Labour candidate for Salford City Council has started a petition to stop Coal Bed Methane extraction in Chat Moss, which is currently licensed to oil and gas exploration company IGas.
The petition is active on the change.org website, and it has collected over 400 signatures, and it aims to collect 500.
In 2011, IGas purchased the site and associated planning permission from Nexen Exploration. Salford Council had already permitted it to be used for exploratory drilling and coal bed methane production two years earlier.
Labour Councillor for Salford Derek Antrobus said: “The Government granted a licence to IGas in 2016, the licence is due to renewal in 2021. The Council is excluded from the licensing process.
Fracking is a big issue in Lancashire, some areas such as Blackpool suffered from earth tremors due to fracking, in December 2018 a 1.5-magnitude quake occurred.
Lewis Nelson who was formerly Salford Youth MP and Young Mayor wrote: “We believe that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is an unsafe technology that possesses a serious and unnecessary risk to wildlife and people.”
Hydraulic fracturing is an oil and gas well development process that typically involves injecting water, sand, and chemicals under high pressure into a bedrock formation via the well. This process is intended to create new fractures in the rock as well as increase the size, extent, and connectivity of existing fractures
Nelson added: “We believe that shale gas extraction in the UK would lock the next generation into dependency on fossil fuels. We believe that we need to act now and urgently to invest in green renewables, polluting fossil fuels should not be our legacy.”
Derek Antrobus added: “The Council opposes fracking because of its climate change impacts. We have opposed the Tory plan to remove some planning powers on fracking.”
Student energy has created a video that shows what hydraulic fracturing is. There is more information on this topic on their website www.studentenergy.org