and other things, so it seems to fit very well fit planning and other regulatory stuff that comes along with it.

J: How big of a thing is fracking here under the local citizens?S: Perhaps bigger for me, because I’m very much an anti-fracker, I’ve joined the protests, stood outside County Hall last year. So yes, I do feel it is a really big issue for the county, not least for its transporting constructor, because the actual ability to actually move the necessary wastewater and stuff away is going to be a big challenge for the highway system around fracking. J: Do you believe that the citizens in Preston are well informed about fracking?S: I think they know a lot more than they did. I think they have been inebriated with stuff and that’s the problem you get with both sides. And how well informed they [citizens] are, I’m not too sure. J: So the earthquakes for example could have led to better informed citizens?S: Yes, I think it is a really long time that people were really not aware of it. J: Was fracking a topic that was spoken about in the City Council before the earthquakes?

S: Probably not, no. It was something that was going on behind the scenes almost. It was a start-up process.

J: What is the influence of the Preston City Council on the decision making process?S: We’re on the accountial thieves (?) in the process. The actual main planning decisions are taken by the county hall at the county council [dus door de Lancashire County Council]. Obviously, that has now gone to the planning inspector and eventually he could be overruled by the minister, so […]. I think that’s probably one of the biggest issues for people in Preston, that a local decision is being made and that may well be overturned. Even the planning inspector may come down on the side of turning the application down and still the minister can be overruling.J: So the role of the Preston City Council is […]S: The consultees they rush for what their feelings say when the actual applications came true. None of them were in Preston. The only ones that actually came to planning committee where they put seismic monitors and several places around the […] particular to the west of the city, where they actually measure the earthquakes, so that may or may not be caused by fracking if it starts again.

J: In the Lancashire Evening Post I saw the following sentences: “Deputy leader of Preston Council, Councillor John Swindells, said the council did not yet have a stance on fracking, but he would object to it from a personal perspective.” And also the following one: “I will be joining to protestors at County Hall, I very very much object to fracking.” Why is it that you object fracking?S: I think the last thing the planet needs is another fossil fuel. I think we’re going to leave a legacy to my grandchildren and their children that the planet cannot stand and all the other stuff that goes around: the potential for contaminated land and the actual stuff that’s taken out of the ground as well. But it is mainly the planet costs of another fossil fuel. We should be concentrate on renewables and whatever, so. J: Have you always been against fracking since you know about it?S: The more I know, the more determined I’ve been against it, so […].

J: Has the council already taken in a stance on fracking?S: They have in the end. They did take a decision that they would not allow fracking on any council land in the city, which is pretty much anything we can do as a council. J: Does Roseacre Wood and Little Plumpton road also account under the city’s area?S: That’s actually in the Fylde area, that’s not in Preston. Preston is on the borderline. But obviously the shale field actually just passes on the part of the city and obviously they are a part of it and it goes right through from the Fylde coast into the rural area, so it does cross Preston. So the potential that future sites will be in the city are very close to it. J: Okay, so the Preston City Council has objected fracking?S: Well, they said that they won’t allow fracking on any of its land. So they are not actively supporting fracking. J: And what if the inspector than allows fracking to happen in Preston? S: Well, the decision will be on the two sites [Roseacre Wood and Preston New Road], but obviously that will set the press again for further applications as they could come in there and […]. I would hope we try and resistance, but it would be much more difficult to turn an application down if this one succeeds.

J: I also read another article from the Lancashire Evening Post in which you said that you attended a protest against fracking in front of the County Hall, and afterwards Councillor Neil Cartwright said that “you should display more responsibility and not be dragged into this gesturing”. What was your response to that? S: Well, if you can’t get involved in the future of the planet, what are you a politician for? So no, there is no reason I shouldn’t take a stance. I would do the same tomorrow really.

J: The founder of Frack Free Lancashire, he told that the government positions seems to be incredibly out of touch with the public opinion for shale gas. I believe they are speaking of the national government, but do you think the government really doesn’t listen to the public opinion?S: Absolutely. If I as a councillor in Preston sitting on planning committee here, and I’ve said that I support the building of new houses in my ward before the application was coming for committee, I would not be allowed to sit on that committee to take that decision because I already predetermined my decision. So if I support a new church in my ward and the application comes through, I cannot sit on that committee, because I’m deemed to be predetermined. But the government is predetermined in its place, but it can make the decision and that just […]. But no other politician anywhere in the system is allowed to make a decision on the planning application if it got a predetermined position. We had the strange position in Preston a few years ago with the football club wanted to – the one which borders my ward – wanted to build the new stadium, expand the stadium. Local people in my ward objected to that, on parking issues etcetera, and I was not allowed to speak for them because I was a shareholder and thus my position was deemed as predetermined. There was no way I could speak on their behalves. And the public was allowed to speak, even if I was going to speak against the application. So the minister has said that they support fracking. The minister will take the decision, and he will be taking the government’s position. So if that is not predetermined, then what is? Any local politician that would come out one way or another and would have had an application cannot come forward and do it, unless they listens fairly to both sides. And I cannot see how that position can be held. That position can be taken locally. The same position could be taken by the planning inspector, he would take a recommendation for the minister. He could recommend that fracking does not take place in Roseacre Wood and Little Plumpton. But if he takes the decision and it can’t, the minister can still overrule it. That’s crazy!J: Would you describe the decision making process as undemocratic?S: Absolutely undemocratic, yes. It takes no interest on local decision making, because the whole pre-text on planning the government has said, is its local decision made by local people, and they ride rude shell over that.

J: What is your opinion of the recent movement of the Cuadrilla Resources headquarters to Lancashire?S: Well I think the case is fascinating overstated if you look at where […]. Well, the argument has been, and the Chambers argument is, it will bring lots of jobs into Preston and highly skilled and lots of money. And the actual way fracking is happening over the world, including in America, it is very short term gain [of jobs], and then they move on and you go back to where you were before and you get let behind with a legacy of cleaning up after them. So yes, in the short term it will probably bring jobs, not as many as people think, I think most of them are highly skilled and highly paid jobs, or people moving from country to country and from well to well, and they [jobs for local people] will stay for short term. Short while, they will not be local Lancashire people – the supply chain maybe –

but that will only be short term while it is around there. So I think some of the economic benefits are fascinating overstated. I suppose the chamber of commerce would say I would say that per se – an anti-fracker.

J: Does all the involved companies, organisations or parties have an equal say in the decision making process in your opinion?S: I think if the planning process was allowed to operate as it was, then yes we would have, but it’s a bit biased to know that the decision is already been made. It looks like Cuadrilla and the other companies that are going to frack around the country have got the ear of the government, and the government are on fully acting on their behalf I think.J: How does it come that Cuadrilla have a bigger say? Is it because of the involved money?S: I think it is a short decision. The energy market has got shortfall in the next few years, and in some way that I think the government says they could fill that gap quite quickly, and somebody else would pay for that, you know? They need to invest in renewables, I think, to make those pay.

J: In your opinion, was the decision making process around fracking easy to follow and transparent as a citizen?S: It was perhaps easy for me. But if you’re not really interested in fracking, it probably isn’t. I think planning, whatever is coming, whether it’s your house extension or the block of flats down the road, it isn’t easy for anybody. I think it is difficult to understand, because the government has said that the decision will be made at a local level, but it is […]. So If you look at Northwest Preston, for example, where they want to build another 5000 houses, if the local decision was made to the local people they would want the green fields to stay. But the government has told the council that it has land for 5000 homes, and therefore any planning application would be approved, whether we approve it or not. They set targets, and then say that local people can make local decisions. We can make local decisions on their targets, and they will impose […]. The planning process actually, everybody objects to it, and they allow it, why? Because that is government policy that overrides anything else. J: The government is on the national level here, right?S: The permission for housing is indeed made at the national government. And as a council we have to operate national planning and policy.

J: Was there any conflictive or even abusive intercourse between the involved parties, companies or organisations in the decision making process?S: I think it was a difficult decision. Of course there were protestors of both sides. I was glad that I wasn’t set on that committee at County Hall. The feel the tremendous pressure of both sides I’m sure. But that’s the role you set your foot for as a councillor. So you get it on every application to a lesser or greater degree. J: Was pro- and anti-fracking around the 50/50 mark?S: There were probably more anti-frackers around. But the pro-frackers are obviously well organized and well financed, really, which is the difference. The anti-frackers are not as well financed, but they are much more commitent I think and much more specifilus (?) perhaps.

J: Who do you think will benefit the most from fracking?S: Probably the oil companies, and like always, the main companies will do and the governments to a lesser extent. We’ll be left to pick up the costs at the end of it. Oh, and the possibility on the short term for lower energy bills. But not particularly for longer than a short period of time.

J: For whom will fracking have the most disadvantages?S: The generations who have to come I think, who will have to see what happens in the next few years.

J: The last question, in what ways were local citizens involved in the decision making process?S: The one good thing about the process here is that we are allowed to object to that and we are allowed to give our voice in favour of things. So the people are allowed to attend meetings, we are allowed to speak in public against it. So that has been the good part, that their cases have been put part of the application itself and the planning inquiry for the inspector.

J: Is there anything else you want to say or do you have a question for me?S: Well a while ago I was at a Blackpool soccer game, and they invited guest speakers to speak about fracking on both sides. One of the things that amazed me was that the Blackpool Uni was actually on the opposite side on fracking [pro-fracking], they were supported it. The GMB itself [the University] actually wanted to represent themselves. So they actually supported that, probably in opposition to what I feel, but […]. At least they gave us a speak on both sides, which usually doesn’t happen. J: Yeah, I’ve heard about the Blackpool University being pro-fracking, which is quite a controversial stance. S: Yes, indeed, because Cuadrilla wants to put a trainingsschool on that platform, yeah.

Mark Shackleton – Prof. Uni. LancasterMark is een professor aan de University of Lancaster en is een “Associate Dean for Postgraduate Studies”. Hij heeft meerdere malen zijn mening over fracking gepubliceerd in een wetenschappelijk tijdschrift of op een blog (zoals The Conversation). Het leek me interessant om Mark te interviewen omdat hij een van de weinige professoren lijkt te zijn die relatief pro-fracking is.

Dit interview verliep heel anders dan alle andere interviews die ik tot nu toe gehad had. Ik ontmoette Mark bij de receptie van de universiteit, waarna hij me wat te eten en drinken aanbood en me een rondleiding gaf door de universiteit. Praktisch gezien is de universiteit van Lancaster voor ongeveer de helft van zijn eigen energievoorzieningen voorzien. Mark vertelde me dat de universiteit zo’n 40 procent van zijn stroom krijgt van een eigen windmolen en een turbine voor water wat stroomafwaarts stroomt. Mark is een van de paar professoren die betrokken is bij de energievoorziening van de universiteit. Het groepje wilt proberen 100 procent zelfvoorzienend te zijn qua energie en eventueel ook producerend te zijn voor de Lancaster binnenstad. Toen Mark me de windmolen liet zien vergeleek hij de komst van de windmolen met het huidige fracking debat. Het is iets wat nodig is voor de samenleving en wat in het algemeen voordelen heeft, maar wel voor een kleine groep nadelig is, bijvoorbeeld de omwonenden van een fracking well of van de windturbine.

Toen we eenmaal op een rustige plek zaten opende ik m’n laptop om de vragen klaar te houden, maar Mark leidde vanaf het begin af aan praktisch gezien al het hele interview. Het begon met het feit dat ik voorzichtig moest zijn met het interpreteren van zijn opvattingen en dat ik niet zonder zijn toestemming iets mocht doorgeven aan de pers of mag publiceren. Hij wilt eerst de context zien waarin het werd gepubliceerd. Uiteraard begreep ik het. Ook de rest van het interview werd praktisch door hem geleid, wat op zich geen probleem is voor het onderzoek, omdat Mark als professor niet direct betrokken is bij het besluitvormingsproces. Het leek me dus het beste om hem z’n gang te laten gaan en zijn gedachtes over fracking uit te laten spreken zonder daarbij gestructureerd vragen te stellen.

14 april 2016, 10:30 – 12:30, Professor Mark Shackleton, University of Lancaster.

J: Joeri/interviewerM: Mark/respondent

[begint met de vraag van Mark of ik dit interview zorgvuldig wil verwerken in het onderzoek, en voordat ik het publiceer toestemming vraag aan Mark. Ook verteld hij dat eerdere uitspraken van hem over fracking in de pers vaak heel uiterst worden genomen omdat dat de aandacht van de lezer trekt. Zo zie je vaak in de pers pro-fracking of anti-fracking staan, maar geen tussenweg. Voordat m’n scriptie openbaar gepubliceerd zou kunnen worden wilt Mark graag zijn stuk nog een keer herlezen om te zien of het niet uit zijn context wordt getrokken].

M: Okay, so I will give a little bit of history. Lancaster has got an Energy Management Group, so Bastian and I sit on an energy group and energy Lancaster. And over the course of 3 or 4 years that organised in terms of resonance for supervision. And we also have a sustainability resource grouping. We got a researcher who is actually from Rotterdam last year, Gaya Whiteman. She moved from Rotterdam to Lancaster and brought her research centre here, because we found a company who would like to fund sustainable research. The Lancaster University have invited some people with

regard to people in the past. 3 years ago I believe it was. We hosted the Royal Geological Society on campus, and I can’t remember the name of the representative, but he spoke about the geological implications of fracking in the sublayers of the earth. J: Alright, so it was about earthquakes for example?M: Yeah, so we had an earthquake in 2011. It was about 3 o’clock in the morning, because that was when the test fracking was occurring. I didn’t feel it, I didn’t wake up, but my dog did. My dog starts barking, I walk downstairs and see nothing happening. Told the dog it was good, went to bed, and then the next morning I saw in the newspapers that there was an earthquake of 2.3 at 2:47. I didn’t feel it, most people didn’t feel it. Very small amount of damage, but clearly, it was that event which then triggered the suspension of fracking until safety and security was analysed. Lancaster University is at the edge of the Balend (?) Shale and it’s on the edge of potential drilling sites which are a part of Cuadrilla. So it [Cuadrilla] has two sites. One of them is Roseacre Wood, and the other is Little Plumpton I think. Drillings suspended until the license was restated. But the drilling is awaiting on the public acceptance, so the public agreement, and obviously that’s subject of appeal in Preston and there is going to be a national meeting at some point and Lancashire Council are waiting on that decision. And if the government indeed does overrule they [Lancashire County Council] have to take that back to the local citizens, to try and get support and test the actual willingness of the local communities to accept the infrastructure that’s coming to place for a period of time in order to develop the capacity of the gas well in the 30 year frame.

