This was made clear as long ago as 2011 in an article in the Guardian

This week it seems they nibbled a bit more off AJ Lucas (and by extension the Bowland Shale)

“Kerogen, the Company’s largest shareholder, has committed to subscribe for its pro rata entitlement ($11.1 million) and to sub-underwrite $2.9 million in total to support the Entitlement Offer. Kerogen has agreed that the Underwriter may allocate to it the first $2.5 million of any shortfall from the Entitlement Offer1.”

Hmm …

China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) -> Kerogen -> AJ Lucas -> Cuadrilla

China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) -> Nexen -> Igas

Shouldn’t we be sitting up and taking more notice of what is going on here?

How long are we going to sit back and watch our UK assets being gobbled up by Chinese backed corporations, whilst the pro-frackers bleat about fracking being in our national interest?

I guess AJ Lucas would have taken the cash from anywhere, given that their offer was under-subscribed, but do we as a country really have to be so naive and undiscriminating?

If shale really *were*  part of a strategic future for UK PLC would the government be quite so ready to mortgage a national asset to our friends in Beijing? I doubt it, but if you have any doubts about our government’s intentions here have a read of the announcement made on the day I published this post:

They posted a plangent complaint on their Facebook page about being misunderstood – it was very touching!

The constant efforts to smear and discredit @BackingFracking, its members and supporters, is really quite gratifying…it shows how worried ‪#‎fracking‬ opponents are.

Unproven allegations that Backing Fracking is an industry astroturfing group, constant efforts to identify, “out” and then undermine the credibility of supporters – and now an outright lie that we offered cash to people in return for attending a demo – all show that there is nothing that anti-frackers won’t do in order to try and control the media perception of fracking.

It also highlights their growing desperation and concern about the emergence of a series of residents groups all supporting shale gas extraction.

You can keep on trying to defame us, you can keep trying to shut us up, and you can keep trying to intimidate us, but listen up folks: it won’t work, and only makes us stronger and more determined to carry on our campaigning.

Now, it’s quite funny to read these shills complaining that they are being discredited and smeared when that is all they have done to others on their Facebook Page and Twitter accounts for the last 3 months. They have hardly attempted to put forward a positive argument in favour of fracking since Christmas, even trying to distance themselves from their poster boy Stephen Tindale’s claims that fracking might be a bridge fuel in recent days.

But let’s analyse what they said a little shall we?

The allegations that Backing Fracking is an astroturfing group are “unproven” but they are not described as “untrue“, which is quite revealing.

They apparently feel hard done by because people make efforts to identify their supporters and their interests, but fail to see the obvious point that real grassroots supporters are open about who they are. It doesn’t need an effort to work out who I am – you just have to ask if it’s not obvious. Anti-frackers on the Fylde don’t hide behind anonymity or get upset when people find out what WE do for jobs. It seems that they are complaining that by identifying the vested interests of those who speak for their group we are undermining them? But that can surely only be the case if the vested interests described put those people in a negative light can’t it?

I don’t know the truth regarding allegations that people were offered cash to attend a demo, but I do know that the attendance at their events is embarrassingly low, so if they were offering cash it clearly wasn’t enough.

And then we have the accusation that anti-frackers are trying to control the media perception of fracking. Now that coming from an organisation with such strong links to the North West Energy Task Force is pretty hilarious isn’t it. Yes , that the “Task force” that is run by PR company Westbourne Communications. We may not have their budgets but it would appear from the outraged squeals here that we are succeeding in out-gunning them in every way.

I’m not sure where they get the mistaken idea that we are in the slightest bit concerned about “the emergence of a series of residents groups all supporting shale gas extraction” because we are only aware of 3 – Backing Fracking, FORGE and Blackpool Fracking for a Better Future. They have all been around for an age and  same half dozen people post on all three.

Backing Fracking has only 255 Facebook likes, 181 Twitter followers, a mailing list of about 130 and refuses to admit how few people have signed their pro-fracking petition.

FORGE has 285 Facebook likes – we imagine most are the same people who have like Backing Fracking, but we can’t tell because they routinely block anyone who comments disagreeing with fracking.

Blackpool Fracking For a Better Future had over 650 Facebook “members” within a week of starting up but has now declined to 591, presumably as people who were signed up by the organisers got tired of the same old drivel from the same old people – amusingly, the only two people to have started discussions on there since early January are our old friends Michael Roberts and Ken Wilkinson, who coincidentally are just about the only people apart from the anonymous “Backing Fracking” and his pal Lorraine to post on the other two groups. Groups that grow organically (like grass roots supporters tend to) don’t suddenly acquire 650 members and then decline in numbers over the course of a year.

So where are these new groups Backing Fracking speaks of emerging, and where are the emerging from?

