How big is this pad going to get?

Francis Egan has been very keen on playing down the size of his erection, but as everybody driving past the site at Preston New Road can now see, the site is growing bigger every day. It is in fact very helpful that their first development site is being built somewhere where its impact is so visible to passing residents.

The claim that the site will only take as much land as a rugby pitch (~1 hectare) is being show up for the lie it is with every new load of aggregate and every new portakabin that gets delivered.

The plan submitted to Lancashire County Council shows that the net total land covered by surface works at the development is about 7 hectares (this the area bordered in red on the plan below)

In addition the area shaded yellow (approximate) is being used for the siting of office portakabins etc – in fact if you look you can see what looks like a new small village being sited! We asked both a Cuadrilla employee and an AE Yates employee at the site whether the area shown yellow would be temporary or permanent (for the period of development). The Cuadrilla employee suggested I contact the Community Information line who refuse to communicate with me) and would not /could not tell me more. The AE Yates employee wouldn’t confirm either way but asked me why I thought they would have moved the cabins from their original position (in the pink shaded area on the plan above) to where they are now if they then intended to move them again.

This adds perhaps about another hectare to the developed site meaning that our estimate is that the developed area will be about 8 hectares compared to Mr Egan’s repeated claim to the media that it will only cover the size of a rugby pitch (1 hectare). And remember this is the net usage – if the entire fields in which these developments are occurring were removed from agricultural use then the area concerned  would be much greater

Add to this the 90 associated monitoring array points each taking up a space of 20 x 20 and you have a further 3.6 hectares taken out of use. So we are now between 11 and 12 hectares of prime agricultural and being removed from productive use to allow this development to take place.

Remember – this is just one pad of 4 wells. Mr Egan has plans for over 100 pads of 40 wells each!