So, that’s really Lancaster University’s involvement in terms of energy. We are a big energy consumer and we want to be a producer of it too. I think we [the university] were interested in fracking because it is an important region of concern, and not just a national concern, and potentially then the university is in a position of being a trusted source of information or recommender for the policy. And certainly, the occasion, when the Geological Society were here, there were about 30 to 40 people coming from the local community who came to campus to participate in that debate. And they had the opportunity to ask about geology, geophysics, earthquakes, and some of the key questions were associated with methane and the potential for methane breaking away from the fracking zone into the aquifer, which is the water source. My understanding, although I got into management now, was that the times taken for methane to break into the aquifer zone and the probably of that event, were very low. So that is what I took away from that event. Not only would it take a lot of time, but in fact it is quite unlikely. So even if there is going to be a methane escape from the fracking zone into the water zone, with the possibility that’s happening it would take a long time, and secondly that is not a certain event, but there may well be barriers between the two zones. So I took away from that talk that the possibility of that event was low, and therefore in itself wouldn’t contribute a significant risk to the water storage on short term.

J: I read in an article of yours from last year I believe that shale gas could be a transition fuel […]M: Yeah, so basically a lot of geologists can’t really comment on the geology, although the gas layer is well separated from the water aquifer. So how deep is fracking happening do you think?J: It is around 1 mile deep in the ground, is that right?M: Yeah, yeah. Do you think that is understand by the people you have interviewed and were against fracking? Do they know about that distance?J: Ehm, I don’t know really. I haven’t spoken to them about the physical process of fracking. I believe they are really concerned about the methane going back into the drinking water and back into the air.

M: So yeah, I believe when it [methane leakage] is going to happen, it would happen between 1 mile to, well basically the aquifer is back up a 100 of feet or meters, so if it is going to happen it is not going to happen around that rock in 1 or 2 kilometres. It is going to happen where the drilling hole goes through the aquifer. So the risk is not that it goes upwards from the drill into the aquifer, the risk is that when you bring the methane up in the bore hole, it escapes where the borehole goes through the aquifer. Hundreds of meters down, not one kilometre down. That has to do with the integrity of the concrete casing. So a lot of the poor work in the US, my guess, is that it has to do with the concrete lining be done too quickly and not on the right standard. And if methane is getting into the water course than that is the point. Not down down below where it is going up the borehole. If the borehole is not cased properly it comes up there. That has to do with how much money and time is spend on that casing process. But my understanding is that if you get the right engineering and the right concrete, it can be made secure. So for me, at least 2 or 3 of the technological difficulties, come down to technological difficulties and we have technological solutions for that if you do it properly and with the right men.

J: So, basically you are pro-fracking [...]M: Hooo, tricky huh? Because the point is that there are not many people – and I don’t have a relationship with Cuadrila – and I said this on the conversation website, I don’t have a relationship with Cuadrilla. I went to one occasion to hear his view, but I haven’t had research founded by that, so I can talk independently from that. So, my guess and my understanding is that it can be made technological safe at that level. However, it’s still very intrusive and it’s still very bothering to the people who are close to the frack site for an 18 month period during which time the well is constructed. So you have a 1 or 2 year period when there is a lot of machinery to drill, a lot of machinery to pump, a lot of machinery to get the water on pressure, so lots of machines, trucks, water and drilling sounds and noise from the pumps. That goes on for at least a year, probably a maximum 2 years. And that is noisy, probably smelly and dirty. I accept that.

J: And what do you think they are going to do with the waste water of the well?M: That is still an issue, and it has to be properly treated. Clearly, it can’t be put in service points, clearly it can’t go in the rivers or the sea, because it contains minerals and material which is probably best returned downwards. So part of the drilling solution is finding a solution for the water. Now if you’re going to drill another well, I would use it for that well, so that you recycle it. So that you don’t have to use more water, you can re-use it. But obviously it has to be restored or cleaned up, and that is up to the drilling companies to find a solution for that. But if they are regulated by the same means as mining and extraction, than that would be subject to the same requirement as a mine company or an extraction company, where they have to meet the same safety standards for waste water disposal and all that. But the difference is that compared to a regular mining firm, they’re going to have a lot more water, because it is critical to their method. But the legislation that would catch them, would be the same legislation as the mining and extraction. It is just that they have to think more carefully about how they’re going to meet their environmental standards in terms of disposal. But clearly that would not be fine if they get rid of it through the river, the ocean or any other flows that would come back in the water source or aquifer. So that’s their solution to fix. Now they say they will take a responsibility for that, but if it were approved you have to trust and we have legislations that will ensure them to do it properly and if they fail they have to get a compensation. The best outcome would be to find a way with safety and security, and it could be the next dwell or it can be another

deep point where they have to find another certain way beneath the aquifer were the water can be stored safely. But that’s an issue.

But I was viewing the major subtending issue for the community, the Roseacre and Little Plumpton community, as being the traffic movement and the noise and the drilling in the first two years. But after that, my understanding, is that it is going to be silent, traffic free and not problematic for the remainder of its horizon.

J: I believe the main concern from the local citizens is that the fracking can cause earthquakes and also contaminate water and it can cause health problems because of the fumes going upwards. What would you say to those concerns?M: So list them again. What was the first one?J: Earthquakes.M: So that’s the first one. So yeah, we had an earthquake, it wasn’t very severe, there was no substantial property damage, although if you may frack more aggressively then you may have slightly higher earthquakes, but I don’t believe that will amount to a large amount of damage. And I’m basically basing my view on the Royal Geological Society that came here, so that’s a talk I heard here three years ago. They didn’t think that the substructure was vulnerable to massive earthquakes. So it’s going to be small and not significant. Okay, and what’s the second one?J: Contaminated water I believe. M: Okay, it’s not about the interface between the fracking zone and the aquifers higher up, they are too far separated and there are too many layers in between. It’s about bringing the water up and down through the bore hole and through the sensitive region and it is about the gas not leaking out of that. And then it is about finding a solution for the water disposal and we’re finished. But if the borehole is properly constructed and if there are safe places found where we can put the water, I think that is technologically a solver as well. I think the one thing you can’t fix is the 1 to 2 years in which the fracking site is constructed, the people living very close to the well will suffer from disruption: noise, fumes and lots of traffic. That’s just 1 to 2 years of disruption, and if I had to deal with that, I might just say to the firm “I can’t live here when you do it, so I might just move temporarily and come back. And I would just say you have to pay me for being out of my home for 2 years”. But that’s quantifiable. You can say to the people in that area “okay, we understand it is going to be a big disruption, and we are going to locate you for a two year period”. You know, it is not desirable, but you can be located for a 1 to 2 year period. I think their biggest concern is the damage to their property. So let’s have a look at that. The second concern is, when I come back, what will it look like? And when I come back, will my property price be affected negatively by the fact that there is a gas dwell nearby my house? That has to do with the security of the borehole, it has to do with the fact how well the well is put together and if that’s done properly there won’t be long term impact on people’s property, their value or how enjoyable a region is to live in. After that period of 1 to 2 years, you can come back. Some people might go and some people won’t do it. They say “I won’t go out” and I understand, and you have to give them arrangements when they stay where they are. J: I believe the biggest concern is the fumes going out of the well and the health problems it can cause. M: Okay, so which chemicals in particular?J: I believe methane, and I wouldn’t know of any other chemical. M: Well, obviously they’re using the chemicals to put down in the ground to complete the fracturing process. And those may have concerns, about their water, and the methane may come after. So if

the drilling is trying to capture the methane, what it can capture will be burned, because you don’t want to have it in the atmosphere, because it is a more warmer substance than carbon dioxide. But if you could do it, you can either capture it or burn it. And are there any other chemicals that people are concerned about?J: Well, there was a long list of chemicals involved, and Cuadrilla doesn’t list most of these chemicals. M: Yeah they’re trying to keep it a secret, because that’s just a commercial concern. But of course they can give you the chemicals they use, they just won’t tell people what it is. J: It is around 1 percent of chemicals and the other 99 percent is a mix of water and sand. And the people think that 1 percent seems a small amount […]M: No, no. It seems like a small amount by volume, but we need to know what they are using, because even if it is a small amount it could be toxic to humans and they specifically use chemicals which kill bacteria, because they don’t want bacteria to develop, otherwise it would block gas. So you’re right, there are things in there which are toxic. So yeah, we should know which ones. But it is a mile away from us. I mean that’s a vertical mile, I can’t really imagine climbing down a latter for a mile. Can you? That’s a long time. People think it is below them, but they don’t really have an understanding of how far it is. J: But the chemicals flow upwards in the pipes, so […]M: Yeah that’s right, that’s when people get concerned. It comes close to you, either a layer a 100 meters from you or at the surface. So they have to be very very carefully with that. I do agree with that.

J: What do you believe is the role of the university in the decision making process around fracking in Lancashire?M: The university owns a small amount of land, so the university isn’t a large player in terms of real estates. And the university is never going to allow fracking to happen on its land, because it is not the right area. So the university can’t be a major factor to change the outcome. And on top of it all universities should be places where people can discuss and open decisions will be made, so they influence opinions and give information, but they never are actually the lead actor. They don’t get to change the government’s minds. We can recommend but not insist. J: Do you think the university delivers a big amount of information about fracking?M: Okay, we’ve got a lot of energy researchers here and we have management researchers. But we have researchers also working in hydrology, and also in water assistance. I mean those are the people that can express their concerns about all these factors and they can come with information about the effects on humans, animals or anything else. So they contribute. So you are not getting a uniformity of opinion inside the university. You get people who say “these are the risks” and you get other people saying “no these are the risks” and other people say “yes”. Now I’ve been trying to talk positive about fracking, because in my perspective the UK has an energy security problem. J: Yeah, for example that the amount of gas in the North Sea is diminishing?M: We import about half the national gas we use. And national gas amounts of around half our energy. So importing gas is very very important for the energy system here in the UK.

[we verplaatsten ons naar een andere kamer omdat het heel rumoerig werd in de ruimte. Hier kwam Mark een collega tegen – Dimitri – hij is werkzaam in het onderzoekscentrum voor sustainability en hij werkt aan systemen voor het verminderen van carbon dioxide. Hij onderzoekt de economische

kant van klimaatverandering en wat het ons kost voor de samenleving om te mitigeren en adapteren ertegen].

M: Okay, a lot of the difficulties we face are at the local, the very regional people living nearby the gas well and the people most affected. Clearly, they are affected. But actually it is a very small amount of people and you can actually put money and resources […] you can basically pay these people to go on holidays for two years. That’s a local thing, but actually for me the big concern are the emissions when you burn the gas. Typically when you see the interview at Roseacre Wood and Plumpton there is the local citizen who is concerned about their impacts on them and there are someone from Friends of the Earth who is concerned about the global impact. Now for me, we have the technological means to separate those. After Dimitri gets in, I try to get his opinion on CO2. Obviously this gas is unique, because it is non-carbon.

J: For whom do you think fracking is most advantageous?M: Well clearly the drilling firms aren’t going to do it unless it is profitable. And actually the pressure on fracking has come down because of the gas price which has come down. But it won’t be down forever, it will come up again. And the economic incentives for fracking will go up again.

[Dimitri komt binnen en sluit aan bij ons gesprek. Mark introduceert mij en mijn onderzoek en vraagt naar de mening van Dimitri erover. Eerst introduceert Dimitri zichzelf en spreekt hij over zijn eigen onderzoek, wat niet super relevant is ten aanzien van fracking maar wel relevant met betrekking tot klimaatverandering. Dimitri noemt het zelf de “damage of the climate onto the economy”].

D: Dimitri/respondent 2.

M: So you’re trying to quantify the cost-benefit analysis of future warming of the planet, Dimitri? Obviously we don’t know how much it is going to increase, but in the worst case scenario it will be 2 degrees or more, and that will have significant environmental costs to economies. With bringing back the mitigation you can transfer that back into a cost-benefit analysis and see which policy and mechanisms are required for a relative ‘soft-landing’. D: [nog een korte introductie van het werk van Dimitri].

M: So Joeri, who have you interviewed?J: Well, First of all Bob Denett, from Frack Free Lancashire. Also John Swindells, who is a Preston City Councillor [...]M: I believe he is in a though position right now, because he’s under pressure from the government who prefer fracking to go ahead, but obviously he might say no. J: Yeah he doesn’t actually want fracking to happen in Preston and Lancashire in general. But he thinks it is biased that his opinion can be overruled by the national government. M: Well, I understand the government, because they are very keen to fracking because of their energy security issue and the economic development issue. And you can see, although the gas price is low, there is still a very big argument in the UK by economic benefits. You know one of the reasons why - this fracking technology is dirty, noisy and smelly in the fracking period – one of the reasons we should consider it in the UK is because we import gas and a lot of this activity is happening elsewhere without any British legislation. I have a heart for emissions too, and for green projects too, but if Britain is going to import more gas, we basically export the regulatory supervision of gas extraction to regimes who might be much less careful.

J: Is the UK also importing shale gas from fracking?M: We’re importing gas from America. Now I mean you can debate if it’s properly done there or not. It is probably done better there than it would be done in a Third World Country, but it is not done as good as it should. So when it happens in Britain we have to make sure it happens to the best quality standards in the world and that’s why I have been talking about the borehole and I’ve been talking about the mouldering. But you know, we’ve got to trust them. If it’s done here it is done by the best standards of the world. And when it is done at the best standards of the world, then the emissions can be minimized compared to it being done elsewhere. And that’s my position.