The truth is that there is no grassroots support for fracking as has been made very evident by the marked absence of local residents without interests in the industry speaking at the public sessions of the inquiry.

We’re very sure though that Backing Fracking will carry on campaigning though – after all they raised £1,100 in donations back in October for a web site some flyers and expenses, and we’ve never seen a flyer, they don’t have a website and they claim they don’t bribe people to attend demos – they’ll have to spend it on something won’t they?

Back in 2012 we raised a series of issues with the Advertising Standards Authority regarding a leaflet sent out to local residents by Cuadrilla. Several of our complaints were upheld in the ruling of 2013 including one which stated

Cuadrilla uses proven, safe technologies to explore for and recover natural gas

The ASA duly adjudicated that

On this point, the claim “Cuadrilla uses proven, safe technologies to explore for and recover natural gas” breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.11 (Exaggeration).

We were disappointed a couple of months later to have to report that Cuadrilla used almost exactly the same phrase in a Press Release.

Cuadrilla Resources uses proven, safe technologies to explore for and recover natural gas reserves

We did raise this with the ASA but they wriggled out of having to take any politically awkward action by saying:

“as it’s a press release (which is not considered advertising) we can’t take action”

It was disappointing that Cuadrilla took such a cynical attitude to the censure that they received from the ASA, but we supposed that readers would draw their own conclusions about what this says about the company, and perhaps the industry as a whole.

Imagine out surprise though when last night it was pointed out to us that Cuadrilla are making exactly the same claim on a website called http://www.shalegaslancashire.co.uk/

We think this is taking cynicism to a totally unacceptable level and would ask Francis Egan to explain why he feel able to throw the ASA’s ruling back in its face in this way. If he responds we will be happy to publish his answer here. There can be no doubt that these words are Cuadrilla’s own as the footer on the page states:

What is more concerning perhaps though is the involvement of two other bodies in making this claim – the logos of the East Lancs Chamber of Commerce and the North West Lancs Chamber of Commerce are  clearly visible on the page, and although Cuadrilla claim the copyright on all of the page content, the web site is actually registered by these two bodies.

Backing Fracking (more on them later) pointed out to us that this link between the Chambers and Cuadrilla was made public last year at http://www.lancashirebusinessview.co.uk/lancashire-chambers-join-forces-create-shale-gas-portal-50922/

This doesn’t change the fact that these Chambers will not be able to claim to offer any form of independent opinion at the enquiry which opens on 9th February.

Given the fact that local Chambers of Commerce are frequently in receipt of tax payer funding, it might seem reasonable to assume that you and I are, directly or indirectly, funding the promotion of Cuadrilla Resources’ interests by Chambers of Commerce who appear quite happy to put their names to questionable statements that have previously been censured by the ASA.

If this is not the case maybe someone from one of the Chambers can clarify the situation for us?

Cuadrilla’s community engagement initiatives at their proposed fracking site at Preston new Road  may have ground to a halt, but that doesn’t mean that they have stopped trying to influence opinion.

Cuadrilla have a long history of using PR Companies, often in a rather inept way. A leaflet created with PPS Group was censured by the Advertising Standards Authority for multiple counts of exaggeration and making misleading and unsustainable statements, and a Bell Pottinger executive speaking for Cuadrilla was taped saying “I know that everything I say sounds like utter ****** bullshit”

This doesn’t, however, seem to have dampened their enthusiasm for burning cash on PR.

How many PR companies would you guess Cuadrilla paid fees to between 1st September and 30th November 2015? One? two? Several? Seven?

SEVEN. Yes really. We have to ask why a company which claims to have so much local support needs to employ SEVEN PR / Lobbying companies in three months to get their message across. For comparison IGas and Third Energy only seem to have used one PR company each in the same period.

You can see the details on the website of the Association of Professional Political Consultants but we have extracted them here for you

Looking at the source data from which this table is extracted we were also struck by something which isn’t there.

We know from an admission from John Kersey of the Institute of Directors that the so-called North West Energy Task Force  has its communications and administration provided by Westbourne Communications. In the register all clients, even pro bono clients, are listed. However, the North West Energy Task Force does not appear even as a pro bono client of Westbourne Communications,  although Cuadrilla Bowland and Centrica (who own a large share in Cuadrilla’s PEDL 165)  are  listed as clients. Now it is possible of course that Westbourne provided no services of any kind to the North West Energy Task Force over that busy 3 months for fracking PR. Indeed the @NWTaskforce Twitter account only posted 9 tweets in the period concerned which seems a bit dilatory for an organisation claiming to be a “task force”, so maybe not much was really going on in the guerilla war being waged against the insurgents in Roseacre and Preston New Road? There may of course be another more credible explanation.

