Serious
questions of
trust, independence and credibility now hang over how the Department
for
Economy awarded a research study into the ‘economic, societal and
environmental
impacts of onshore petroleum exploration and production in Northern
Ireland’ to
Hatch Regeneris, on the grounds
that it had conducted similar research
for the Welsh Government in 2015, after it was discovered this week
that Regeneris
had falsely claimed in the Welsh
report
into ‘socio-economic impact of unconventional gas in Wales’ that ‘Public
Health England’ and ‘Public Health Wales’
were of the view “that
effects of individual exploration activities can be identified,
assessed and
mitigated to an acceptable level”. No
such view was expressed in the
‘Public Health England’ or ‘Public Health
Wales’ reports referred
to by Regeneris. [see Footnote 1]
The
false assertion
that fracking could be “mitigated to an acceptable level”
is of crucial
importance given that the Northern Ireland Executive is set to decide
on a new
policy on Petroleum licensing. The outcome of the Hatch
Regeneris report
commissioned by DfE will be used as the basis for helping the Northern
Ireland
Executive choose its preferred option but the credibility of Hatch
Regeneris
following the revelation now seriously
undermines this process. On December
21st 2018, the Department controversially
published
its opinion
that, falsely, it is “by no means
the case” that there are “actual” adverse
environmental and health
impacts from fracking in Northern Ireland and that fracking can be
mitigated “to
an
acceptable level”,
without defining for whom the level of fracking is acceptable.
However, it is now clear that there is a DfE policy of systematically
continuing a narrative that ‘fracking can be mitigated to an acceptable
level’,
when all the latest scientific evidence points to the exact opposite.
The
Regeneris Welsh
report, with clear disregard for the well-established
precautionary
principle, further disingenuously stated that “it
will not be
until the exploration industry has an opportunity to demonstrate that
it can
undertake these activities in a manner that does not lead to
unacceptable
adverse effects, that public acceptability of the technologies will be
achieved”,
with no consideration for the fact that a petroleum licence is for 30
years. It
is well understood in legal terms that once a license is given, then
industry
is only obliged to apply ‘best practice’ and ‘as
low as reasonably
possible’ operational mitigation, which runs completely
counter to the
precautionary principle. It is a choice of preempting damage or
regulating damage
and the fear and experience to date is that the fossil fuel sector
prefers
regulation which it can then ignore and challenge at every level in the
courts. Once a fracking company has a petroleum licence and
if, on
climate or public health grounds, this practice subsequently needs to
be
stopped, then the country is financially exposed to expensive
litigation which
can run into the hundreds of millions, if not billions, via such tools
as the
Energy Charter Treaty on the grounds that the companies had an
expectation of
profit - and that is even if the ban is done on climate or public
health
grounds. For example, on
20 January 2021 German
electricity generation company RWE filed a €1.4 billion request
for arbitration
against the Netherlands at the International
Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) based on the Dutch
government's decision to phase out coal for electricity generation. For
Regeneris
to encourage a regulatory monitoring/best
practice/’as low as reasonably
possible’ approach to fracking by measuring the climate, environmental
and
public-health damage caused instead of considering the
pre-emptive/precautionary
principle option to ban fracking, limits the margin of
manoeuvre open to
regulatory bodies. That is also why any false and unsubstantiated claim
attributed to UK public bodies ‘Public Health England’
and ‘Public
Health Wales’ by Regeneris that fracking
can be “mitigated to an
acceptable level” seriously undermines the independence of
any further
studies Hatch Regeneris undertakes on the same
subject.
What
is of even more
concern is that, with no time for mature reflection on the implications
of the
Northern Ireland Assembly motion to
ban all onshore petroleum
licensing, DfE, in a breach of trust and duty of care, had awarded Hatch
Regeneris the report on the economic impacts of fracking
within 24 hours of
the vote. Yet, the DfE has only set terms of reference that include
assessment
of 3 development scenarios (the existing policy)
with no assessment
of the scenario of implementing an outright ban on petroleum licensing
(a new
policy) as proposed by the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is feared that
it will
now be more difficult for Minister Dodds to propose a fracking ban to
the
Northern Ireland Executive if the Hatch Regeneris
Report does not even
consider the economic impacts of such a ban. Campaigners feel that DfE
is ‘gaming
the system’ to arrive at a predetermined outcome if the
report is only
considering different levels of development scenarios, all of which
involve
onshore petroleum exploration. The Department for Economy officials
cannot be
allowed to impose their own solutions where there are huge adverse
climate and
local environmental and public health impacts and where there is no
social
license for petroleum licensing either at the Assembly level or at a
local
level.
