BOW hosted a public meeting in Brockham Village Hall on Easter Sunday (April 16th) to raise awareness about the recent developments at the Brockham oil well and inform the public about the wider implications of unconventional onshore drilling across the South-East.

The event was well attended, with speakers coming from a wide variety of backgrounds and speaking on a range of topics, from the Brockham well itself, the proposals for drilling on Leith Hill and at other sites across the Weald basin, the acidisation method, to the more general topics of climate change, renewable energy and government planning, policy and regulation. This was presented with the context of the row about planning permission between Angus Energy and Surrey County Council over the recently drilled side-track well on the Brockham site. There were informative stalls, opportunities for discussion with knowledgeable people and even games for children. A highlight was a superbly crafted version of ‘pin the tail on the nodding donkey’ which could even be made to rise and fall:

Local artist Karen Pearson put up a display of her work and offered to donate the profits from the sale of a particular painting to protecting Leith Hill.

The overall atmosphere was remarkably warm, friendly and optimistic, considering the troubling nature of a lot of the subject material. The BOW group requested greater public involvement in ‘watching’ the actions and proposals of the oil and gas industries and called for pressure to be put on local and national government for tighter regulation and greater scrutiny on unconventional oil extraction.

See this facebook post for more.