Venue: Blackpool FC – Bloomfield Road Blackpool, England, Blackpool

Please see this Facebook Event for further details

https://www.facebook.com/events/557205317781762/

“Look – we’ll pay for a sports hall. Great Mr Smith – you want it. Oh Mr Brown you don’t, so by opposing fracking you are denying your community a facility.”

Some of you may remember Jessica Ernst from Canada providing examples of this when she visited us in St Annes in 2013, so we fully expected it to happen here too. You can hear Jessica’s analysis of how this process works here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU6DJE9h6uc

Anyway it’s an old trick but it seems it’s a perennial.

Cuadrilla though are taking the trick to a new low by using local kids from a junior football team.

We wonder how many parents were asked for or granted permission for their kids to be photographed like this?

So, kids , when you are out and about this Christmas do wrap up well, look out for strange men offering you inducements and keep an eye out for odd blokes with cameras. They’ll be up to no good you know.

We discovered that there are some very clear links between Westbourne and the NWETF:

Tom Evans is described on the Westbourne website as  “a Senior Account Executive at Westbourne and has worked on projects for several clients including Uber, GPlus Europe and the North West Energy Task Force.”

His LinkedIn profile though shows that he left Westbourne in January 2015 to work at “controversial firm Burson-Marsteller ” who according to Spinwatch have “a long history of working for repressive regimes and tobacco firms, setting up front groups and aiding major polluters in their greenwashing.”

It also shows that according to him his clients did not include NWETF but did include Cuadrilla and Centrica, thus suggesting that these organisations are perhaps rather more intimately linked than any of them appear happy to admit. Or of course it may just be that he is very forgetful about his clients.  The High Speed Rail link is significant given what we already know about Westbourne’s tactics for “shitting up (sic)” their opponents and using “guerilla tactics” to silence their client’s opposition. The insights into Westbourne’s tactics with relation to HS2 detailed here will be very familiar to some fracking protesters on the Fylde, where we have seen several local astro-turfing groups trying to suggest that opposition to shale is just ““posh people standing in the way of working class people getting jobs”.

Another Westbourne staffer who seemed to have strong links to shale gas whilst she worked there was Amy Yiannitsarou whose LinkedIn entry shows

We have been told that local people received invitations to NWETF events from Amy’s email address.

The Morning Star article talks about “Westbourne Communications, which has shale gas companies Centrica and Cuadrilla as clients” and  “the North West Energy Task Force campaign led by Westbourne Communications”

On the Powerbase Website we can see in the entry for the NWET that it details :

Lobbying firms

• Westbourne Communications, handled by senior account executive Tom Evans, who previously worked for Jim Fitzpatrick, a former Labour minister for transport and Defra. The firm appears to have produced NWETF’s Exploring Shale Series.

A Freedom of information request revealed correspondence between an unnamed Westbourne executive and Guy Robinson at DEFRA who was at the time a special adviser to former environment secretary Owen Paterson , to request a meeting on ‘shale gas and farming’.  This makes it clear that he/she  is closely linked to the NWETF as they help “to co-ordinate the communication for the North West Energy Task Force”

We have tried to ask some of the NWETF panellists on Twitter  whether Westbourne actually run the NWETF but they either refuse to answer or post childish responses. This is how the chairman of the Lancashire branch of the IOD and NWETF panellist, John Kersey, responded to my question.

And that is all we could get out of him. Make of that what you will.

Update 19/11/15 – Mr Kersey has now responded again and confirmed what we believed:

Interestingly there is another connection between Westbourne Communications and the powers that be in the North West.

Account Executive Christopher Rees is presumably well known to our local MP Mark Menzies – “Christopher Rees is an Account Executive at Westbourne, focusing on energy, including working on clients such as Liquid Air and the Green Deal Finance Company. 

Prior to this, he worked in Mark Menzies MP’s Westminster Office as his Senior Parliamentary Assistant. Responsible for the overall running of the office, Chris worked closely with Mark in his Parliamentary Private Secretary roles to both the Minister of State for Energy and for Housing. ”

So – there we have it – it would seem reasonable to conclude that Westbourne Communications actually is the “éminence grise” behind the North West Energy Task force.

We should note that, as far as we are aware,  there is nothing actually illegal in companies funding front groups like this, or employing aggressive PR firms to try to quash and discredit local opposition. We just don’t think it’s as effective a method of acquiring the social licence to operate that the frackers so badly need as they seem to think it is.

We can all see through everything they do, as the recent fiasco with the revelations of invented support for the Task Force showed, and one thing people really hate is being treated like fools by people who are trying to put one over on them. They really should know better.

