THE Scottish Government is expected to announce a complete ban on fracking within days.
The move will bring to an end six years of debate on the issue, as well as the moratorium on the practice that has been in place since 2015.
A report in yesterday’s Sunday Herald said an announcement from the government was due to made this week ahead of parliamentary recess and the SNP conference. However, the same report suggests legal complications may delay the introduction of a full ban.
Other parties have made their opposition to the practice known, but Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson yesterday accused the Scottish Government of hypocrisy over the issue on Sunday Politics Scotland, adding that she found news of an impending ban “disappointing”.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks in order to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas.
It is controversial due to the environmental concerns the method has raised, especially in the United States where fracking is common in certain areas of the country.
It involve using vast amounts of water, and concerns about disposal of the waste generated has led to accusations that it has caused contamination of drinking water supplies.
A ban in Scotland would allow the SNP to fulfil their election manifesto promise from last year, in which they promised to ban fracking “unless it can be proved beyond any doubt that it will not harm our environment, communities or public health”.
Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens have already made their opposition to fracking clear, with Labour having pledged to bring forward legislation if the Scottish Government fails to act.
Green co-convener Patrick Harvie said there was a “growing impatience over the SNP’s inability to announce an outright ban”. He added: “I really hope they make a statement this week, because communities across Scotland deserve certainty.”
Meanwhile, Scottish Labour’s environment spokeswoman Claudia Beamish made clear she would press ahead with that if ministers did not ban the practice completely.
“Anything less than an outright ban of onshore fracking in all its forms would be a betrayal by the SNP government of our climate change commitments, our communities and the job opportunities now and for future generations in clean, renewable energy,” she said.
“Fracking would be a dirty distraction, not a transition fuel.”
But in a television interview yesterday Davidson bucked this trend by coming out in favour of the controversial practice and accusing the government of hypocrisy in the process.
“I think there has been a pretty big level of hypocrisy from the Scottish Government in the past on this issue,” she said. “They say that fracking is perfectly well to be done elsewhere – it’s done in America and people take gas out the ground and put it on ships and take it to Scotland in order to be refined – but they don’t want it to happen here.”
Davidson added that she found a potential ban “disappointing” as it would rule out a potential “second gas boom for Scotland”.
The government announced a moratorium on fracking in January 2015, but ministers have still to decide if this should be made permanent.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “We have put in place a moratorium on fracking which means no such activity can take place in Scotland. We have also published research reports on the potential impacts of unconventional oil and gas and carried out an extensive public consultation which attracted more than 60,000 responses.
“Ministers are considering the evidence, including the results of the consultation and will put their recommendation on the way forward to the Scottish Parliament for MSPs to vote on this important issue before the end of this calendar year.”
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