Friends Of The Earth Comment On US Fracking Shipment In Scotland

Following news of the arrival on the first shipment of ethane from fracked US shale gas to Scotland today Friends of the Earth Scotland’s Head of Campaigns, Mary Church, released the following statements.

“It is completely unacceptable to attempt to prop up the Grangemouth plant on the back of environmental destruction across the Atlantic. One of the companies supplying INEOS, Range Resources, has attracted record fines for environmental pollution in the US. To write this off, as Jim Ratcliffe has done, as like getting the odd puncture in your car, is cavalier. You can fix a puncture in a matter of minutes. It may never be possible to fix groundwater contamination from leaking fracking wells.

Only today we have heard from the UK Climate Change Committee that global warming is already impacting Scotland.

 

“Only today we have heard from the UK Climate Change Committee that global warming is already impacting Scotland, and that we should expect to see an increase in extreme weather events like last year’s floods. To pursue a future for the INEOS plant based on the consumption of ever more fossil fuels is utterly irresponsible in the context of what we know about the devastating impacts of climate change. If Jim Ratcliffe was really concerned about the future of the Grangemouth plant and its workers he would be planning for its transition to a low carbon model.”

“We urge the Scottish Government to act swiftly to ban fracking and start planning seriously for a fair transition to a low carbon economy across all sectors. Fracking should not happen here in Scotland, and our country should not profit from it happening anywhere else.”