Furious Britons have told GB News that Energy Secretary Ed Miliband “has no right” to order the sealing of Britain’s final shale gas wells amid mounting fears over energy security at a time of rising global tensions.
Plans to seal gas wells in Lancashire – thought to contain enough energy to power the UK for decades – were met with fury as Britons accused the Energy Secretary of “short-sightedness”.
In line with a pre-election vow to ban fracking on UK soil “for good”, Miliband approved an order for the wells to be permanently sealed, taking the option to use them off the table despite war in Europe and Britain’s dependence on energy imports.
Robert Jenrick told GB News viewers the decision posed a risk to Britain’s energy security, pointing to the development and use of land oil wells during World War Two that proved crucial to winning the Battle of Britain and then powering the D-Day landings which ultimately secured victory for the Allies in the wider war.
Furious Britons have told GB News that Energy Secretary Ed Miliband ‘has no right’ to order the sealing of Britain’s final shale gas wells amid mounting fears over energy security at a time of rising global tensions
GB News
Britain’s spitfire planes were fuelled in part by the 2 million barrels of oil pumped from the Eakring oil fields in Newark, Nottinghamshire as part of a top-secret operation ordered by Winston Churchill.
Oil recovered from the site was pumped through a daring pipeline, strong yet flexible enough to follow Allied forces across the Channel to fuel their invasion of France in 1944 through Operation PLUTO.
“Fast forward to today, and over in Lancashire, the Cuadrilla fracking wells sit safely drilled, capped and ready. They are our modern equivalent – strategic reserves, national assets ready to be used in extreme situations if, God forbid, our country was in peril once again,” Jenrick said.
One elderly member of the public living near Eakring oil fields was outraged, telling GB News: “I don’t think that Miliband has any right whatsoever to demand that these resources are closed down just because he has a whim about the easiest way to get himself into the history books.
“He’ll get himself into the history books in a very adverse way, in my opinion.”
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Others were equally angry at what they termed a “short-sighted decision”.
One lady sat eating a cream cake on a bench in Newark town square told Jenrick: “The problem is that we are trying to get to net zero, but a lot of other countries are just carrying on. We’d make a one per cent difference [to global emissions] if we went to net zero.”
Parliamentarians accused Miliband of “playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands” by ordering the wells sealed shut in a letter pleading with the Energy Secretary to change course.
Conservative MP Julian Lewis accused the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of ducking the issue in Parliament: “Does he not recognise that in a desperate situation such as an international conflict where other sources of power were cut off from us, taking a decision now to concrete these things over so that a future Government could not use them is extremely irresponsible and reckless?”
Plans to seal gas wells in Lancashire – thought to contain enough energy to power the UK for decades – were met with fury as Britons accused the Energy Secretary of ‘short-sightedness’
GB News
Starmer replied: “There are real consequences of fracking which I’ve set out. What we need to do to secure our independence and lower bills for the next generation of jobs is move at speed to renewable energy. That’s why there is record investment coming into renewable energy so that tyrants like Putin can’t put his boot on our throat.”
The North Sea Transition Authority, an arm of Miliband’s department, has ordered the decommissioning of Britain’s two shale wells by June.
In February 2022 an identical plan was blocked by Boris Johnson’s government when Kwasi Kwarteng, the then energy secretary, intervened.
Kwarteng said at the time that it “did not necessarily make any sense to concrete over the wells”.
But Miliband has given no indication that he will stop the process, which critics say is motivated by “blind ideology”.
A spokesman for Miliband’s department said: “We intend to ban fracking for good and make Britain a clean energy superpower to protect current and future generations.”
