Reform UK bosses in Lancashire have distanced themselves from comments made by the party's national deputy leader calling for the return of fracking in the UK.
Top councillors have said any future fracking activity in the UK will be focused hundreds of miles away on the other side of the country, nearer Richard Tice MP's own constituency.
They added local conditions are “not conducive” to restarting the controversial process where it was previously carried out on the Fylde coast.
The ruling group on Lancashire County Council was responding to comments made by Reform’s national deputy leader in which he championed shale gas as an untapped source of energy.
Richard Tice said earlier this week that should the party get into government in 2029, it would lift the current indefinite ban on fracking in the UK and start testing new extraction techniques at a small number of independently-monitored sites for a period of two years.
The Boston and Skegness MP said: “That will confirm the quantity of gas available and satisfy people that it’s safe."
However, his enthusiasm has provoked anger amongst anti-fracking campaigners in Lancashire, where the process, which involves water and chemicals being pumped into shale rock at high pressure to extract gas, has a long and volatile history.
A site off Preston New Road in Fylde became the focus of semi-permanent protest after the government gave the green light for test drilling by energy firm Cuadrilla in October 2016.
The process was suspended, and the national ban, or moratorium, imposed, in 2019 after a series of tremors at the Little Plumpton plot that year, the largest of them measuring 2.9 on the Richter scale.
Nick Danby, from Frack Free Lancashire, said Reform would face “massive and sustained opposition, both nationally and locally, if they try to resurrect fracking”.
However, deputy Lancashire County Council leader Councillor Simon Evans sought to soothe local concerns.
He said the authority’s cabinet member for rural affairs, environment and communities, Joshua Roberts, had already made it clear that “the conditions in the Fylde coast are not conducive to fracking – and there are no plans for it to take place here”.
County Cllr Evans added: “While Reform UK does support fracking on a case-by-case basis, any activity is expected to be more likely in the East of England rather than the North West.
“County Cllr Roberts will continue to support local residents and liaise with them regularly to ensure their concerns are heard and represented.”
The two wells that were drilled alongside Preston New Road have now been plugged as part of the process of restoring the site, as required by the planning permission granted for the drilling.
Any fresh applications for fracking in the county would – at least initially – be determined by Lancashire County Council’s cross-party and politically independent development control committee, with the councillors who sit on it being guided by advice from the authority’s non-political planning officers .
That committee refused permission for the Little Plumpton scheme in 2015, before the then Conservative government overturned the decision a year later.
Nick Danby said that the national fracking moratorium “is in place for a very good reason”.
He said: “Let nobody forget that the fracking activity at the Preston New Road site caused numerous earthquake tremors – exactly as we predicted.
“We need to embrace greener and cleaner energy as a matter of urgency. Climate change is very real and to deny this is grossly irresponsible.”
Lancashire County Council leader Stephen Atkinson said at a cabinet meeting in June that he believes in “the climate science” around global warming, but – like Reform at a national level – he has been highly critical of the pursuit of net-zero carbon targets in the UK, in the absence of the rest of the world going down the same path.
Richard Tice, who is also Reform UK’s energy spokesperson, said there was “potentially hundreds of billions” in “energy treasure [available] in the form of shale gas”.
He added it was “grossly financially negligent to a criminal degree to leave that value underground and not to extract it”.
However, Frack Free Lancashire’s Claire Stephenson, rubbished that characterisation of the claimed benefits of fracking.
She said: “Calling shale gas a ‘treasure’ ignores the wreckage it left behind in Lancashire.
"Since 2011, every attempt to frack here has failed – on safety, on economics and on public consent.
“What’s grossly negligent is pretending a busted industry is the panacea to today’s energy crisis when renewables are cheaper, cleaner, and actually deliver."
County Cllr Roberts recently told the BBC that fracking “has its place, but not everywhere”, adding that the particular geology in Lancashire risked issues such as water contamination and subsidence being caused.
Back in 2011, another Cuadrilla fracking site – near Weeton, also on the Fylde – was linked to two earth tremors. That also led to a temporary ban on the process nationwide, which was later removed. The firm pulled out of the project in 2013.
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