As a final word it is interesting to see that in spite of claiming huge support from local businesses the NWETF have, according to their own web site, signed up just four people in the last year.

Could do better?

Here is a timeline from Egdon Resources that shows that they hope to persuade investors that 2016 will be the year when fracking is let loose on the UK

Now there IS a reason behind this optimism – according to the presentation it is taken from they have a “Priority to farm-out the “A” Prospect – 160 bcf gas discovery for 2016 drilling“. They are trying to persuade investors that fracking is not the investment disaster that evidence from the USA suggests it will be.

This chart (note the logarithmic scale on the vertical axis) should make it abundantly clear what their interest in doing so  might be.

The UK government is now actively steamrollering the democratic process, with an announcement yesterday that the Government could decide Cuadrilla’s fracking appeals under new rules.

Although the percentage of those who oppose the shale gas project in the UK is growing every time DECC does a new survey, there are still many people who are sleepwalking into allowing the UK’s countryside to become a pawn in a financial investment game. A game  where the only winners will be those investors who are canny enough to sell on (farm-out) their investments at the right time.  Our government already appears to have lost its integrity. The rest of us are set to lose something we can never get back when it is too late.

Don’t be apathetic! When it’s gone it’s gone.

So runs the headline in today’s Financial Times above an article which begins

Britain’s leading shale gas explorer Cuadrilla has cited rural Pennsylvania in the US, home to America’s “fracking” revolution, as a model for Lancashire where it hopes within days to win the go-ahead for a contentious drilling campaign

Those of you who have been following the great shale gas debate may now be shaking your heads in amazement that Cuadrilla’s PR operation is so arrogant that they don’t think people are capable of making the rather obvious connections.

Pennsylvania where the “List of the Harmed” has grown to a staggering 16,000 + reports

https://pennsylvaniaallianceforcleanwaterandair.wordpress.com/the-list/

Pennsylvania where the impact of shale on local employment is routinely overstated by a factor of 10!

http://keystoneresearch.org/publications/research/exaggerating-employment-impacts-shale-drilling-how-and-why

Pennsylvania where the trucks are overwhelming the road network. Take a look at

(Look about 2:30 in for an idea of what we are talking about)

and

http://www.fractracker.org/2014/09/truck-counts/

Mr Egan – we really don’t want you to turn us into Pennsylvania thank you very much.

And then, later in the article we see the typical scaremongering of this industry.

Myles Kitcher, managing director of Peel Oil and Gas, said that big industrial users such as Ineos, the chemicals group, could quit the UK if they do not get shale gas supplies.

This presumably is the same Ineos who are investing £150 million in an ethane tank at Grangemouth to facilitate the import of LNG from US shales.

http://www.ineos.com/Sites/Grangemouth/News/Tank-Location-selected-for-Grangemouth-/

Please Mr Kitcher, don’t treat us like fools!

And finally we have the old reds under the bed , Qataris in Ferraris routine from Mr Egan when he
blusters

And the question is do we import that? Do we import it from Qatar? Do we import it from Russia? And do we ignore the gas sitting here beneath our feet?”

Perhaps Francis should ask his pals at Centrica because, amusingly, the deals to import gas from Russia and Qatar have been done by the same Centrica who are one of Mr Egan’s main backers:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10430701/Centrica-signs-4.4bn-gas-import-deal-with-Qatar.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6fb10734-f969-11e4-be7b-00144feab7de.html#axzz3cuqI61MD

Of course the other question is do we just carry on importing it from Norway and the Netherlands. And yes, Francis, we ignore the gas sitting beneath our feet because getting it out risks ruining the agricultural area which LCC councillors, who will make a decision next week, are entrusted by us (not by you – you live in Cheshire) to protect.

The decision made by the DCC was clearly a direct result of being told that they had no alternative legally, although several councillors let it be known that they were personally opposed to the request which they clearly felt was not in the spirit of the democratic process.

Councillor Marcus Johnstone proposing the deferral said that he “regretted enormously” that the many people who had attended the hearing today would now not have chance to speak, whilst local residents would be left in a state of uncertainty for another two months.

Councillor Stephen Holgate bemoaned interference from central government in process that were by right decisions that should be taken by the council and referred to the “Frackgate” letter (1) sent by George Osborne to members of the cabinet committee on economic affairs requesting that ministers make dozens of interventions to fast-track shale gas drilling

Up to 100 speakers had applied to address the hearing, and some had even brought along legal representation including QCs. The decision will now have to be deferred for a further 8 weeks.

We share the concerns expressed by Councillors about the damage being done to the democratic process and the difficulties that Cuadrilla’s actions will cause to local people who are trying to make their voices heard. It is hard to see how such behaviour will stand Cuadrilla in good stead when the DCC finally come to vote on the applications.