Graham
Miller,
Director of Heat, Minerals and Operations and Energy Group in the
Department
for Economy and his colleague Lorraine Fleming, who heads up Minerals
and
Petroleum Policy, both addressed Fermanagh and Omagh District
Councillors,
along with Neil Evans and Kelly Watson from Hatch Regeneris
on February
25th. Graham Miller told the councillors that they were pleased to
award the
research contract to Hatch Regeneris, particularly
as Hatch has
conducted similar research for the Welsh Government in 2015. The
Research
contract was awarded for 65,810 pounds.
On fact-checking the economic report Regeneris
had undertaken prior to the policy against
fracking being chosen as the
preferred option by the Welsh Government, the serious mistruths by Regeneris
regarding ‘Public Health England’
and ‘Public Health Wales’
were discovered.
Kelly
Watson of Hatch
Regeneris told the councillors that it would be drawing upon
the Strategic
Environmental Assessment (SEA) approach in its study. However, Article
5 and
Annex 1b of the SEA
Directive
are very clear that any assessment of the significant environmental
impacts of reasonable alternatives of a plan must include “the
current state
of the environment and the likely evolution thereof without
implementation of
the plan or programme”. The assessment should therefore
include the
consequences of not fracking Northern Ireland - the no development
alternative
- and not just all development alternatives.
At
the meeting of
February 25th, Hatch Regeneris repeatedly refused
to confirm the
timescale of impacts their study would cover even though Petroleum
Licenses in
Northern Ireland are awarded for a period of 30 years (5-year
exploration
stage, 5-year development stage and 20-year production stage).
Regeneris wrote
in its final summary in the Welsh report “Many of the
disbenefits associated
with development that local communities experience are likely to be
concentrated during the exploratory and preparation period and hence
short term
in their nature.”How can Regeneris make
such a claim if it does not
assess the research on the long-term impacts of the full 30 years of a
petroleum license? Is that not a case of accentuating the positive for
the
fracking industry while playing down the negative?
In
addition, Neil
Evans from Hatch Regeneris, referring to current
available research on
fracking, stated that some of that was US-based evidence which was
being
gathered for developments which very often are in a slightly different
context.
To cast aspersions, even obliquely, on US-based evidence on fracking
impacts is
unacceptable given that the US is where so much fracking has been
taking place
over the past 10-15 years. The latest peer-reviewed
scientific
studies,
found in 2019 that one third of the total increase in methane
emissions from all sources globally over the previous decade was coming
from US
fracked gas (shale gas) - the world’s largest single super emitter of
Methane.
Scientists have also found that methane emissions are accelerating
global
warming because methane has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) 87
times greater
than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Scientists have shown that,
unlike the case for carbon dioxide,the Climate System responds quickly
to a
reduction in methane emissions which, along with CO2 reduction
measures, could
provide the opportunity to immediately slow the rate of global warming
by
around half
a degree celsius.
The scientific evidence of
serious health and environmental
harm from fracking already irrefutably exists and no acceptable
mitigation of
fracking has been implemented anywhere in the world.
The
Strategic
Environmental Assessment (SEA )
into further onshore oil and gas
licensing undertaken by the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate
Change (DECC)
in December 2013 referred to “acceptable”
in terms of the overall
objectives of the UK’s draft licensing plan stating that “the
main
objectives of the draft Licensing Plan are to enable a further
contribution
towards the comprehensive exploration and appraisal of UK oil and gas
resources
and the economic development of identified reserves, together with
enabling
further gas storage capacity in hydrocarbon reservoirs, without
compromising
the biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and the interests of nature and
heritage conservation, and other material assets and users”.
When
considering the
alternative of “No award of Licenses”, the SEA
stated “This option
proposes that no award of licences would take place during the
licensing round.
