As a prominent retired anti-fracking academic prepares to take legal action against his former employer Glasgow University, new emails uncovered by Spinwatch raise doubts over the university’s close relationship with the shale gas industry. Professor David Smythe last week crowd-funded more than £11,600 to challenge the university’s right to terminate his lifelong online research access after he published an article critical of the shale gas industry. He claims his access was cut off because one of the university’s senior staff, engineering professor and member of the university court, Professor Paul Younger, ‘disagrees with my views on fracking; he and many other UK earth science academics depend upon industry and government for research grants.’ A former adviser to the Scottish Government’s expert panel on unconventional gas, Younger has accused Smythe of ‘pseudo-scientific scaremongering’ over fracking. Younger has also received funding and was a non-executive director of the company Five Quarter which was involved in exploring for shale gas from underground offshore coal deposits, until it collapsed in March this year. Smythe, who has represented many community groups opposed to shale gas, argues that wider issues are afoot too: ‘The companies that I have criticised technically include Cuadrilla Resources, Dart Energy, IGas, and Celtique Energie. The common theme in my work is the risk of contamination of groundwater resources due to the complex faulted geology of the UK.’
Spinwatch 17th Aug 2016 read more »
A tiny community sitting on a 27-square-mile piece of Western Pennsylvania wanted to send a big message to the energy company planning to deposit toxic fracking wastewater under its neighborhoods. And its 700 residents wanted it to be perfectly legal for them to loudly object. Grant Township had seen what happens when people nationwide take to the streets to protest bullying corporations: Arrests. Lots of them. So Grant Township planned ahead. Two weeks ago, it passed a law that protects its residents from arrest if they protest Pennsylvania General Energy Company’s (PGE) creation of an injection well. Residents believe this law is the first in the United States to legalize nonviolent civil disobedience against toxic wastewater injection wells.
Yes Magazine 13th May 2016 read more »
The Chinese government is doing more than just funding the UK’s fleet of new nuclear power plants, and taking over North Sea oil fields. It’s also backing fracking. The same Beijing-backed company The Times today revealed is now the UK offshore oil industry’s biggest player is also the largest shareholder in one of Britain’s biggest fracking firms. China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) controls 13% of shale explorer IGas via its subsidiary Nexen. That is 6% less than it owned when Energydesk first looked into IGas two years ago.
Energydesk 23rd Aug 2016 read more »