Mike Hill, sitting in his living room a few miles from a fracking site outside Blackpool, is brandishing a government letter brushing aside his concerns about the industry. “You, Theresa May, overruled democracy to force fracking on the residents of Fylde,” he says, referring to his own letter to the prime minister, in which he urges her to heed experts’ calls for tighter shale gas regulations.
“And then you won’t pay attention, the slightest attention, to anybody in regards fracking regulation, fracking monitoring, public health risks, risks to indigenous industries,” says the chartered engineer, who used to work in the oil and gas sector.
“I’m not really a protester – I’m an engineer,” adds Hill, who won 12% of the vote in the 2015 general election running as an independent candidate in Fylde to raise awareness of fracking locally.
Despite his efforts, this month will see the first ever horizontal drilling in the UK to recover gas trapped in shale rock. The shale is thousands of metres underneath a farmer’s field between Blackpool and Preston.
The moment, which will mark a milestone for the domestic fracking industry, will be overseen by UK company Cuadrilla, a local firm backed by international investors and Centrica, the owner of British Gas.
Cuadrilla’s site off the Preston New Road is the country’s biggest and most important shale exploration site, due to its sheer scale and its use of a drilling technique that could unlock many more sites across the country if it proves successful.
Since ministers overturned the county council’s rejection of fracking here, it has also been the most contentious, acting as a lightning rod for Britain’s national anti-fracking movement.
A “rolling resistance” by opponents this summer saw almost daily road closures in July, and a policing operation of about 100 officers a day, at a cost of £2.3m so far. With autumn’s arrival, the level of protest has quietened as drilling operations have intensified.
“There’s a bit of momentum,” said Francis Egan, Cuadrilla’s chief executive, referring to his firm’s progress and to imminent drilling or fracking by companies including Third Energy, Ineos and iGas. “But it’s still in the exploration phase. It’s one step at a time.”
Entering the fortified site, which the Guardian is the first national newspaper to access, the reality of this potential future energy source is mundane rather than revolutionary.
Well-casings lie in rows near cement mixers and sealed skips. There are few staff – about 40 on a typical day. Behind two noise-insulating walls stands the 35-metre high drilling rig which was brought in at night, breaching planning permission but defended by the company as a way of minimising disruption.
So far, one well has been vertically drilled 1,300m deep, and the other 1,200m out of a target of 3,500m down. Both are small, around the size of a manhole cover. Later in the month, if all goes to plan, the drilling will turn horizontally, with the wells heading westwards towards Blackpool.
Hydraulic fracturing kit – essentially, a lot of pumps – will then arrive, to pump water, sand and chemicals at high pressure underground to fracture shale and release gas.
The key question is whether the gas flows fast enough for Cuadrilla to justify ramping up to a production phase. The company has permission to drill and frack a further two wells here.
While drilling has been largely straightforward, Lancashire’s ample water has been another matter. The Environment Agency censured the company after excess muddy water ran off from the site during construction earlier this year, silting up a brook.
“This is the bane of my life,” jokes the company’s health and safety manager, Nick Mace, of an artificial ditch holding water from the site. Today it is trucked off to wastewater treatment plants, but Mace is applying to have treatment equipment installed on site, to reduce HGV movements and save money.
At the corners of the site are four boreholes, more than regulation requires, to monitor water for gases such as methane and carbon dioxide.
This belt-and-braces approach does not come cheap: Egan puts the cost of drilling and fracking each exploration well at £12m-£15m each.
The company’s reassurances have not stopped the site from dividing local opinion. On the one hand, it appears there is quiet support for the development. The pro-shale Conservative party won here in 2015 and 2017, though local Tory MP believes it should only go ahead if proven safe.
“Unless there’s an alternative [energy source], I’m for it,” says one farmer nearby, who did not want to be named, adding that they would be happy if the horizontal wells went under their land.
Phil Davidson, sales manager of the nearby Pipers Height caravan park, said: “If that money stays on Fylde coast, the majority of it, then I’m for it. If it all goes down to Westminster and into the coffers, then I don’t agree with it.”
Concerns about the site include the risk of air and water pollution and the impact on two big employers locally: farming and tourism.
While there were a little over half a dozen protesters opposite the site during the Guardian’s visit, Green party co-leader Caroline Lucas and shadow chancellor John McDonnell have both recently drawn crowds of hundreds to Preston New Road.
Claire Stephenson, a local and member of residents’ association Preston New Road Action Group, said: “The more we’re here, the more we see the disgraceful breaches of regulation that go on, the stronger we feel we have to protect our land.”
Dan Huxley-Blythe, an antiques dealer in nearby town of Lytham St Annes, said he had been at Cuadrilla’s site every week since construction began in January. “It swallows up a lot of free time, it’s so important to get involved, [but] you do make sacrifices. You sacrifice spending time with your family, spending time at work. It affects you financially, your relationships.”
But he is inspired by support from opponents around the country, including people from Kirby Misperton, the North Yorkshire village where Third Energy is on the verge of fracking. “Wherever this industry takes hold, it meets resistance,” said Huxley-Blythe.
One campaigner against the site, a local councillor, likened the policing to the 1980’s miners’ strike, facilitating the company’s business rather than the public’s right to protest. Others said the police had been heavy-handed.
Lancashire police, which had to draft in officers from around the country in the summer and made more than 300 arrests, said it faces a thankless task of balancing freedom to protest, Cuadrilla’s right to go about its business, and minimising the impact on locals.
“It’s a bit of a line in the sand as it’s the first commercial site to be developed and it’s iconic because it’s been done against local decision-making,” said Supt Richard Robertshaw, who heads the policing operation.
He rejects the claims of heavy-handedness, saying complaints have proved unfounded. The mood was that fracking opponents were in it for the long term, he said. “We will be there.”
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