Such an option is incompatible with the main objectives of the Plan.” It
is
in those terms that the SEA considers mitigation measures as
“acceptable”. And
to reinforce this point even more, the SEA promotes an ALARP approach
to a
precautionary one. It states “Excluding sensitive receptors
and using a
precautionary distance may have the unintended consequence of
significantly
reducing the area that is available for licensing, depending on the
locational
criteria used, which would make it difficult for the alternative to
contribute
towards the objectives of the licensing plan (to make comprehensive
exploration
and appraisal of UK oil and gas resources and the economic development
of
identified reserves)”. The preferred mitigation measure
proposed in the SEA
is that “the Operators should adopt the principle of reducing
emissions to
as low a level as reasonably practicable (ALARP)”.
The
Northern Ireland
Department for Economy has stated that its policy objective is
pro-licensing: “DfE’s
policy objective is to maximise successful and expeditious exploration
and
exploitation of Northern Ireland’s oil and gas resources, and all
decisions
will be made with regard to that policy.”
What
is now clear is
that “acceptable” cannot be allowed to be defined
only in terms of what
is acceptable to the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland
under its
existing policy objective but also in terms of what is acceptable on
public
health and climate grounds at the policy assessment stage as has
happened in Scotland
and Wales.
It
is also clear that the temptation to take an
as-low-as-reasonably-possible
(ALARP) approach in climate mitigation at a policy level instead of a
precautionary approach is also breaching the EU Precautionary
Principle
as obliged under Article
191 TFEU
and further explained in an EU Communication
in
2000. The
Precautionary Principle aims at ensuring a higher level of
environmental
protection through preventative decision-taking in the case of risk
In
June 2018, Public
Health Wales
informed the Welsh Government that “gaps in the evidence base
do
exist” and that “a proportionate precautionary
approach is warranted”
going on to state: “It is clear, therefore ,that there is a
need to consider
at an early stage not just the direct risks to health and the
environment from
the technical aspects of extraction but wider social and health
impacts. In
Lancashire, a local Health Impact Assessment (HIA) was undertaken to
look at
the potential impact of a proposal to drill while Health Protection
Scotland,
at the request of Scottish Government, undertook a HIA to look at wider
health
impacts to inform policy developments prior to any proposed extraction.”
It
is now clear that
a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) should be undertaken at the policy
stage of
Strategic Environmental Assessment to aid policy makers in deciding if
fracking
should be allowed in the first place; if HIA is only applied at the
project level
(the Environmental Impact Assessment) then the cumulative health
impacts of
fracking on a regional or national level are ignored and regulatory
bodies are
faced with having only the choice to impose best practice on an
industry that
cannot be stopped easily due to the constant threat of litigation from
the
powerful fossil-fuel sector, even if the level of climate and public
health
damage is socially unacceptable at a local and national level.
It
must be remembered that 3 Judicial Reviews were already taken
by fracking
company Tamboran against what are now the Departments for Economy (DfE)
and
Infrastructure (DfI) and were only dropped on 17
January 2018
- "amicably resolved by all three
parties". It is highly questionable how
Tamboran could
reapply for a petroleum license in September 2016 and only withdraw its
3
Judicial Reviews once its licence application had first been validated
by DfE on November 12th, 2017
- 2 months earlier. No agreement on why the 3
cases were withdrawn was ever made public, but one lesson learned is
that if
the Northern Ireland fracking licence applicants are very willing to go
down
the legal route even before licences are given to them, imagine what
they will
be like if they do obtain 30-year licences. And this move by Tamboran
was not a
once-off. In September 2018, the petrochemical company INEOS
lost a legal
challenge against the Scottish Government’s position on fracking,
arguing that
the Government was exceeding their powers and lacked the legal
competence to
impose an effective ban.
The
biggest
indictment of the Welsh report by Regeneris was
that the Welsh
Government concluded
that
“However,
the Welsh Government has set
a target of generating 70% of electricity demand from renewable sources
by
2030.Whilst we acknowledge the role for gas as a transition fuel until
it is
replaced by renewables and low carbon nuclear generation, introducing
an
additional supply of petroleum to Wales could displace
investment in
renewable energy systems”,
going
on to state:
“The
evidence from the 2015
Regeneris study presented in the consultation is that economic impacts
are
likely to be short-lived and transitory, with many of the high-paid
technical
roles being filled from outside of the local community. We are
unwilling to
risk the future well-being of communities when the potential for long
term jobs
is small. We recognise a community benefit
package, similar to the
Shale Wealth Fund, could benefit local communities. However, such a
package
would not negate the potential environmental and climate change impacts
which
petroleum production would create”.