M: So there is this risk when you go through this process, before you encase the borehole and stop capturing the gas for use, there is a risk that it escapes or that it gets into the water or surface area. So during the constructing period, it is either the risk of methane getting into the aquifer for drinking or getting into the air. But obviously after that, it has to be absolutely nailed down. So you need to protect the local people against those things during the construction period, and if methane is going to escape you want to burn it rather than let it escape. Because when you burn it, it is less toxic. But during the construction period that’s a risk and it has to be merged.

J: So you believe that there is a risk involved, and […]M: Yeah, sure, you are naïve when you pretend there is no risk. That will just be bad for people to say that there is no risk. D: So how is it compared to other gas exploration?M: Well, a lot of gas is extracted offshore. And often trough drilling rigs at sea. So a lot of it occurs in the sea bed, where you can’t monitor it. And we have pictures of the Gulf of Mexico, where that well ruptured and you have pictures of the oil coming out. So than you can see it, but nobody has put any cameras in the North Sea and the wells there. So there could be some which are probably leaking.

My position is, unfortunately, for the next generations, it is going to be hard to provide fossil fuel energy for all people. So we have to – so now is the transition fuel argument – we have to change the way we produce and consume energy, to become more renewable. But that in itself requires energy. When you want to change the way you want to produce energy – whether you want to build wind turbines or in particular when you want to build solar cells – you have to create energy to use those. It takes energy to make a solar sell. So anytime you want to transform this system it requires energy. So where is that energy going to come from? Is that energy going to come from green energy? No, because all the green energy we are producing are we probably already consuming. So in the short term, unfortunately, the energy to transform of producing energy will have to come from fossil fuels. So that is just a given, except when you want everyone to cut their energy demand by 50 percent. We have no slack in the energy system to suddenly say we now start building power plants for coal and we start building more solar cells. So in the short term it is going to be from fossil fuels, like it or not. And therefore Britain will continue to import gas for the next 20 to 30 years. Hopefully not for the next 50 years. You have to have horizons which are consistent with these goals. We have to taper that down in a way that is consistent with the goals. You can’t do that in 10 years, it is going to be around for a considerate amount of time. So for my perspective it is a question of – we’re going to be using gas for 20 years, where’s it going to come from? Is it going to come from Qatar, Russia, the North Sea? All those have political risk and production risks. All those have environmental risks. Or does it going to come from Britain? If it comes from Britain, you have the chance to regulate it and monitor it much, much more carefully than if it’s coming from Russia or Qatar? And I know it’s very

hard on the residents, and you may have to compensate them, but if it occurs here you can make it subject to more scrutiny than anywhere else in the world.

D: Is fracking also happening in the Netherlands? J: Well, I believe there was a case of doing it nearby the city of Breda. M: Do you know how deep the shale layers are there?J: No, I wouldn’t say.M: You should check, because the deeper it is, the safer it is going to be. It makes it more expensive to get, but it makes it safer. You wouldn’t frack for gas if it was only a 100 meters down. The deeper it is, the easier it will be to contain the waste down there.

M: Okay listen, the final point has to do with carbon dioxide. Okay, so that’s methane, alright? [wijst naar een papiertje waar hij aantekeningen van chemische samenstellingen op schrijft]. If you would burn that to CO2, then about half the energy comes from the burning of the carbon, and about half the energy comes from burning the hydrogen. Half the energy comes from oxidising this, and half of the energy comes from burning the methane. One way to tackle this [de grote uitstoot van methaangassen in de atmosfeer] is by taking this and we strip this back out. Either by carbonates, or we pump it back into the ground. And we call that Carbon Capture Storage. Now if you do that it takes energy, so you lose about half of that energy [wijst naar de energie die wordt gewonnen door oxidising]. So basically, you lose up to a quarter of the 100 percent. But then you could in theory strip that out. That is unproven. How you can make it big is very tricky. Whether you can put the CO2 out of the atmosphere forever is unknown. This is uncertain.

But listen, there is a different approach. What you can do is this. You can take the CH4, and you can split it into solid carbon and you can split it into hydrogen and you cannot burn that carbon. There are means now to separate methane into hydrogen and solid carbon. You bubble the methane at the bottom of tin, it is about 900 degrees, and as the methane comes up the carbon solidifies on the outside of the bottom. But then you can get the hydrogen off. This one [de eerste methode die hierboven wordt genoemd] is costly and uncertain and you give up a quarter of the energy. This one [onderste] you give up about half of the energy and you get half of the energy from the hydrogen. Basically, once you can quantify the energy loss here [onderste], you can work on the economics of this. And once you use this technology [onderste] it cuts the energy in half, so you have to use twice as much gas for the same electric output. But the advantage of this is no carbon dioxide. So for me, I am a transition fuel guy, for the next 20 years it’s going to be impossible to change our energy system without using fossil fuels. So, if that’s a given, we should expand all our efforts on burning gas without producing carbon dioxide. And that [wijst naar onderste oplossing] is a technological solution and we should solve that. It’s costly, but then again so is doing nothing.

So we should using the coal first, stop using the oil next, and stop using the gas last. That’s my position.D: Yeah, gas is best in terms of environmental consequences. M: So that’s why we unfortunately have to keep getting back at gas and fracking. If you would be from Friends of the Earth, what would you say now? J: They obviously try to reduce carbon dioxide. M: Alright, that’s great. It’s a positive thing to say to reduce the emissions, but some people say it is unsustainable to still use fossil fuels. And they’re right, because there is only a limited amount of it.

So I say that’s right, we can’t be doing this in 50 years of time. I say, if we do it in 20 years of time, we can do it and operate with an energy system that can operate without methane. Solar cells, wind turbines, hopefully not nuclear.

J: What would be the best outcome of the decision making process around fracking in Lancashire in your opinion?M: Which decision making process?J: Around fracking in Lancashire. M: Well, basically this is really tricky, isn’t it? Because basically you are asking me to recommend about how some local people feel about it. I can’t change their view. It will be noisy, smelly and very intrusive. All I can suggest that if it goes ahead they can go to the drilling company and say “this is very evasive for our lives in the coming two years, you need to compensate me for that. Just pay me and I can go on holiday for two years”. But the key thing is, is that I can’t just decide what local people think about it, that’s just not acceptable. The key person I want to meet is the Friends of the Earth person. I want to know what they feel […] this is the more important issue, because basically Britain should be doing this for its imported gas. I think it is better for the environment to produce the gas ourselves. That’s a personal view. But even if that doesn’t happen, we should do this for the gas we burn, and we do this for the gas we burn in Britain. Now that’s an argument for Friends of the Earth, when you say it produces less carbon-dioxide, that’s good. Not sustainable – yeah that’s true, but when that is required to actually make the transition needed to renewables, then we should do it rather than continuing to burn the carbon.

J: To get back to your point Mark, on the one hand the FOE says that on a global scale carbon dioxide has to be reduced, and on the other hand they have concerns about the local people. M: That’s true, but at the moment the two arguments are not separated. So the argument now goes from my home, which will be affected [bij wijze van spreken], it goes back to FOE, and they say it is bad because it will be polluting. My point is that that second point doesn’t necessary have to be true, for domestic gas or international gas.

J: And the people in Pennsylvania became ill because of the fracking. What is your respond to that?M: Insufficient regulation. I mean, Qatar, we don’t know who is affected by gas attraction in Qatar.

[Dimitri verlaat de ruimte, vanwege een afspraak]

M: So, that’s how i stand between, because I’m not going to get captured by the Cuadrilla’s, but again, you know we have to change the way we consume energy and Britain will continue to consume gas for the next 20 years, irrespective of fracking. It’s tricky, because it will affect people quite intensively.

J: What would you say to the argument that fracking will be bringing jobs and that they will be beneficial for the local economy?M: The jobs will come and then will go. Basically the jobs will be for two years. One security guard with a dog and that’s it. And I don’t think it will be beneficiary for the local economy on the longer term, and the people who fulfil those jobs will move. So they won’t be local people, and they will come from offshore I believe. These people will go to another country if it is developed. So I don’t think that’s a big argument. For me the argument is how you would compensate them in the

immediate facility and how you would compensate them for the intrusions in their lives. I think if I was there I would say I just move. Just pay me the rent for another place.

M: Can you log onto Eduroam? J: No, unfortunately. M: Well, there was another article I wrote about Not Under My Backyard. It is about the land under the homes of people. The land is not owned by an individual in the UK, but by the government. A mile down isn’t even Lancaster’s property, it’s from the government.

J: I’ve heard that Blackpool University takes a stance on fracking as pro-fracking [...]M: If it occurs at scale in Lancashire, there will be lots of migrants coming to Blackpool. So obviously the majority of the service industry that will be the most likely area where these migrants will stay. J: Do you believe the Lancaster University also has a general view on fracking?M: No senior official is going to take a position on that. I’m not going to say out loud you have to allow fracking, or you don’t have to do it. It is a debate and you have to inform people about that debate. I’m critical because some of the anti-fracking groups, because they use a lot of emotional arguments. And they research some of the issues, but they don’t necessarily research all of the issues. And you know, both sides are pretty selective. The gas companies are very selective with the data they present and the anti-groups are sometimes selective in what they present. J: So what information does the anti-fracking group not present?M: I don’t think that people understand that after the one or two years period that the fracking site will be constructed, it actually goes quite again. They believe that fracking has to occur constantly. J: And on the other hand, Cuadrilla for example?M: Well, they don’t want to tell people what chemicals they use. And they maybe see they have solutions for the wastewater which hasn’t been tested. So you know they maybe haven’t resolved that but they people it has been resolved. So that needs to be established. And of course they don’t want to be regulated because that will cost money. So they want to minimize the costs. And a lot of the drilling done in America was done for low costs. So the drilling done here has to be more expensive so that it’s done properly. If it is being done here, it has to be done in the highest environmental standards in the world and that will make it expensive. Even if the gas price is low now, it will probably go up and it will be a profitable investment for Cuadrilla. The benefit for the UK will be that gas prices will go down.

M: I just wanted to say that I will not sit on the fence and be neutral in this debate. I just want to provide information for both sides and try to clarify some of the issues. And for me this is a means for separating the climate argument for the local argument [wijst naar het kaartje met chemische samenstellingen].

Barbara Richardson – Ros. Awar. GroupBarbara Richardson is een inwoner van Roseacre, één van de twee plaatsen (de andere is Little Plumpton) waarover het besluitvormingsproces nu gaat om testfracking toe te staan of niet. Ze is tevens voorzitter van de Roseacre Awareness Group. De Engelse site 2BR noemt Barbara Richardson een “prominent voice in the anti-fracking fight”. Onlangs (14 april) had ze een award gewonnen voor haar campagnes tegen environmental injustice met betrekking tot fracking.

Vanaf Preston (de plaats waar ik verbleef) was het ongeveer een uur fietsen naar Roseacre. Eenmaal aangekomen in het kleine plaatsje van ongeveer 200 inwoners viel het me op dat er veel Frack Free Lancashire banners waren opgehangen, net als zelfgemaakte posters (zie figuur 1).

Figuur 1: Anti-fracking banners en posters in Roseacre

Bron: Auteur, 2016.

Barbara woont net buiten de ruitjeshuizen van Roseacre in een relatief groot huis met verre uitzichten. Het is een erg rustige omgeving (zie figuur 2). Ze verteld me (zoals ook later blijkt uit het interview) dat ze speciaal heeft gekozen voor deze locatie omdat het rustig is. Daarvoor woonde ze samen met haar man in Preston, maar ze hield van de rust en stilte en was daarom verhuisd naar Roseacre. Ook wijst ze me de plek aan waar het fracking zou kunnen gebeuren, het is zo’n 500 meter van haar huis vandaan. Ze verteld me hoe stil het is in de omgeving, en dat ze werkelijk niks anders hoort dan de geluiden van de natuur, zoals het getjilp van vogels. Even later gaan we naar binnen en starten we het interview.

Ook dit interview (net als bij Mark Shackleton) verliep wat anders dan verwacht. Ik had zoals alle voorgaande interviews een set vragen voorbereid, maar Barbara vertelde haar verhaal praktisch rondom deze vragen heen en dus was het niet nodig om ze allemaal te stellen.

Figuur 2: De nabije omgeving van het huis van Barbara

Bron: Auteur, 2016.

15 april 2016, 14:00. Barbara Richardson,

J: Joeri/interviewerB: Barbara/respondent

B: Just to put it on perspective, the site here is the one in Roseacre Wood. It’s just about 500 metres from where I live, from my drive. But the actual proposed site is midway between two little hamlets.

One you came through is called Wharles, and another called Roseacre. But it is all one community. So basically the planning committee wants to put it right in the heart of the community and as you can see here we are about 7 miles from the nearest main road. And the proposed route is then another, let me get it right, all in all it’s 18 miles from the nearest motorway. So this site is a long way from a major road and a road network. The other site, in Preston New Road, is a different type of location. It’s still rural, it’s still very rural, but it is on a major road going into Blackpool, and they’re only about a mile from a motorway junction. So what happened is, I don’t know how much you know history, but when Lancashire County Council were determining whether to accept or reject, then even the planning officer said they should reject the Roseacre one because of traffic and the dangers. Because as you can see these roads are used by thousands of cyclists, horse riders, people walking and so. So there are lots of vulnerable road users here. The other site don’t have traffic. The planning officer actually approved it, or well, the planning officer did, but when the councillor heard all the evidence related to noise, transport, emissions, landscapes, you know the whole thing, then they decided to reject it. So they rejected both of them, and that happened last year. So that’s basically to put it in perspective.

So this little village here, we only got about 200 people living in about a kilometre from the site. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s 200 people living within a kilometre. You know, it’s pretty close. And then the whole of our parish, there is only about 500 people. So it’s a very small community, which is why I think they chose it, because Cuadrilla they don’t want much opposition. And they think there won’t be many people affected. But what they failed to understand is the amenity value of this area, because it is in the heart of the Fylde, we have thousands of visitors who use the area. So it’s not just the residents. For us it’s our local group, and suddenly it became a focal point, and we got literally all eyes on us. You know people from America, Australia, etc. So for our little community it came totally unexpected, and it’s all completely out of proportion. So you know a bit of background, just fire away with your questions.

