It’s a nice idea that the old Blackburn gasworks would be an ideal drilling site, but I don’t think Cuadrilla would be interested (‘Let them start drilling for gas in Blackburn’, Letters, 16/7). Unfortunately, the gasworks are the wrong side of the Pendle monocline, so the frack-worthy Bowland Shales are, on a cursory derivation from the relevant (Rochdale) BGS geological map, about one and a half miles underground even though they outcrop on Pendle Hill only a few miles away.

Just as well, really, as there are several faults in and near Blackburn which might be re-activated by fracking, giving the Telegraph a good ‘Blackburn Earthquake’ headline!

Jim Harding, Brownhill Road, Blackburn.