In
conclusion the
Welsh policy set out in the consultation adopted “To
not undertake any
new petroleum licensing in Wales, or support applications for hydraulic
fracturing petroleum licence consents.”
End.
Footnotes
1.
Following
devolution,
the Welsh Government launched a consultation on
Petroleum extraction policy in Wales (2 July 2018) seeking views of its
proposed policy on petroleum extraction, including fracking. One study
that fed
into that was ‘Socio-economic Impact of
Unconventional Gas in Wales’, to assess the recoverable reserves
of unconventional gas
in Wales and the economic benefits, prepared in 2015 by Regeneris, AMEC
and
Cardiff University, which examined the potential regional economic
benefits of
the development of unconventional gas. The 2015 report also generated a
series
of scenarios, which were then examined to estimate direct and indirect
economic
effects associated with three different scales of unconventional gas
activity.
The focus in the economic modelling was on local effects in terms of
employment
and income support.
However,
the problem
with that Welsh Regeneris report is that it stated in section 3.34: “It
is
the view of DECC [Department of Energy and Climate Change], the
existing
regulators, Public Health England (PHE), Public
Health Wales (PHW) and the
conclusion of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of
onshore oil and gas licensing that the application and enforcement of
existing
regulatory requirements can be expected to ensure that effects of
individual
exploration activities can be identified, assessed and mitigated to an acceptable
level. However, it will not be until the
exploration industry has an
opportunity to demonstrate that it can undertake these activities in a
manner
that does not lead to unacceptable adverse effects, that public
acceptability
of the technologies will be achieved. ”
However,
neither PHW
(page 18) nor PHE, in
its draft (october 2013)
and final (june
2014) reports stated that it was their view that
the “effects of
individual exploration activities can be identified, assessed and
mitigated to
an acceptable level”. PHE concluded “We conclude
that the currently
available evidence indicates that the potential risks to public health
in the
vicinity of shale gas extraction sites will be low if shale gas
extraction is
properly run and regulated. Where potential risks have been identified
in the
literature, the reported problems are typically a result of operational
failure
and a poor regulatory environment” PHE wrote of using “best practice”
and “best
available technology” to “minimise” risks, which is not the same as
“acceptable”.
And
the SEA (December 2013)
actually referred to “acceptable”
in terms of the overall
objectives of the draft licensing plan which are that “the
main objectives
of the draft Licensing Plan are to enable a further contribution
towards the
comprehensive exploration and appraisal of UK oil and gas resources and
the
economic development of identified reserves, together with enabling
further gas
storage capacity in hydrocarbon reservoirs, without compromising the
biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and the interests of nature and
heritage
conservation, and other material assets and users”.
The
SEA actually
states:
“However,
given the
importance of achieving the other objectives of the plan, and that the
activities that follow licensing will need to meet a range of
regulatory
requirements (which, when applied and enforced, will ensure that
effects at the
project level will be identified, assessed and mitigated to an
acceptable
level), the unrestricted alternative (i.e. the draft Licensing Plan as
proposed) may prove to be the preferable alternative”.
The
context of the
sentence means that Regeneris, through clever word games, is attempting
to give
the impression that it is the accepted view of DECC, PHE and PHW “that
effects of individual exploration activities can be identified,
assessed and
mitigated to an acceptable level”, when
this is clearly not the
case.
When
considering the
alternative of “No award of Licenses”, the SEA
stated “This option
proposes that no award of licences would take place during the
licensing round.
Such an option is incompatible with the main objectives of the Plan.” It
is
in those terms that the SEA considers mitigation measures as
“acceptable”. And
to reinforce this point even more, the SEA promotes an ALARP approach
to a
precautionary one. It states “Excluding sensitive receptors
and using a
precautionary distance may have the unintended consequence of
significantly
reducing the area that is available for licensing, depending on the
locational
criteria used, which would make it difficult for the alternative to
contribute
towards the objectives of the licensing plan (to make comprehensive
exploration
and appraisal of UK oil and gas resources and the economic development
of
identified reserves)”. The preferred mitigation measure
proposed in the SEA
is that “the Operators should adopt the principle of reducing
emissions to
as low a level as reasonably practicable (ALARP)”.
Contact:
John McElligott
Safety Before LNG
(087-2804474)
[email protected]