J: I know that you are of course against fracking. But could you describe your stance on fracking and how that stance came about for me please?B: Well, originally when we first heard about the proposals in 2014 February, we weren’t actually opposed to fracking at all. What actually happened was that we heard about it. We went to all the meetings with Cuadrilla. And then the more we looked into it, the more we realized what the impacts would be on the community. So it is very important to say we weren’t anti-fracking. We weren’t protestors or activists, we were just residents who had some concerns and we did some research. And even after the conciliation we had Cuadrilla was still not convinced that it is appropriate here for a fracking site. So our views came about, actually it’s quite quick, because our group formed in march 2014, and that’s why we’re called Roseacre Awareness Group. So it is not action group, we were just about raising awareness amongst the community. And I would say when the planning applications went in, and Cuadrilla submitted their environmental statement, then we were really concerned. You know, then we realized there were a lot of gaps, and a lot of information wasn’t available and a lot of the implications wasn’t appropriate accounted for really. So by the time the planning applications came in around June, July, we were becoming firmly opposed to fracking. And our group was growing all the time. As more and more people became aware of it, I would say more people were opposed to it around this area. You would say it from the signs. And you know, we never did a survey. We purposely kept away from doing that, because we think they won’t believe us anyway. But I was going around houses and did a rough estimation, and I would say that in this community

around 80 to 90 percent are opposed. The people who are for it are the landowners, because they get the money [compensation money]. Because what happens in this community is that you have farm owners, and they’re basically farms owned by the same family. So all the farms are related and all the people who are for it are actually related or friends of the landowners. I would say the rest in this close community is against it. I think the further away you get, you get in the urban centres, people are not as aware and not as concerned. Because these are the first planning applications that have gone into Lancashire County Council there has been a lot of local publicity and a lot in the local press. But there is still a big amount of people who don’t know about it or don’t understand it. And what I’ve found is that a lot of people who are for it are just the people that listen to what the government has to say and believe it. They just believe without questioning and research. The more the people research, the more you realize what’s involved, and the more you realize there are too many unknowns and dangers. And it just flies in the face of climate change and it’s just too dangerous for the environment; too disruptive for the local people; the benefits they try to push forward we don’t believe, we believe they have to invest in renewable energies. What they’re trying to say is that you get compensation money for the fracking sites being in this area. But what they forget is that this community has quite affluent people. And this area is known for agriculture, tourism, farming and at the end of the day we don’t want it, we don’t need it. Actually, we don’t use gas, we use oil. And you know, most people feel there are alternative energy solutions. You know, the government seems to be to us, jeopardizing the renewable sector in favour of the oil and gas sector. In my personal view it has all to do with money. And it’s all to do with the fact that the tracery have got such a deficit and they see it as a way as getting money and quickly. I personally don’t believe that we’re running out of gas like they try to make out. You know, the North Sea oil and gas is plenty of it. We can still import it if we need to. At the moment we know that is not even economic viable to extract shale gas anyway, not at the moment. J: Yeah, because of the low gas prices right now, right?B: Yeah, it costs too much. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that oil prices won’t go up again. So not just me, but our community, and the more people know about it, the more people are opposed, so it grows all the time. What is funny is that there was a student coming over here from London, and when he started doing his research he was pro-fracking, but at the end of his research he was anti. So that to me says a lot. If he started thinking “oh fracking is a good thing” and after he did all the research for so many years, and thought “oh no, it is not a good thing”, that may speak volumes. But I don’t know if you have noticed yet, but in the UK because the put out the pedal licenses out in March, and it says that 3 percent of the country could be affected [by fracking]. The majority is in the North of England – so it’s a North South divide – the more opposition there is. I think there are now around 400 anti-fracking groups across the UK. So it’s not just our residence who are opposed, it’s really more and more of a public who are opposed. I don’t know how much you know about it, but DECC, the Department of Energy and Climate Change, have produced their own survey. They do their own public opinion survey and they do it about every 4 months. And even their own survey shows that there is more and more opposition. And that when people are becoming aware, the more likely to be opposed. And that’s the government’s own survey.

J: So you were against fracking since 2014?B: Yeah, we heard about it in 2014. A lot of people around here knew about the earthquakes in 2011, I didn’t live in the village then, I lived in Preston which is further away. I didn’t know a lot about it. But what happened was that many people didn’t know what fracking was back then. So the

earthquakes were really a wake-up-call for many people. So people like Bob Denett, there is a group called ‘REAF’ and another one called ‘RAFF’, and then you have people like the Nana’s, Gayzer Frackman and all that, they were all more aware of what the impacts where then. But obviously, until people were actually threatened with these new sites coming in, that’s what woke people up. A lot of people heard about the earthquakes and didn’t take a lot of notice at that time. But when they heard that they actually wanted to frack again in Lancashire that was the wake-up-call for a lot of people in 2014.

J: And what would you say is the biggest risk of fracking? B: Well, for the local community here it is traffic definitely on the road. And even as Cuadrilla says the volumes will be capped and we know there are lots of HTV’s going. But I would say traffic as it’s the biggest impact on the community and all the people who come here, because the rural area is pretty, it’s flat, so lots of people like to come cycle here. We know there are 9000 people cycling on Strave – you know, this GPS thing – and 3000 not-cyclers use this lanes. So for everything that uses a GPS tracking system there are probably 2 or 3 that don’t, so we’re saying as an estimate, there are about 9000 cyclists who use these roads constantly. So traffic is a major issue. The second issue here would be noise. You know, because it is a very quiet and rural community. So people are concerned about the noise. People are concerned about the emissions as well. They are going to be flaring, so not carbon capturing the gas, just flaring it into the atmosphere. There are going to be two flaring stacks at this site, well hopefully it won’t happen. So people are very concerned about the air, and not just from methane leakages from the well etcetera, but there is also the diesel fuels, the accelerators, the equipment, it is going to give a lot of noise and fumes. People are concerned about the impact potentially on the water. This area, you know from Holland Groningen wherever it is, this area is heavily faulted. That’s why the earthquakes kept happening. So people are very concerned about the seismic impacts, even though they going to put a traffic light system in which is going to stop the mechanism if there is anything at risk. Nobody knows what the damage could be, and when you start something how could you stop it? And because the area is highly faulted, again, we don’t believe the claims that when the fracking fuel is left, where does it go? Is it going to track into the water system? Lots of farmers around here have springs and boreholes. You know, who knows? Even Cuadrilla’s own director said that when the flew is in the ground nobody knows where it will go. They say it’s that low down and that it won’t transmit through the folds, but nobody […]. And not just that, what if there is going to be an accident? People are concerned, there could be an accident on site. There have been hole blowouts; a tanker could just go of the road, the tractors go of the road here and they go into the ditches. It will only take one tanker with fracking fluid which tips over and discharge all the fluid, and you know, what’s the impact on the food? People are concerned […]. You know this is a farming community and it is well known for its food. So the people are worried about that. People are concerned about tourism, because this is a rural area and we actually have a campsite in the village. The people over there have already said that when fracking goes ahead they’re not coming back. So you know what’s going to be the impact on the community, the pulps, the restaurants?

So there are economic concerns, and then as you become more aware, you start realizing about the impacts on climate change. You know, it’s fossil fuel. Why do we extract all these fossil fuels? Climate change is a real problem and they should be looking at alternatives.

So we have so many concerns at different levels. On the outside you’ve got the traffic: the immediate concerns to the local community. At the county, Lancashire, we’re worried about the impact on farming, tourism and the socioeconomic things. And then as you go further and further, then you have things like climate change, which is wider. So, our concerns are numerous.

So yeah, we’re all very opposed. But the big issue as you might know is the government.J: So the government is your biggest hurdle in the decision making process?B: Yeah. And then again, I’m assuming that Bob has already told you, but the way we worked – once we stood on our own feet, we created our own groups. Preston New Road has the same basically. We got our groups together, we got a committee structure, we got an IP on board and I was the chair at that point. J: And all these groups fall under Frack Free Lancashire, right?B: Yes, like I said, the groups all started to network then. So what we did, we started meetings – we still do have meetings, every month – and we got the Frack Free Lancashire alliance, which is […]. You know, Bob has very different views as to what it is. And there are different people with different views on how it is. He isn’t the founder of it, it was just a loads of groups together, and they’re just keep saying they’re the founders. The way the Frack Free Lancashire came about was that all the groups got together and we had some kind of branded logo […]. It’s like an umbrella. But that’s what it is, it [FFL] is an umbrella organisation actually made of all these different groups. So we meet monthly and we share information, we try to work together as much as we can. But each group is autonomous and does their own fundraising, their own research, but we also work together under the FFL umbrella. And recently I managed to raise a lot of money with 38degrees – we work together with NGO’s as well. Friends of the Earth particularly have been very helpful. And greenpeace also. But 38degrees helped us raise a lot money. And when I spoke to them about it – because we needed a lot of money to fight the appeal – […]J: For lawyers and all that, right?B: Yeah for the lawyers and all that. Oh no not just for the lawyers, because the lawyers got pro bono. We got lawyers who actually wanted to do it and represent us. What we had to pay for were experts on landscape, noise, traffic, those things. So we started fundraising – so we were fundraisers as well – but 38degrees said that they could only help us raise the money if it was for Frack Free Lancashire and not for an individual group. And that’s important for me, because what it meant was that we had to raise money as a sort of semi-organisation, and then we had to decide how that money then would be used across the group. Money causes a lot of trouble. And it was hard to manage, but we have a finance working group. But our own group had to raise about 80.000, and as I said before, it is a very small village. You’re talking about tens of thousands of pounds to get the experts paid. We shrunk down a bit really, because what happened was: the FFL group came together, but each group was individually going out campaigning and lobbying. And what we – what I spend most of my time to – was lobbying. Councillors at the Fylde Borough council first, they then influenced the county councillors. So what we did is we used to educate them. We get presentations – deliver our side of the story. Because they get canvassed by Cuadrilla – you know taking them out for lunch and taking them to meetings. So we send emails, we canvassed them, we did presentations to help the councillors become aware of what was our side. I think that was what made the big difference. It was all about lobbying – and not just our local MPs, our county councillors, our borough councillors, but our MNP’s too as much as we could.J: Are the MNP’s on the national level?

B: Yeah the MNP’s are European. But we haven’t done a lot there. I mean most of that we leaved to groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. J: Yeah, and they also made petitions right?B: Yeah, petitions. What we had was – that was the big thing - once Cuadrilla turned the planning applications in, then people could object. We got thousands and thousands of petitions. But what happened when they went to Lancashire County Council, what they did is they tended to dismiss it as a standard petition. So if it was a pro-former, you know I object to fracking and people who signed it and they were fighting to sign it, you know we go to farm shows and stuff, and people were keying up to sign the petition and they put the postcard on, they put the address on. If they were in the immediate area, the planning officer said they weren’t close enough. Do you know what I mean? So they massaged the figures to show that the opposition wasn’t as great as it actually is. So what they took more note off, to be honest with you, was the individual – like groups like us – who got a detailed case together. So what we had to do was that we had to become experts on planning law. Because it is planning, they only look at certain aspects. They can’t look at climate change and health – what they look at is traffic and noise and landscape. So what we had to do, we basically had to quote the planning policies and say “well that planning proposal can’t be happening because the noise will be overriding this standard”. So really the county councillors probably listened more to the evidence we were getting from the group and the experts as opposed to huge numbers. They listen to huge numbers – there are 30.000 people that don’t want it, at each site. And then there’s the people who can be bothered to sign. You know, there’s probably a lot more people who are opposed to it. There were probably like 27 ‘for’s’ [die als pro-frackers tekenden].

But the other thing that Cuadrilla have been very crafted in, is that they bought their way into the business community. So we’ve had a struggle. We had many many businesses who were opposed, but they got onto the Chamber of Commerce, and they got them behind them. And it was so evident at the inquiry that the people of the Chamber of Commerce did not know – they never even read their own defer (?) report. And then they say we are for fracking because of this, this and this, and they didn’t even understand the report – it was so obvious that they did not looked into it. So to me, Cuadrilla have been very clever. They got the Chamber of Commerce behind them, they got this group called the North West Energy Task Force. Most of them have got vested interest: one of them is waste disposal, one of them is transport, one of them is a security company. And they got those people on board. And they’re going out by saying that it creates all those jobs, it’s going to be all this income and revenue coming into the area, but when you dale a bit deeper, you can actually challenge that information. There’s going to be only 11 jobs per site, because most of it is ultimate. There might be more when it goes into production, and there will be jobs in the supply chain, but even the institute of directors said I think it was 60.000 in the whole of the UK for the whole of the industry! So they don’t see that, they just see this number and think “oh wow, 60.000 jobs”, but they’re not all direct and not all at the same time. Many highly-skilled jobs, many jobs are brought in from other countries from other areas. The local job could be only one security man. Truck drivers may be – you know it’s really manual. I mean most of the people who are around here are retired professionals: they’re business people who are quite affluent. You got young professional families. These people choose to move out of the city, into the country, and they pay a premium to live in the country. So you know, we did, my husband and I left Preston to live here and we paid more money to live here and it’s even a smaller house. But the views here are beautiful. You know, so people chose to live here for that. So when you’re threatened with fracking, that is the nimby [Not In My BackYard]

bit coming out, but why should they spoil this countryside? And you know, Cuadrilla has admitted that by the very nature of fracking they prefer to let it be in rural areas. So that’s why we’re a test case really. Because if they can do it here they can do it anywhere.

