Today’s unpleasant radio interview with Liz Truss came after she was criticized for lifting the fracking prohibition.
Before oil or gas can be extracted from shale rock in some areas of Britain, the Prime Minister insisted that “local community support” is required.
She struggled, however, to outline how the local communities’ consent would be requested.
Additionally, Ms. Truss was compelled to acknowledge that she had never been to a Lancashire site where fracking had previously been attempted before it was stopped due to tremor concerns.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Prime Minister justified her desire to resurrect fracking in the UK as part of efforts to increase the nation’s domestic energy supplies.
She argued that Russia’s gas exports to Europe should not leave Britain open to Vladimir Putin’s “exerting pressure.”
She did, however, criticize Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg after he said last week that fracking opponents were “luddites” and dismissed worries about the extraction process as “hysteria.”
According to Ms. Truss of BBC Radio Lancashire, “We will only go forward with fracking in places where there is local community support for it and the Business Secretary has been very clear about that.”
In many parts of the world, fracking is done with complete safety, and the Business Secretary will ensure that any fracking that occurs is safe.
Because it’s crucial for me as prime minister that any fracking have the permission of the local community.
The PM underlined that ministers’simply don’t want to be in that situation’ in which Britain is exposed to Mr. Putin ‘exerting pressure’ by influencing global energy prices via Russia’s gas supplies.
I want to see more domestic energy in the UK, she continued.
That entails using North Sea resources, increasing the use of renewable energy sources, increasing nuclear power, and fracturing in places where there is local support.
The lack of support for fracking in Lancashire, including from local Tory MPs and the local council, was brought up to Ms. Truss, who responded by promising that the government would be “setting out in greater detail” how permission would be obtained.
When asked why, given the strong resistance in the county, she couldn’t rule out fracking today in Lancashire, Ms. Truss said, “I don’t accept the premise of your inquiry.”
I’ve said that if the community is in favor, we will go forward. We still need to determine where local consent exists and where it does not, so we are working on that.
We shouldn’t completely rule out Lancashire, I believe.
After her predecessor Boris Johnson banned the extraction technique in 2019, the PM was forced to disclose she had never been to the Preston New Road site, some seven miles from Blackpool, where experimental fracking had conducted before being abandoned.
The location of the facility was likened by radio commentator Graham Liver to the “middle of nowhere” fracking sites in America.
I don’t believe I’ve ever gone to that site, Ms. Truss said.
The prime minister said when asked whether she should travel to Preston New Road, “As I’ve indicated, we will only go forward with initiatives where there is local permission. I’ve made it very, very obvious.
“We will make sure local approval is in place, and if there is a worry about a specific location, such concerns will of course be looked at and taken into consideration,” the statement reads.
Ms. Truss responded to Mr. Rees-assertion Mogg’s that fracking opponents are “luddites” by saying, “I wouldn’t have worded it that way, I can promise you.”
The Liberal Democrats charged Ms. Truss of “contempt” for rural regions in reaction to the PM’s local radio appearance.
Liz Truss’ painful failure to respond to even the most basic queries, according to the party’s energy and climate change spokesman Wera Hobhouse MP, demonstrates how hollow her claims of local consent are.
“People are concerned that they may soon be a part of an absurd experiment with no say at all, from Surrey and Sussex to Somerset and Shropshire.
We all know that it will just make the climate situation worse. Her own experts won’t certify that it’s safe, and her own chancellor says it won’t lower costs.
Why is the PM willing to subject the British people to such destruction?