Poll held over fracking amid ‘North Sea on land’ claims

Labour Party activists, who will be in Beverley on Saturday, along with Hull East Labour MP Karl Turner, hope hundreds of people will cast their vote.

Protesters camped at the Rathlin Energy (UK) site at nearby Walkington, are trying to stop a “mini fall off” test being conducted on the Bowland shale.

Rathlin told regulators in its application the tests “will help determine whether the formation is capable of being hydraulically fractured”.

The protesters claim the site will then be sold off to a larger energy firm.

The group expects convoys of trucks to start arriving with equipment next week, ahead of tests, but Humberside Police said yesterday they were unaware of “any planned activity which would require our response”.

Member of Beverley and Holderness Labour Party George McManus, a former gas pipeline engineer, said: “I think it is a terrible idea mainly because of the impact on climate change.

“A certain amount of damage is almost inevitable given the complex nature of the geology in the Humber basin. It’s ‘a North Sea on land’ stretching from Scarborough to Lincoln, a massive natural carbon reserve.

“If you put a borehole down in Walkington theoretically the (shale) gas extracted could be from under a garden in Beverley.”

Ministers want to change ancient trespass laws to facilitate fracking projects and Mr McManus urged homeowners to express their views.

He said: “There will undoubtedly be a lot of people who are positive about fracking especially if they think it will bring down energy prices and the pollution will be elsewhere.”

Rathlin released a statement repeating that it was not hydraulically fracturing at either of its wells in East Yorkshire and had no plans to do so.

It was looking “exclusively at conventional oil and gas targets in sandstone and limestone formations.”

The statement added: “ We are very well aware of the protesting groups which are continuing to suggest Rathlin has some hidden intention to carry out unauthorised activities such as fracking. It should be obvious, from any objective viewpoint, that this is an absurd proposition.”