So petitions were very important, and we’ve got thousands and thousands of people literally climbing up to sign. And to be honest, with more money we could have a lot more. So Lancashire County Council got all the general and detailed information, and then as I say, it was a bit of a battle, but basically they rejected them both and then within a month Cuadrilla appealed. And that’s when we got into this really technical expensive phase. And then we got in the public inquiry which took six weeks […]. So the public inquiry was done by an independent planning inspector, which we actually liked because you can present your evidence to her – and she’s independent and she’s going to listen to it on a planning basis – and you think she can made a fair decision. But then Greg Clark came in, and he can overrule anything what she says anyway. He can overturn what Lancashire County Council says. So a lot of people were opening their arms now, and some people were necessarily anti-fracking, but what they don’t like is that local democracy is being overruled. You know – Lancashire Councy Council – they’re the experts, they know the area and listen to all the evidence. Why should their decision be overruled because the government decides its government’s need? And that’s the situation we’re in right now.J: And is that undemocratic in your opinion?B: Yes, absolutely! Since all of this happened my eyes have been opened. I always voted conservative, because you know they look out after our people. It suddenly made me question everything and I won’t vote conservative anymore. I totally changed. In fact to be honest, I vote Green Party now. So you know, it opens your eyes and you become aware of environmental issues and political issues, but also of local politics – all the greed and businesses. It’s horrible, you can’t ignore it.

And I had to say this, but we’re not campaigners. We’re just residents and we’re standing up for what we believe in. And we never did anything like this before in our lives, but we just feel so strongly about it that we do feel that we have to speak out. J: So that’s the reason why you organized the Roseacre Awareness Group?B: Well, that’s really […]. Well it started obviously with a group of people. The only reason I became the chair originally is because I was the person who would delve. So what I did was that I went to universities to talk to professors to find out some scientific information; I wrote to our MP and I also done some stuff. And we had this meeting with 8 of us and we said we name it the Roseacre Awareness Group, we have a chair, we do it formally. We got some advice from RAFF – one of the other groups – which said “if you’re going to do it, set a committee up” – which was good that we did. And I got nominated because I did the most work, and that was the only reason that I became the chair. So then I did that for 18 months, and then I sort of resigned because it’s a lot of hard work. You know, I work every morning, afternoon, evening, weekend. You end up spending all your time researching and all that. So I stood down after Lancashire Councy Council took it out, and I thought this is the time. So a lady called Elisabeth Warner is now the chair of the group, but she will say exactly the same as me. Everybody feels the same. The only difference is that I’m more involved with Frack Free Lancashire because of the campaigning. Elisabeth is more involved with the nitty-knitty planning element. J: And next to lobbying and raising awareness at universities and at the local city council, do you do any other things to gain support for your ideals?

B: Obviously social media is a big thing. It’s using the website, the Facebook page. So it’s basically raising awareness through social media – it’s a big one. We don’t have enough people to do what we want to do. We try to lobby business – obviously we done that, and we had to do that within Frack Free Lancashire, so you depend on the wider group. So fundraising is a big one we had to concentrate on, almost to the detriment of campaigning, because we had to raise the money for the planning. So planning has been a big thing. The big thing is raising awareness, getting on the streets, talking to people, but we don’t have the money that the industry has. So we don’t have the money, we don’t have the people, and it’s really hard to get out on the streets all of the time. So what we had to do was – we said from the beginning – that we focus on the decision makers and stakeholders. Because yeah, it’s great to have a big voice, and that lots of people oppose, but what is going to make the difference is the planning application turned down. You know, it’s like the legalities of it. So what we also did before the planning application in Lancashire County Council, we try to influence the environmental agency and the other regulatory bodies like health and safety. But they already made their minds up, because they’re government bodies. They say they’re independent, but they’re not. We were trying to influence them. Again, it is lobbying. So it is about awareness, and it is really difficult for TV, media and you know getting in the press. I mean we did reasonably well, but some other papers won’t even publish anything originally. But I got an article into a magazine called Lancashire live, which is read by most of the higher classes in Lancashire. So I was getting articles into magazines like that and in our local paper. That’s the easiest way to get across loads of people. We’ve done things like the health meal at the UCLAN, we had a stand there. Because everybody there is looking at health – so we were there saying like fracking can affect your health. We’ve done agricultural shows; we try and go to farmer markets; we try to have stances at sport and social clubs direct, you know to make them aware of what the impact on the roads will be. So it’s canvassing groups that would have a say. We tried to work with – not with government agencies, but groups who are campaigning for the protection of rural England and try to make them aware of what the implications are. We spoke to the Wildlife Trust – it is about the ecology – because we got some rare species around here. J: So basically you tried to go to all parties who were even slightly involved in the fracking debate?B: Anybody who would have a say in it. We concentrated on the ones that counted – that have a proper say in the decision making. Then we sort of went down the chain, we tried to influence other groups who would try to influence. But the key ones are the councillors, obviously. But our biggest problem has been money and time. J: And are you speaking about Roseacre Awareness Group or FFL?B: Both. But because Roseacre and Preston New Road are the areas which are directly under threat, we are the ones who had to do the most work. And I’m not being funny, the other ones have helped us in many, many ways, but we are the ones that had to put all the paperwork together. All of the others do brilliant stuff like branding the streets. We also made leaf letters. Oh and what also happened is that Cuadrilla used to have a magazine called ‘Fylde Explorer’, where they put all the “oh, isn’t this wonderful, we give the Fylde Rugbyclub 10.000 pounds and we’re working with Blackpool College to train apprentices for all these jobs there are going to be”. So they had than in the back, and then in the middle they said all these regulations and this is how safe it is. So what we used to do is to put out a magazine called ‘Fylde Exploited’. And for everything that Cuadrilla would say we put our side of it. They say it’s capped to 50 vehicles a day, but the people don’t realize that they go back and forth. We also have a community press that goes to 4.500 people, so we made sure we got articles in that to educate people. And it’s really funny because Cuadrilla can’t handle that. So

every time we did something they started to put something in because they realized we influenced a lot of people. So it’s leaf letting, and also fundraising to raise awareness.

J: So it was a real battle between Frack Free Lancashire and Cuadrilla.B: Yeah it was. But of course, Cuadrilla have more money, more resources and they got PR experts. They even have people employed doing all this stuff, for example people talking to farmers. Oh, that’s another thing we did. Of course Cuadrilla needs the landowners to sign up. So what we did is to get to farmer markets and giving them presentations. So we educated them. For example that their insurance can’t cover this, and what happens if Cuadrilla has leaved and the well starts leaking? So we try to educate the farmers – because I think a lot of them are quite naïve. Farming of course is under treat, and they see it as a business opportunity to get some extra cash in. They didn’t even think there were any protestors if it goes ahead. They said “why will there be any protestors?” That’s naïve. They didn’t even think about the importance of the issue. So we spend most of our time making leaf letters, writing press, raising money, spoke to people, presentations, lots of research. It is never ending.

J: What would you describe as the best outcome of the decision making process?B: The best outcome – you know it’s a local decision making process. We believe that the local people should make decisions that impact them locally. So we believed in the planning process, because at the end of the day the Fylde Borough plan and the Lancashire County Council should be there to protect the local communities. Because in this area nobody is allowed to put PVC windows in or extensions on certain properties – because it is a rural area. So you automatically would assume that the planning process would protect you and the environment. So green areas should be protected through planning law. Then this comes in and it completely flies in the face of local decision making process. You know, Cameron self has said that you can make decisions over windfarms, solar farms and things like that – the local people can have a decision – but in this case they don’t care. “We might override you”. It’s almost like the result is almost predetermined. But the good thing was when the Lancashire County Council listened to the evidence. It’s just a wonderful feeling that the councillors have listened. They made us feel good. You know, we believe that Cuadrilla can appeal, we could also appeal.

But it was when Greg Clark came in and said “He’s going to deter it”. It’s almost like […], he is down in Tombridge Wales, he knows nothing about this area. I bet you a pound that he knows nothing about fracking. He will only be advised by certain people that have vested interest. He won’t have heard our side of the argument. So we just pray to God that after a six week public inquiry – which was good – he’d been there. Somebody said to me that if someone listens to all of the evidence we were saying, there would be no way let it go ahead. Because the amount of evident that said there are too many risks was overwhelming. They were hoping that the planning inspector – who is neutral – will here that evidence. I mean she is restricted by planning laws – so she can’t look at things like climate change really. You know there was a lot of debate about that – the legalities. You know is it the national planning policy, or is it an ministerial statement that the government put out and says shale gas should weigh more heavily. But what they’re pushing out for now here is that they say “oh but these are just exploratory sites”, just to see if it’s viable. But we know well that if they find the gas they’re going to put that in production. And even Francis Eagan [CEO van Cuadrilla] said at the very first meeting […]. I stood up and asked him “you talk about exploratory and you talk about four wells, but we all know that if you find the gas you want to have it in production. Could it become a

superpad (?) where you can have up to 40 wells?”. And he said “oh yes, yes it could and you can be concerned about it”. That’s what he actually said and I was like [mond open]. I didn’t expect him to say that it could become a superpad. They want to push for it. If this is really like they say a ‘sweet spot’ – and the other reason they want to do it here is because it is very close to the water and gas mains. They literally 50 meters away, so they can connect very cheaply to the gas and water mains. So yeah, the good thing is that we believe that there was a democratic process, which we were a part of. And as a rural party we had a really good say in it. And we believe we did a good job, because we had a great expense in time and money. You just hope it will be listened to.

J: Do you also want fracking to be banned nationally or even internationally?B: Us? The group? Unconventional gas on-shore, we don’t believe. That’s the way where you difference. Because the people in our parish say it could go ahead if it’s properly regulated, but not in the hearth of a rural community. So it could go ahead on a brownfield site, like an industrial area, away from residences. As long as there are regulations in place that will protect the environment. Then you’ve got other people – more the Frack Free Lancashire type – who don’t believe it should go ahead anywhere. I’m in that crowd, I think it shouldn’t go ahead at all. I just think there are too many risks. I would be interested to see what happened if it happened at a site – not this site. And some other people said that when they presented their evidence. You have SP1 and SP2. SP1 are rural areas which shouldn’t have any industrial areas, whereas SP2 are rural areas where development for industrial purposes can happen. So do it there, and prove that it is not dangerous. But my concern on that is – all of the evidence coming out of America: all these methane leakages, the health risks, the drinking water is growing. It’s empirical evidence now of the harm and it is scientific.

But as we were building up to the inquiry, what we find is that Preston New Road and we [Roseacre Awareness Group] had to focus on what I call the ‘Nitty-Knitty’ stuff, the details and the planning regulations and all that. I mean you should see the paper up there [wijst naar een stapel papieren]. The wider Frack Free Lancashire group is probably going to demand for the campaigning and general stuff, like the Nana’s and people like that. So they do more like that, but between us it comes together. It’s hard, because when me and a husband drive down the road and we see a horse rider we are like “ohhh, we should get a photograph of this because we can show the danger”. How dangerous is it when people and children are walking out there at the canal side when all these trucks come along? We have two schools within 1,5 kilometres, there’s a nursery and a training centre. Lots of people would be impacted by it. We got off on where we were now, where were we on?

J: Well, I’ve got another question. The professor I spoke to yesterday, he was sort of pro-fracking, his name is Mark Shackleton. He said that many people who are anti-fracking do not take into account that the fracking site will be quite again in two years. So the people can move away for two years, maybe even on a paid holiday, and then come back in silence again. What is your response to that?B: It is, no […], because what Cuadrilla’s plan is […] and that is why it is so naïve. You know, how naïve? What will happen here is they will do the exploration for two years. We have 24 hours a day drilling, noise, drilling, for two years! And the big traffic especially while they are constructing. The other thing is sand delivering and stuff. The data which Cuadrilla provided for that was wrong. Who’s going to police how many vehicles are going through this area? Lancashire Councy Council won’t be there to do that. I’ll be out for work. It will be the residents who have to do it. But anyway, after the two years there will a phase called ‘extension flow’. And he is right, there will hardly be any traffic

while that is happening, but do he want us to believe that if they find shale gas they stop? So then they’re going to drill all this. And apparently in production it speeds up, so it will be noisier, louder, there will be more trucks. There will be bigger impacts if it goes in full production. And we know, Eagan has already admitted, there will be a minimum of at least ten dwells per pad, potentially 40. So you just extend your timescale. I’ll be dead by the time they finished here, and that’s a fact. You know, I’m 60 years. I will be 80 if they’re finished. That’s my retirement ruined. That’s what they don’t understand. I bought this house, I stand outside and I feel like I want to kick them when I hear things like that. It really hurts my goat. I have challenged people to speak to us about it, but they won’t. Come and speak to us, come and speak to the residents. Greg Clark was one of them. But there was total silence, just birds, that’s all you hear. That’s why people choose to live here. And then some people say that you can’t hear the drilling indoors, but we don’t live indoors. We live outdoors. You chose to sit outdoors on a sunny evening. I thought if they’re drilling, don’t tell me we can’t hear it. If I can hear a tractor riding over that road [wijst naar een heel verre weg], then of course I can hear the drilling in that field. So once it starts drilling 24/7 – you know these are the local issues, this is the difference between Frack Free Lancashire’s wider issue and how it’s going to impact on people – I will be severely impacted by this. I am a campaigner for Lancashire Wildlife Trust and a campaigner for rural England, because I believe strongly in protection the green space we got. So I get angry if I hear things like that. I would hit him, haha. That’s how angry it makes me feel.

We live in the rural hinterland, between these big cities like Preston and Blackpool. And people from those cities come over to visit this area for peace and quietness. It is just getting out of the town for a minute. So to me that is what should be valued. But what makes me angry is that this specific area doesn’t fall under the name of ‘Nature’s Beaty’, because those areas are free from fracking. You can’t frack underneath it, because it is protected. But they’re more worried about it. This area is what they call a ‘designated value’ in planning terms. It is not called a green belt. And that is what I think is the biggest mistake the borough councillor have made. They should designate this area as a green belt, or maybe as tranquil areas. It gets me crossed really. But I would stand up for anybody else now and help everybody. You know, we try to get linkages with the Yorkshire groups. I’ve been asked to present to other groups in other places and tell them what we did, how we did it and help them to operate a protest. So we help each other and I don’t know if the government has underestimated it. Whether they care? I don’t know.

