Dear BOW Followers,
Please see below an open letter on the recent cluster of earthquakes in Surrey published on Monday (6/8/18) in the Times newspaper. An accompanying article is at this link.
The letter is directly relevant to the current planning application for the Brockham well site, which will be decided on Wednesday morning (8/8/18) at County Hall, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 2DN. The meeting starts a 10:30am and is open to the public.
A longer version of the letter was sent to Greg Clark, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the chief executives of Surrey County Council, the Oil and Gas Authority, the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive and has been written by four leading academic geologists from both sides of the “fracking” debate, including Professor Richard Selley who resides in Brockham.
The letter calls for a moratorium on all drilling, re-injection and flow-testing in the affected area be put in place immediately, to remain in force until the records of fluid injection and local faulting activity have been comprehensively surveyed and interpreted, and the triggering mechanism for this quake cluster phenomenon is properly understood, and that, in the interest of safety, a respect distance is made mandatory when drilling near faults.
A related article in Drill Or Drop goes into more depth on the available data on fluid injection.
Brockham Oil Watch 
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