Walney report: Government is seeking to ban groups it disagrees with, says Good Law Project

 

Responding to Lord Walney’s review of protests, Good Law Project executive director Jo Maugham said: 

We are firmly into the territory of our government banning organisations whose politics it disagrees with. This is a sinister and shameful development, which moves us closer to the plastic democracies of Turkey and Hungary and further from our peers.

Clamping down on dissent does not make issues like global conflict and the climate crisis go away. A competent government that values freedom of speech would be trying to solve the big issues, not criminalise the messengers.

The man responsible for this report, Lord Walney, has links to an arms manufacturer supplying weapons to Israel which has been targeted by Palestine Action and he has close links to the oil and gas industry whose ecocide Just Stop Oil targets. LINK

What really motivates this report - the public interest or money?

PR blitz to enable drilling for gas in Harlesden

Eschewing the use of the word 'fracking' London Local Energy LINK have launched a public relations blitz to persuade people that it will be fine to look for oil and gas in the Harlesden NW10 area. They claim to focus on the product, not the process, thereby ignoring issues around fracking or other extraction methods.

They state, without giving any evidence for the claim:

We start by correcting two key errors: Gas development is not surface intensive, and nor is local natural gas best left in the ground to fight carbon emissions and climate change.

We don’t want public acceptance or acquiescence. We want to create public enthusiasm. We ask for the media and the public to abandon outdated concepts and join us in an informed debate involving the many, not the few.

They outline their plan:

The White Heather Laundry at  what is now Artesian Close London NW10 8RW (see map),  was an extremely successful commercial laundry business that drilled a well for water in 1910.

According to contemporary records in the public and private domain, the White Heather Laundry found over 250 feet of oil shows below 1500 feet. That is a very significant amount, and there are many discoveries which produce from 50 feet thick shows -or less.  Equally, there are wells which tried to prove up oil fields from far thinner strata and were unsuccessful. LLE may fail too. But why should we not look?

From the laundry’s perspective, it wasn’t the water they needed, or at least it was too salty, bubbly and oily to be of any us to a laundry. 

The Willesden well didn’t find oil, but it did show indications of gas. LLE’s geological analysis is the intellectual property of London Local Energy Limited and we will not release this publicly at this time.

Returning to today,  London Local Energy wants to drill and analyse the cores from the NW10 area to a greater depth, with an eye on using today’s non-intrusive yet potentially highly productive methods. We can drill under the old wells from any number of locations from up to five miles away, although a gas fired power station* sounds a reasonable enough location and the owners of the power station are aware of our efforts.

*The power station behind the Leopold Primary School Annex in Brentfield Road (Previously the Brent Teachers' Centre)

LLE  conclude: 

We don’t see LLE’s resources as being game changers. We’re the wildcatters of Willesden, but we don’t look good in cowboy hats. This may not be an especially productive  gas field on a global scale, but it will be one that could make a significant contribution to both London’s energy security and carbon footprint. Let’s look!

After any license approval, we anticipate a two to three year process of exploration and analysis to assess if the geology supports a movement toward the next phase. That would be the appropriate time to have a debate over production.
 

London Local Energy’s 3 Step Plan:

1.     Oil and Gas Authority to open 15^th Onshore Licensing Round as soon as possible

2.     On license award,  revisit proven hydrocarbon discoveries in London NW10

3.     If resources allow produce local onshore natural gas with minimal surface impact  and maximum CO2 reductions.