J: And who do you think will benefit the most from fracking?B: That’s fairly obvious, it is the oil and gas industries themselves. I mean it’s not Cuadrilla, because they sell it on to other gas companies. So they all benefit mega from it. Of course they do, because they spend all these millions doing what they have been doing so far, while they haven’t even got any gas. There’s a lot of benefit for them. The government will benefit, because they have the revenue from the gas and oil industries. And that’s why I think they’re doing it. For the treachery and revenue, because they don’t want to import it. There are certain people locally with vested interest in it. The landowners maybe. But more important are the people who will benefit and are in bed with Cuadrilla. These companies like the waste disposal companies and also companies who will be providing equipment, and things like sand. So businesses who could be associated. I don’t believe the local community will benefit in any shape or form. We’ve lost more money on our house than the community benefit combined. You know, people here […]. There’s one guy who is a billionaire and his house has dropped millions, because it is so close to the Preston New Road site. People can’t sell the houses here. People just want to move into an area where fracking is being proposed, let alone

when it will take place. So people can’t move out, because you don’t know where to go. You don’t get compensation, so you’re stuck where you are. Nobody locally will benefit, apart from this community projects [ik denk zoals geld geven aan rugbyclubs]. And then there are a lot of question marks about that, because that’s not legal. You know it’s not mandatory that they have to give compensation and there is no mechanism in place to do it. And the community projects won’t help the people who are most affected. So there’s a lot of debate going on. And we try Eagon to say that people want to move out, and will you buy the houses of them of market prices? Because if you say it will have no impact on them, then you’re not going to lose any money, do you? But he wouldn’t do it, because A: then he knows that people won’t be able to sell it, and B: he knows if he does it, it will set a precedent for all the other companies. There was thing committee where I was on and we had monthly meetings with Cuadrilla representatives, and it was an absolute sham. We kept trying to tell them that there wasn’t any community benefit. But nobody wanted to talk about it, but we got to it. And I argued that 1 percent of production revenue is not enough anyway [voor compensatie]. And they were talking about 6 percent, but you have to offer a lot more if you’re going to do anything. I said even if you do we want to make sure it will go to the people who are impacted. So then it was a big argument or debate how it would be managed. And Cuadrilla wanted to manage it all through this independent group called ‘Lancashire Community Fund’, which we think is anything but, because they got them to do it. They’re obviously tied in with them. And we kept saying is the bottom line, and that is that we don’t want the money. So the people who benefit from this are the profiteers if you will and we know a lot of – this is awful – but a lot of the government has shares in the gas and oil companies. So no wonder they’ve got a vested interest in it if it goes ahead. So people who already got a lot of money will benefit, but not the local communities. They are the most affected.

J: I think I’ve already got almost all the questions I wanted to ask you, haha.B: Yeah, you sure? You can just fire them to me. I keep speaking about something if I get passionate about it. You know, this is what happens when something like this happens to you. You want to do something about it. Even lots of young people – from the uni for example – are divesting from fossil fuels. Lots of young people seem to be aware of environmental issues and green policies. That’s the one inspiring thing I have noticed. I think they are also interested about the outcome of the decision making process.J: What do you think will be the outcome of the decision making process?B: I think they’re going to do a political experiment thing. I think Greg Clark will turn down this one in Roseacre, because there are planning reasons to do so. So it’s clear there are problems with the roads. I think they go ahead at the other side, Preston New Road, which I don’t agree they do. Because I think […] it is quieter here than on the other site. So the only reason LLC would be these two things – noise and traffic – because these are the only things they come up with. But they didn’t apply them here. Even the planning inspector said it’s darker here, it’s more quiet here, more rural here, blablabla. I think they’ll go ahead there. It depends whether public pressure will stop him [Greg Clark]. J: What are you going to do if it goes ahead at Preston New Road?B: If it goes ahead there then I’ll fight with them, and obviously we will unite, because we are part of FFL. I mean anyone will do […], this is going to be direct action obviously. There is going to be more lobbying – I think there’s going to be a huge uproar from people across the country, because he then has overruled the LCC. And I think he even has to overrule his own planning inspector. And you know, the other thing is we won’t see the report before it goes to him […]. Because he will get the

rapport, before the 4th of July, it goes to him, and then he’s going to make the decision and we see the rapport afterwards. So how do we know that it’s not changed? We will like to see her report as it goes to him, so we know what she said to him. Then we see if it hasn’t been changed. But there is a danger – that what my head says – my heart says reject them both. But then they will go somewhere else. They said that at the inquiry – if these two get upheld, then basically we will go somewhere else they said, we put another planning application in. So they won’t give up, they will go somewhere else in Lancashire. They’re not going to give up, they spend too much money. They’re going to keep trying. They also have another application in Yorkshire, but the thing is, whatever way it goes somebody will appeal. They still think the Lancashire ones are the key ones, because they still got to go through all that process. I think that’s going to happen: they keep trying to get in (Cuadrilla). So the extreme is that they go ahead with both, that fills me with horror. If they overrule both we should be more aggrieved, because we were meant to be down in the first place and we got very clear planning reasons for not to get ahead. My other concern here in Roseacre is that because they turned it down on traffic, that they come up with some crazy scheme to get the trucks directly from the motor bridge to the site – to bypass the traffic. Oh god, I think no. I think there is going to be a huge national uproar. I think it will be another Balkan (?), maybe worse than Balkan. Balkan, Northern Hills, there have been all these sites where they got away eventually. That is what these two sites will become. I even heard residents here in anger threatened to do damage, you know. People feel so strongly that they will fight, they will be out on the streets. They have no social lines, that is the bottom line. I think Frack Free Lancashire will galvanize people, because in the end it is a fight for a paper. There is nothing to see in the moment, there is no site. It’s just a field and a gate. But once it goes ahead and the trucks start coming, you can just block it here. People will do all sorts of things to make it as difficult as it can be. I think Cuadrilla just don’t appreciate this trend and the problems. I mean I won’t do anything illegal, but I will be out there protesting and stuff, doing everything I could and I will be angry by then. I still have that inner feeling in me that it shouldn’t happen. The people that feel like that are normal residents. They’re not protestors or campaigners. It is how far the local residents go. And I’m sure what we get we get the hardest activists coming to stop them and the residents helping them.

One other thing, we have talked about going to the human rights tribune. It’s the human rights foundation. This tribune will be next year, and by then we know if it’s going to be overruled. And once it is overruled, then I think we got a general grievance to go to the human rights tribune. So we will presenting evidence and witness statements at the court. Because we were so focused on the planning, we haven’t yet explored other legal options, but we will be exploring them and getting advice from where we take them. We can go to the EU, if we still in. That’s another thing, we also think they’re going to berry it in the EU referendum. So the fracking bit could get lost in all of that. So there would be other levels to go to. But we’re all so tired, I try to get some weeks without fracking. Not this, this is almost pleasant, but you know, other stuff to do.

J: Are there any parties, companies or organisations which have influenced your position on fracking, or any events maybe?B: Well the ones who helped us to fight it, like Friends of the Earth, who put a lot of time and effort in with us, helping us. Greenpeace, you know, it’s the big corporations. Apart from that it’s just our own group, and other local groups – RAFF, FrackOff is another one. They did some really good presentations and they’re really good helping us with what to do and campaigning. But I won’t say they influence people. They try to say that these local groups are influenced by all these big

corporations, like Friends of the Earth, but it’s not true. These groups help and they give you resources, like information when you need it. But I won’t say they have influenced people, no. I mean all that stuff that made me aware is just social media – listening to what’s going on in the US, and listening to what’s going on in Holland, Australia. Delving a bit deeper, reading as much papers as you can, trying to get into the experts really. The organizations that have helped are organizations like 38Degrees, that helped us fundraising. Greenpeace have helped us fundraising. Things like that, they helped us raise awareness nationally. So I would say they all helped us, Friends of the Earth in particular have helped us doing a lot. Frackoff and Greenpeace helped us a lot. We have Facebook links with all of the other groups. I turned out to be the Facebook person in our group. Facebook is the most useful, because our website isn’t that great, you know, we use it for fundraising. We do a lot of the fundraising through the Frack Free Lancashire site. But that’s the thing we have a bit of a problem with lately, because Bob [Denett] and Ebeny, they will not let anybody else touch the FFL website and we want to post a bit more and be more pro-active. So there’s a bit of falling out of some of the people involved and Bob about how we manage the FFL website. But I say you’re going to have that always. That’s why we have the meetings.

[kort gesprek over mijn onderzoek]

Now we’re speaking about survey’s, there’s also this focus group thing. They (?) asked some of our people, but because they said they were anti-fracking, they won’t let them join it. So they’re making sure they haven’t got anti-fracking. And they also say they don’t want pro-frackers, but I don’t believe them. And I heard that one of the ladies went to one of the focus groups and she was not happy about the way it went. She almost thinks it is biased with fracking. I think they’re going to say that most of the people are pro-fracking. J: Was that the research where people were paid for being involved?B: Yeah, you’ve heard about it. That’s my opinion.

[weer kort gesprek over het verloop van mijn onderzoek]

Bill Winlow – Lanc. County CouncillorBill Winlow is sinds 1974 een lid van de Lancashire County Council en het hoofd van de Liberale Democraten in Lancashire. Zijn uitgesproken mening over fracking in 2012 op zijn eigen blog (http://professorbillwinlow.mycouncillor.org.uk/2012/12/14/lcc-gives-unanimous-support-for-liberal-democrat-motion-on-fracking/) maakte me nieuwsgierig naar zijn positie in 2016. Toen ik voor het eerst zijn blog las dacht ik dat Bill pro-fracking was, maar na dit interview bleek dat anders te zijn.

Toen ik Bill vroeg (voor het interview) over hoe hij terecht was gekomen bij de County Council antwoorde hij dat hij eerst bioloog was en zelfs les gaf op universiteiten. Hij schrijft nog steeds naast zijn baan bij de County Council biologische artikelen. Vervolgens vertelde hij me dat hij betrokken raakte in de politiek omdat hij het gevoel had dat hij de wereld wilde veranderen, en dat dat nog steeds zijn drijfveer is voor zijn werk.

19 april 2016, 11:30. Bill Winlow

J: Joeri/interviewerB: Bill/respondent

J: What is your job in the Lancashire County Council?B: Well my job here is that I am a county councillor. I’m also leader of the Liberal Democrat group, chairman of the scrutiny committee and chairman of the executive scrutiny committee. J: What exactly is the scrutiny committee?B: The scrutiny is a separate committee apart from the other administration, which asks critical questions about the administration and about everything that is going on in Lancashire. The executive committee is another committee which pre-scrutinizes everything before it goes into the cabinet to make decisions. So we can modify things slightly in executive committee. That’s a pretty tough and critical committee. J: And are you also directly involved in the public inquiry about fracking?B: No, my wife was. I kept away from it, because I had already written all sorts of things about fracking and I actually managed in December 2012 to get the current policy through the council unanimously. And that policy said basically that there was no adequate regulatory body and we should have an industry specific regulator – if fracking is to go ahead. And we were also concerned about its health impacts and all that sorts of things. But basically, the government has regained on all that, they have not given us what we as a council want, which is a regulator – a proper one. We have regulations dispersed over four different agencies and I’m not even sure if the agencies know what they’re doing. So I am very worried about the whole thing. One of the agencies is of course County Council, but if we make any rules on health for example we can still be overwritten by the environment agency. It is insanity, it is insanity. And you’ve probably saw that I went to our conference in York a view weeks ago, and managed to overturn our original party policy and that brought them against fracking, because it is uncontrollable. And because it is uncontrollable we shouldn’t have it.

J: So you are against fracking?B: Yeah, yeah.J: And why exactly?

B: Environmental problems […]. Basically I believe we should have the greenest agenda possible – which my party believes in anyway. That does mean we shouldn’t be pumping more gasses into the atmosphere, because they are going to disturb the atmosphere. We have to get rid of greenhouse gasses. Renewable energy is the thing I believe we should be going for, and we’re not. And I’m very disappointed that the government is undoing a number of the things that my party – the Liberal Democrats – would put into position. You know they’re reducing the amount of feeding turf (?), taking away subsidies from wind energy, and all the things that we aught necessary – and they make the industry almost unable to function because they don’t like wind turbines, for example!J: Is that because there is less money involved in wind turbines?B: Well, they’re ugly. They don’t believe in climate change. The government basically doesn’t believe in the obvious, because of course, the conservatives don’t believe in such stuff.

J: I read an article into which you said: “we must do all to prevent the industrialisation of rural areas of Lancashire as a consequence of fracking”. I know you’ve already said that you are against fracking, but could you elaborate the industrialisation part a bit more, please?B: Well, that was one of my original statements and it is still true. Because if you have fracking you have to get some way to get the gas from where it’s produced in the ground. How do you move it? So you either have a big amount of pipelines, we have to move it in big gas tankers, and they have to move it through primary rural areas. In the Fylde – which is where the problem is – is largely rural. And also, there is a big tourist industry around Blackpool and Lytham Saint Anne. That’s going to look to good, if you have the whole area covered in fracking towers and burning all gas and the rest of it. So you know – I like to see our rural economy taking care of. And I really think fracking is completely unnecessary.

J: And who do you think will have the most advantages from fracking?B: [vraag anders opgevat: nu wordt antwoord gegeven op wat de advantages zijn van fracking] The advantage is for example that mister Putin will not control our energy supply. However, I think we have so much wind energy as a nation we could be using that. What we should work on is the energy storage facilities. You know, better batteries and all that sort of things. So better ways to store energy and moving away from non-renewables. The trouble is that we are still relying on Russia and even more that than – Norway. They give us gas. Oh, and the Middle East too. What they have done is interesting. At the moment there is an energy clutch on the market. There is plenty of gas, there is plenty of oil and the prices are very low. They’ve taken the price down to try and kill fracking. That’s what it’s all about, that’s why the Middle East is clever about all this. There is a clutch of oil and gas on the market, and that is to prevent fracking to happen. You got to see the politics behind all this.

