The U.K. has lifted its fracking ban, digging up a long-running

LONDON — The U.K. government lifted its ban on fracking Thursday, citing the need to increase domestic energy supply following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In her first major address on Sept. 8, new Prime Minister Liz Truss said ending the ban on extracting the U.K.’s “huge reserves of shale … could get gas flowing in as soon as six months, where there is local support.”

The ban was introduced in November 2019 after several tremors, and finally a magnitude 2.9 earthquake, were recorded near the U.K.’s only active fracking site, in the English county of Lancashire. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves injecting water, chemicals and sand into cracks in the earth at high pressure, widening them to allow the extraction of oil, or in the U.K.’s case, gas from shale formations. Locals worried about the link — nearly 200 reported damaged to their homes from the earthquake — and made their objections loudly known.

While anything below magnitude 3 is considered a small earthquake and is relatively common, a government report in 2019 concluded a ban on the practice was necessary since it was “not currently possible to accurately predict the probability or magnitude of earthquakes linked to fracking operations.” 

But Truss, and her new business and energy chief Jacob Rees-Mogg, insist fracking will play a key role in making Britain a net energy exporter by 2040. They also want to increase North Sea oil and gas production, announcing a new oil and gas exploration licensing round Thursday, as well as deployment of hydrogen, solar and offshore wind.

Support for fracking among the general population has risen amid the energy crisis, according to polling firm YouGov, but remained at only 27% in May; while there are organized campaign groups opposing fracking around the U.K. who say they are ready to spring into action.

The devolved Scottish and Welsh governments and the opposition Labour party are also officially opposed to fracking. So are several politicians from the ruling Conservative Party, including Mark Menzies, member of parliament for the area of Lancashire where the Cuadrilla site is located. On news of the ban lifting, he said it had been “demonstrated without doubt the geology here is not suitable.”

Even the person now holding the reigns of the U.K. economy, Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng, publicly claimed as recently as February that fracking would do nothing to cushion people from rising gas and electricity prices, and that it would “take a decade to extract sufficient volumes” while coming…