Energy firm says it is building access road at site in Fylde after receiving government green light last year

The energy company Cuadrilla has started work on a controversial shale gas site in Lancashire that will later this year become the first well to be fracked in the UK since 2011.

The site at Preston New Road in the Fylde is one of two rejected by Lancashire county council, but its decision was overturned last year by the communities secretary, Sajid Javid.

Cuadrilla said work was initially focused on building an access road. Over the next three months, it will establish a well pad and site in what is currently a field, the size of a rugby pitch, in the Lancashire countryside. Drilling is expected to begin in the spring, with fracking in the third quarter of the year.

What is fracking? Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a way of extracting natural gas from shale rock formations that are often deep underground. It involves pumping water, chemicals and usually sand underground at high pressure to fracture shale – hence the name – and release the gas trapped within to be collected back at the surface. The technology has transformed the US energy landscape in the last decade, owing to the combination of high-volume fracking – 1.5m gallons of water per well, on average – and the relatively modern ability to drill horizontally into shale after a vertical well has been drilled.

​In the US, up to 30,000 new wells were drilled and fracked between 2011 and 2014. In the UK, not a single well has been drilled and fracked completely – the only attempt to date, near Blackpool in 2010, was halted halfway after being linked to minor earthquakes. ​



The chief executive of Cuadrilla, Francis Egan, said he hoped it would become clear within a yearwhether it was economically viable to extract shale gas from the site.

“It’s a resumption of operations,” he said. “It’s been a long break. So for us it’s good to be able to commence work on the ground. We know there’s a lot of gas in the ground and we hope to demonstrate that it can be made to flow out in commercially viable quantities.”

Although Cuadrilla has planning permission for four wells at the site, it will concentrate on drilling a pilot well 3,500 metres deep this year and two horizontal wells. The contract for the construction is worth £1.5m and Egan said the work would involve dozens of people.

Claire Stephenson, of the local residents group Preston New Road Action Group, said the first they had heard of construction starting was via media reports.

“If this is Cuadrilla’s delivery of their ‘community engagement’ standards, they have failed in the first instance. Local residents were not even informed of their plans. It’s discourteous and reaffirms the continued lack of social licence that this company has in Lancashire and beyond,” she told the Guardian.

Rose Dickinson, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “This is brashness and arrogance from Cuadrilla, especially so while legal challenges from people in the local community are pending. What this action does is further erode any chance of trust in this company.”

Environmental activists last year vowed to fight fracking at the site, promising direct action and “rolling blockades” to delay construction and drilling.

On the prospect of protests, Egan said: “I understand that there are people opposed to it [fracking] for a variety of reasons and will want to make that opposition known. Frankly, I don’t have a problem with that.

“We have the consent; we are following government policy. We and, more importantly, our workers have a right to go out about their business, so I hope that right will be respected, just as we will respect the right for people to make their feelings known.”

Cuadrilla and Friends of the Earth have clashed before, and this week the green group informally agreed with the advertising watchdog not to repeat claims it had made in an anti-fracking leaflet about the effects of fracking on the health of local populations, drinking water or property prices.

On Thursday, the chief of the Advertising Standards Authority said it was not true that, as Friends of the Earth had claimed, it had dropped the case.

“That’s not an accurate reflection of what’s happened,” said Guy Parker, the ASA’s chief executive. “We thoroughly investigated the complaints we received and closed the case on receipt of the above assurance. Because of that, we decided against publishing a formal ruling, but plainly that’s not the same thing as ‘dropping the case’.”