J: Who do you think will have the most benefits from fracking? Which party, organisation or company?B: BP and the like. Of course Cuadrilla is another one, but it is only a small company. There are much bigger companies lurking behind, who will make […]. I mean they have made huge amounts of money in the States. Just recently, because of the energy clutch a lot of the American fracking companies have gone out of business. So you know, I don’t really see a bright future for it. Basically because I think it’s not the right direction we should be travelling. Have you seen the graphs of global warming since the Industrial Revolution? The graph just keeps on growing. J: It is like a hockey stick, right?

B: That’s right. You saw Al Gore’s movie, did you?J: Well, a couple of years ago. B: That’s very good, because he didn’t handled it emotionally and gave us the facts and figures. I think that was very good, but he wasn’t a president, haha. Climate change is ignored by a lot of people in big business, because it is a uncomfortable truth. The point is that climate change doesn’t necessarily mean that everywhere it is going to be warmer. Some places will be warmer, some places will be cooler. It’s basically climate change in a major way, and we don’t really understand it yet. Is it safe to go ahead by pushing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere [fracking]? I don’t think so. It’s a question a lot of people don’t understand. It is a lot about money. In fact, it is almost entirely about money. I mean the Americans are delighted because it [fracking] has put their costs on fuel down. And it means they no longer depend on the rest of the world. I would argue that Europe doesn’t need to be dependent from anyone else, because we’ve got plenty of sources of renewable energy that we could use. Solar cells is a good example.

I also was arguing that if you’re going to frack, if you must do it, then wouldn’t it be better to take all the profits of that to use that for renewable energy – development? Because the big problem that a lot of us in the West have had, is that we have used the energy but we haven’t put enough research in renewables. You know, if we’d put enough research in renewables as we did in diffusion technology then perhaps we might be a lot better off in the moment.

I was in Italy a while ago, and I was quite amazed that the area around Napoli has not even a single bit of renewable energy, and very little in the rest of Italy too. While there is loads of it – there is lots of sunshine. So I don’t quite understand why they’re up to. There are plenty of desserts, which you know, haha, we could easily fill up with thousands of solar panels. J: I’ve heard that when an area as big as Israel or New Jersey is filled up with solar panels, then that could would provide the whole world with energy. B: That’s proper truth. The problem is that Israel [politieke situatie van Israël wordt nu beschreven, wat niet heel relevant is]. I mean i’ve got all solar panels over the roof of my house and they do yield energy, even on a cold winter day we still get energy. You know, we use it. That’s the whole point.

J: Okay, that’s nice. Who do you think will have the most disadvantages from fracking?B: [vraag wordt weer opgevat als in “wat zijn de disadvantages van fracking?”] Well I think the mayor one is methane leak. Methane is a very serious greenhouse gases, it lasts many times more in the atmosphere than any other gas. So I mean it hangs around in the atmosphere […] already we produce loads of methane – cows produce methane. Basically you know, invest quantities. So that’s another thing we need to look at, do we have to eat all that meat? But the major dangers are I believe industrialisation in areas where we don’t need industrialisation; greenhouse gas production; possible damage to water tables, possibly; and if you’re not careful you end with all sorts of problems in the strata down below and it might starts to trigger minor earthquakes. J: Yeah, like the ones in 2011. B: Well yeah, but I’m not even convinced, because Blackpool had earth tumours anyway. So it might be, it might not. But if you mess around with it you produce geological disturbances if you’re drilling in the wrong place and if you’re in all sorts of things you shouldn’t trigger. And then of course the other one is – if you dragger all these things up you got all this waste water, how do you treat that? Because some of it is radioactive and we have no way to remove the radio activity. So you put all of that together and it doesn’t seem to me a terribly acceptable prospect.

J: And who do you think will be most affected by that?B: Anybody living close to it. So people in rural villages will be very upset by it, but there is some evidence beginning to accrue. I was at a meeting in Yorkshire a while ago. There is a medic who managed to have a lot of information from America [fracking in America] with evidence from corrosion and organ dysfunctions to another which seems to be related to the fracking site. I don’t know how strong that evidence is and how strong the statistical evidence is, but he gained a pretty convincing case, which was quite interesting. So you know, there is disuse here which we haven’t fully explored and which the government doesn’t wish to explore. J: What for example?B: Well, if you look at the British government for example, they really have set their face against all this stuff. They’re very much in favour of fracking. And we’re still not convinced if it’s going to happen. We will have to see.

J: What do you think about the fact that the national government can make the decision about fracking?B: Well, I think it’s wrong. That was part of the motion which we put trough and said it should be in the hands of the local people. It’s absolutely wrong that the national government is telling us what we should do and how we should live. So that’s another reason why I am against the whole concept. J: Ah okay, the whole concept of the decision making process around fracking?B: Yes. Look, we’re perfectly able to make our own decision [Lancashire County Council], and it is not up to London to tell us how to work in Lancashire. Do they care about fracking? That’s the whole problem. They’re strapped from money, they need cash. Basically they will do anything they can to reduce the energy bill, and in their mind that’s a good thing. I think the price is too high personally.

J: What is the best outcome of the decision making process around fracking in your opinion?B: Well, if the government decides to be against it that will be fine […]. There is no good outcome the way it’s been done, because the Chamber of the Inquiry will make the decision. Oh sorry, they will make a recommendation and passes it to the minister and pass it to the minister [Greg Clark]. So they make the decision, but franky, if the recommendation is against they can still overrule that recommendation. They don’t have to do what the inquiry tells to do. So it’s a really uncomfortable one. J: But you said that every outcome is bad, do […]B: Well, if they decide against that’s a good outcome. But I don’t believe they will. I think it will go ahead, at one of the sites – Preston New Road. But Preston New Road is I would say the most likely to go ahead, because it is the closest to the highway – while the other is not. I still think it’s a mistake.

J: What do you think is the biggest hurdle or hinder to reach the outcome that fracking is not going ahead in Lancashire?B: The central government. The central government and continuous pressure from the fracking companies. J: Like Cuadrilla?B: Yeah, like Cuadrilla. J: How do you think the fracking companies will keep to hold pressure?B: Well, they can’t. I mean eventually there is going to be a decision one way or another. But it may not be this decision that finishes it off. But it is very unpopular all over the country, so I think it is

going to be really interesting. The other thing which I think is interesting is if they allow a site for fracking – Preston New Road for example – I would hate to pay the security bill for that site, because there will be all sorts of people trying to wreck it. You know, people are not going to sit there and let it all happen. And I think it might not be the good way, but it is just in human nature. People try to do all sorts of things to let it happen. I don’t recommend it, but I think that’s what will happen. They’re the closest to it.

J: Do you think all involved companies, organisations or parties are equally heard in the decision making process?B: [begreep de vraag als in ‘equally hurt’] I think local people are the ones who are going to be most hurt about it; I think the planet is hurt by it […]J: Yeah sorry, I mean heard instead of hurt.B: No I don’t really [think everyone is equally heard]. I think Lancashire County Council has got a major impact, because of what it is caused. I think the local people have made quite a lot of noise here – in the debating chamber – that was heard. And I think the Lancashire County Council has listened to that and they came up with their own views on it – which upsets our officers very badly. But that’s their decision, and it was thrown out very heavily. So I think the local groups were heard and listened to. We had people here demonstrating in front of the building for weeks, so it was interesting. My view is the central government is the view that is heard the most. They may be the most damaging.

J: Was there any conflicting or abusive intercourse between the involved parties, organisations and companies during the decision making process?B: Well, there was certain amount of disagreement here, yes there was some. But nothing physical here, yet. And nothing physically in the council. But in fact we have a unanimously agreed position, which it is going to look the government is going to override. And it was unanimous. I was very surprised, because at that time – I mean at the moment – we have a balance of power in the council – just to give a political background. And I am a leader of the Liberal Democrat group, which is the smallest group, but we have an agreement with the labour party to allow administration to carry on. In 2012 we’ve had no such agreement with anyone, because the conservatives were entirely in power, but they agreed with the proposition I put forward. So it’s a unanimously agreed position, which basically the government wishes to override. J: So the Lancashire County Council is against fracking?B: No I didn’t said that! I said the council allows fracking under certain circumstances, which the government seems not fit to agree with. J: And which circumstances are those?B: That was the whole point of the local control, and also taking account of any geological activity and the main one was of course that the businesses have an industry specific regulator – there isn’t one.

J: I believe that was my last question. Is there anything left you want to say?B: I think the council will be in a difficult position, because the decision is made by the minister. But we remain to see what that is – it may be for, it may be against. It’s a hard one.

I always have been very careful with what I’ve been saying about fracking, because I didn’t want to put the county into a position where […] you see there is a problem – you can’t in planning terms

pre-deter. You must not do that. But since the government has gone down to this line I think it’s time to actually speak out and make clear what my views are. I am against it, full stomp, haha! Especially if they don’t want to apply any sense of regulation. You know, there is no point.

There is another issue here, and Barbara has probably already told you about that. Basically, we’re a small country and we rely a lot on agriculture. And we have pretty big population centres pretty close to what would be fracking sites – lots of villages in rural areas in that same position. If you’re in America you got vast amounts of space. We don’t have that. I think you got to manage it very carefully. That’s what it’s all about in the end. If we don’t want to manage it, then we don’t survive. People are still being ill. I got friends in Pennsylvania, and they’re not happy, haha. Putting the whole package together – it [fracking] is not a sensible idea.

Scotland has rejected it, Whales has almost rejected it. So it is only England. And basically all of this suggests something else for this country. I’ve always believed in devolution of power, with decentralised government. But basically, this government gets more and more centralized. The other thing is, if we managed to pull out of Europe – which I think would be an absolute disaster – Scotland will leave the UK, and I suggest Northern Ireland would as well. We’ll end up with only England, and possibly Wales attached. It’s a little island floating in the ocean all on its own. What’s the point? At this point I will move to Scotland, haha. You know, we’re one of the most centralized governments in the world. We are certainly the most centralized government in Europe, and possibly even more than Canada. The reason I joined my party in the first place was because we all believed in devolution, we still do. All we’re saying now is decentralization of powers, and all that means is that the government still controls the mind. So we’re still centralized, and I think it is very unhealthy.

2. Participerende Observaties

Part. Obser. Documentaire7 april 2016: 19:00 – 21:00 – participerende observatie documentaire ‘Groundswell Rising’ – Friends of the Earth Central Lancashire – in het Mystery Tea House

Figuur 1: Flyer documentaire ‘Groundswell Rising’

Bron: Mystery Tea House, 2016.

Op 7 april werd er een documentaire genaamd ‘Groundswell Rising’ voor geïnteresseerden laten zien in het Mystery Tea House. Het is een documentaire over fracking en de anti-fracking movement in de US (vooral Colorado en de staat New York). De flyer van de documentaire noemt het “a compelling documentary about the human side of the fracking debate” (zie figuur 1). De documentaire komt uit 2014 maar werd door Friends of the Earth Central Lancashire uitgezonden. FOE Central Lancashire staat niet geheel los van de niet-gouvernementele organisatie FOE, maar ze mogen wel zelf bepalen aan welke protesten of acties ze hun geld uitgeven. Na een kort gesprek met een van de werknemers van Frack Free Lancashire werd me al snel duidelijk dat veel van het geld naar protesten tegen fracking gaat. Zo vertelde ze me dat ze daarnaast ook strijden voor het overleven van de bijen, plastic afval en nog veel meer zaken wat betreft het milieu, maar dat fracking het “grootste risico is voor de lokale bevolking van Lancashire”. Ze organiseren maandelijkse bijeenkomsten (ook in het Mystery

Tea House of het Beautiful Planet Café), organiseren workshops om protest te voeren en hebben maandelijks afspraken bij de Lancashire County council.

Rond kwart voor 7 zaten er al rond de 10 mensen in de omgebouwde eetzaal tot filmhuis. Bij binnenkomst kreeg men een paar stickers en badges van Frack Free Lancashire en werden er informatiekaartjes over volgende evenementen uitgedeeld. Ook werd je gevraagd om een donatie te geven van 2,50 pond voor FOE. Iets voor 7en, toen de documentaire bijna begon en er onderhand zo’n 25 mensen naar binnen waren gekomen, gaf de vrouw van FOE een korte toelichting. Ze vertelde dat dit de eerste documentaire is die ze gaan laten zien in Beautiful Planet Café en Mystery Tea House, maar dat er nog velen zullen volgen. Ook vertelde ze daarbij dat er bij de volgende documentaires ook een discussie zal volgen, maar dat die discussie bij deze documentaire niet nodig was omdat er al veel experts en protestanten tegen fracking aanwezig waren.

De documentaire gaat kortweg over de komst van fracking in Colorado en de staat New York. Allereerst wordt kort uitgebeeld wat fracking is, en de mogelijke gevolgen ervan. Fracking is een redelijk nieuwe methode van gasexploitatie en bijna niemand leek ervan af te weten. Het wordt gevolgd door enkele argumenten vóór fracking, zoals dat het kan leiden tot meer banen, goedkoper gas en lokale economische groei. Ook zou het weinig risico’s met zich mee brengen. Die argumenten worden echter al gauw weerlegd aan de hand van anekdotische en wetenschappelijke informatie. Verspreid over de hele film komen diverse inwoners van de betreffende gebieden aan het woord die elk hun ervaring delen over fracking. De meeste ervaringen hebben te maken met een afname van biodiversiteit in het gebied, geluidsoverlast en bovenal een sterke toename van ziektes als kanker in het gebied. Ook komen er experts op het gebied van chemicaliën in beeld die de schadelijke gezondheidseffecten die fracking met zich mee kan brengen uitleggen. De documentaire eindigt met een oproep tot protest wereldwijd tegen fracking.

Gedurende de documentaire werd af en toe gelachen om de argumenten die de grote bedrijven gaven waarom fracking wél moest gebeuren. Ook werd er vaak in een teleurgestelde zin nee-geschud op momenten waarop de lokale (zieke) bewoners hun gezondheidssituatie uitlegden en het verband daarvan met fracking. Er leefde een echte samenhorigheid in het filmhuis van het Mystery Tea House en de ‘slachtoffers’ van fracking in Amerika.

Na de documentaire kwam de medewerkster van FEO nogmaals naar voren om de meeting af te sluiten. Ze gaf aan dat de documentaire heeft laten zien dat fracking een enorm risico kan zijn voor de bevolking en dat we ervoor moeten strijden om het niet te laten gebeuren in Lancashire. Fracking speelt nu een grote rol in haar leven, en ze kan zich niet het leven voorstellen zonder fracking tegen te gaan. Juist nu is de tijd om in te grijpen en te laten zien dat de bevolking wel een stem heeft. We laten niet over ons en onze democratie heen lopen. De afsluiting werd met een hoop gejuich en applaus aangemoedigd. De bijeenkomst werd afgesloten met thee en koffie, waarbij iedereen nog samenkwam. Bijna iedereen kende elkaar bij naam en als men elkaar groette werd er vaak iets gezegd in de trend van “tot zaterdag” (dan is er een Lancashire County Council vergadering).

Als onderzoeker probeerde ik me onder het publiek als kijker van de documentaire te ‘verbergen’ om zo eventuele veranderingen in het gedrag van het publiek te voorkomen als ze wisten dat er een ‘onderzoeker’ in het midden was. Toch lukte dat niet helemaal. Bij het begin van de documentaire werd ik namelijk geïntroduceerd als ‘speciale gast van de Universiteit van Amsterdam’. Hoewel het

publiek bewust was van mijn aanwezigheid had ik niet het gevoel dat dat hun gedrag in enige zin heeft beïnvloedt.

Update: De dag na de première werd het volgende op de Facebook van Friends of the Earth Central Lancashire geplaatst:

“Thanks to everyone who came to see Groundswell Rising last night. So good to meet old friends there and great to see new faces, too. Thanks to Natalia from the Mystery Tea Shop in Cannon Street for providing us with the venue and a range of lovely teas. Groundswell Rising is a very thought provoking film especially for anyone new to the dangers of fracking. But why are these sorts of documentaries not widely available on mainstream television? Why must people have to seek them out in order to become educated about fracking?”

Part. Obs. Workshop Environ. ProtestNANA’s = nanashire.com

9 april 2016: Lancashire County Council: 10:30

Het is een bijeenkomst voor een workshop voor environmental en social protests. Er zijn zo’n 25 mensen aanwezig. Eerst wordt er een voorstellingsronde gehouden voor iedereen en van welke community of protestgroep iedereen komt. Praktisch iedereen komt van Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth of een andere protestorganisatie tegen fracking. De meeste mensen komen voor motivatie voor protesten, inspiratie om meer mensen tegen fracking te organiseren, diversiteit binnen de protestgroep en ook om manieren te bedenken om duurzame energie te implementeren op lokaal niveau. Er zijn ook politieke partijen betrokken in de discussie/de workshop (van de Green party).

Wat interessant is dat er ook veel ‘Nana’s’ bij de workshop aanwezig zijn. Dat zijn oma’s van over het hele land die zich door hun leeftijd en motivatie voor fracking verbonden voelen met elkaar. Later had ik een gesprek met een van de Nana’s. Zij vertelde me dat de meeste Nana’s met pensioen waren en zich niet veel om het milieu bekommerden totdat ze over het mogelijke fracking in de regio en de risico’s ervan hoorden. Omdat ze kinderen en kleinkinderen hadden wilden ze niet hebben dat zij opgroeiden op een vervuilde planeet door fracking. Het was een motivatie die een ieder van de Nana’s voelden. Als ze protesteren is dat vaak met hun (klein)kinderen en verzorgen ze hapjes en drankjes voor de rest. Een andere Nana waar ik contact mee had vertelde dat het een manier is om wat terug te geven aan de wereld, in plaats van de hele dag voor de televisie te hangen wat de meeste ouderen doen.

Eerst worden er sleutelvragen die de aanwezigen opnoemen opgeschreven. -How to engage new members and maintain their energy?-How can we engage the positive renewable energy together with the negative industry? how can we coordinate both these sides together?-How can we engage younger people?-How to include renewable in the community planning?-Direct action: what’s legal, what’s illegal?-How do you really mobilise people to actually DO things?-Efficient use of time?-How can we communicate as a movement?

Slechts een paar daarvan kunnen behandeld worden bij deze workshop. Vooral de 2e en 3e en de laatste drie zijn belangrijk vandaag wordt verteld.

Movement building: build and transition to a bigger and stronger environmental/social justice movement.Punten die de leider van de workshop heeft opgesteld:-how can people stay involved?-involvement is active?-strategies-effective alliances between groups and campaigns

Een eerste vraag is of iedereen op post-its kan opschrijven wat ze doen om meer mensen te verzamelen om tegen fracking in te werken. Er werden ongeveer 50 post-its geplakt. Vervolgens worden die post-its geplakt op een soort schietschijf, met als buitenste ring de mensen die niet bewust zijn van het fracking probleem. De binnenste ring zijn de mensen die actief bezig zijn met het fracking probleem. Daartussenin zijn mensen die bijvoorbeeld wel naar bijeenkomsten komen, maar niet heel erg actief zijn in actie voeren. De post-its worden geplakt op de schijf van mensen waarop ze zijn gericht zie figuur 1.

Figuur 1: post-its met daarop de acties om protestaanhangers te verzamelen, geplaatst op een plek afhankelijk op wie de acties zijn gericht

Bron: Auteur, 2016.

Vervolgens wordt er ingedeeld in 5 groepen. Die groepen beantwoordt een vraag en krijgen 15 minuten de tijd om een presentatie voor te bereiden met de volgende vraag: “What is your vision on a strong movement?” Deze vraag was onderverdeeld in diverse subvragen, zie figuur 2.

Figuur 2: Presentatieopdracht

Bron: Auteur, 2016.

De vijf verschillende groepjes hadden allemaal diverse manieren van presenteren. Mensen hadden een rap geschreven, anderen deden een evaluatiegesprek van een protest na, een ander groepje liet met behulp van foto’s en tekeningen hun mening over een saamhorigheidsgevoel in een protestgroep zien en wij en een ander groepje stelden elkaar vragen in de vorm van een interview.

Het was dit onderdeel wat vooral over het bouwen van een groepsgevoel ging, en het creëren van een sterke band tussen de leden van de groep. Zo vonden sommige groepjes het heel belangrijk om samen leuke dingen te ondernemen en bijeenkomsten af te sluiten bij een pub. De gedachte daarachter was dat naarmate men elkaar beter kent en een eventuele vriendschap heeft opgebouwd, men ook productiever en gemotiveerder met elkaar kan werken. Andere groepen vonden juist dat die positiviteit niet het voornaamste punt was voor een protestgroep, omdat fracking een bedreigende industrie is die grote consequenties heeft voor een ieder op de planeet. De

protestgroep zou daar rekening mee moeten houden en ervoor moeten vechten om fracking tegen te houden.

De tweede helft van de bijeenkomst ging voornamelijk over de psychologische kant van het actie voeren. Hier kwamen bijvoorbeeld onderdelen als presentatieangst en faalangst naar voren. Dit was echter niet heel relevant voor het onderzoek.

Ten slotte werd er afgesloten met een tal concrete mogelijkheden voor samenwerking: * cost sharing (e.g. to hold a stall at events)* Training (face to face, online, via the WEA) - contact frackfreerossendale@gmail.com and nanashireuk@gmail.com* A north west get together* Food - considering the impacts of fracking, putting it across to producers - also the local message* Having a national call-out calendar that was searchable by area or issue* Creating a simple renewables guide for anti-fracking talks to build in some 'what's the alternative'* Having mutual meetings for people within the anti-fracking and renewables campaigns

De rol die ik innam als onderzoeker was in dit geval participerend. Ik deed mee met de groepspresentatie, stelde mezelf voor en luisterde aandachtig. Toch was ik me er ook bewust van dat sommige aanwezigen zich niet geheel durfden uit te spreken bij de workshop door mijn aanwezigheid. Het was immers een redelijk kleine hechte groep met mensen die elkaar bijna allemaal kennen. Ik was daar dus echt een buitenstaander in. Toch had ik niet het gevoel dat mijn aanwezigheid de participerende observatie sterk heeft kunnen verstoren, omdat er alsnog gevoelige informatie voor de protestorganisaties werd besproken, ook in het groepje van 4 personen.

Student: Joeri VeulBachelor Thesis Human Geography

Contact: joeri.veul@student.uva.nlHello, my name is Joeri and I am a bachelor student Human Geography at the University of Amsterdam. I am writing my bachelor thesis about fracking in Lancashire and would like to ask you a couple of questions about the decision making process around fracking.

This survey has a total of 24 questions and will take around 15 minutes to complete. Thanks in advance!

General questions

1. Which age group are you in?o <25o 25-40o 41-60o 61-80o >80

2. Gender:o Meno Women

3. Where in Lancashire do you live?o Southern part (e.g. Preston, Lelyland, Chorley, Omskirk, Skelmersdale)o Western part (e.g. Lytham Saint Annes, Poulton-le-Fylde, Cleveleys, Fleetwood)o Northern part (e.g. Lancaster, Morecambe, Hornby, Whitewell, Forest of Bowland)o Eastern part (e.g. Burnley, Barnoldswick, Clitheroe, Nelson, Colne)o Other, namely………………………………………………………………………..

4. Do you know what the term ‘fracking’ means?o Yeso No (hand back the survey)

Fracking in Lancashire general questions

5. To what extent have you followed the decision making process around fracking in Lancashire?

o Not at all, because…………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………………………

o Only slightlyo Occasionallyo Reasonably wello Thoroughly

6. Did you participate yourself in the decision making process? (this could take any form, like being active in a political organization, demonstrating or any other activity)

o No (skip question 7 & 8)

o Yes, namely…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

7. How would you describe your participation in the process in maximum 3 sentences?…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

8. If you participated in the decision making process yourself, are you willing to complete a slightly more in depth-interview with me at any time and place convenient to you?

o Noo Yes, please fill in contact details below:

-Name………………………………………………………………………….. -Phone number………………………………………………………………… -Email…………………………………………………………………………..

Fracking in Lancashire decision making process specific questions

9. Could you please give me the names of the first five companies, organisations or parties which come to mind that were involved in the decision making process around fracking? (could be any company etc. which is even remotely directly or indirectly involved or tries to influence the process) 1…………………………………………………………………………………….. 2…………………………………………………………………………………….. 3…………………………………………………………………………………….. 4…………………………………………………………………………………….. 5……………………………………………………………………………………..How would you rank these five parties in terms of their involvement, starting with the party that is most heavily involved? Please write the numbers behind the five parties.

10. How would you describe the goals of the five different parties or organisations you named at question 9 in one or two sentences?1.…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………2. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………3………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………………………………………………………………………………………………4………………………………………………………………………………………………....................................................................................................................................................5……………………………………………………………………………………………..

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……………………………………………………………………………………………………

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11. What do you think about the ways these five different parties express and articulate their point of view (which is for example through (social) media, protests, blogs/websites, etc.)1.……………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………2. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………3………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………4………………………………………………………………………………………………....................................................................................................................................................…………………………………………………………………………………………………5……………………………………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

12. Has any of these parties made you rethink your point of view on fracking? And if so, which party and in what way?

o Noo Yes, namely……………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

o I do not know

13. Assuming that various groups have been involved in the decision making process around fracking in Lancashire, do you think that the voices of all groups are equally heard in the decision making process?

o Yeso No, because…………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………....………………………………………………………………………………………

o I do not know

14. When the different parties involved entered into a dialogue with each other, in your opinion, did this lead to any conflicting or even abusive intercourse between the parties? If so, could you give an example?

o Noo Yes, it led to a dispute, for example when…………………………………………..

………………………………………………………………………………………. ……………………………………………………………………………………….

o I do not know

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15. Do you think that the final decision about fracking in Lancashire has been manipulated or controlled by any party/individual in any way? If so, by whom and how?

o Yes, ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………....................……………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………………………………………………………………….

o Noo I do not know

16. Do you have a complete overview of the entire decision making process? If not, what information was missing in your opinion?

o Yeso No, the information about …………………………………………………………..

………………………………………………………………………….was missing.

17. Was the decision making process easy to follow as a citizen? If not, what was not so clear and why not?

o Yes, it was completely clear.o No, it was not clear, because………………………………………………………..

……………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………………………………………………………………….

18. What do you think best describes the way that decisions around fracking have been taken:

o Every decision has been taken without any communication to the citizens of Lancashire

o Decisions have mostly been taken without communication to the citizens of Lancashire

o Decisions have been taken with limited communication to the citizens of Lancashireo Most decisions have been communicated to the citizens of Lancashireo Every decision has been fully communicated to the citizens of Lancashireo I do not know

19. Through which channels did you gather information about the decision making process? (multiple answers possible)

o Via the media (newspapers, television, radio, etc.)o Through internet sites of the parties involved (for example www.greenpeace.org.uk

or www.cuadrillaresources.com)o Via hear-say (family, friends, neighbours)o By attending discussions or conversationso Other:………………………………………………………………………………….

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20. During the decision making process, did the involved parties take into account the interests of the various parties affected by their proposals? If not, please briefly explain where parties failed to do so.

o Yeso No…………………………………………………………………………………...

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

o I do not know

21. Do you think that the citizens were able to influence the decision making process in any way?

o Not at all o Only to a limited extento Quite a bito Certainlyo I do not know

22. How would you describe the outcome of the decision making process if fracking will be rejected?

o Strongly positiveo Advantageouso No impact / no changeo Disadvantageouso Strongly negativeo Other, namely………………………………………………………………………….o I do not know (skip question 21)

23. Which of the parties that you named at question 9 will experience this outcome as advantageous in your opinion, and who will experience it as neutral or disadvantageous? Advantageous.…...…………………………………………………………………………….…………………………………………………………………………………………………Neutral……………………………………………………………………………………….... ..................................................................................................................................................Disadvantageous……………………………………………………………………………….…………………………………………………………………………………………………

24. In your opinion, does this outcome of the decision making process correspond with the values and identity of the Lancashire citizens?

o Not at all o To a limited extento Quite a bito Certainlyo I do not know

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