Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Britain has just controversially allowed fracking under National Parks. The fracking rigs can’t be erected inside the parks, but horizontal drilling from properties adjoining the parks, into land which lays underneath the parks, is now permitted.
MPs have voted to allow fracking for shale gas 1,200m below national parks and other protected sites.
The new regulations – which permit drilling from outside the protected areas – were approved by 298 to 261.
Opposition parties and campaigners criticised the lack of a Commons debate – and accused ministers of a U-turn as they previously pledged an outright ban on fracking in national parks.
The government said its plans would protect “our most precious landscapes”.
Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom also said there had already been “enormous debate” on the subject.
Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35107203
Britain, which has suffered years of disastrous green energy policy mistakes, currently faces a serious electricity grid capacity crisis. The failure of Britain’s green energy policies was admitted a few weeks ago in parliament by Amber Rudd, the British Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change;
We now have an electricity system where no form of power generation, not even gas-fired power stations, can be built without government intervention.
And a legacy of ageing, often unreliable plant.
Perversely, even with the huge growth in renewables, our dependence on coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, hasn’t been reduced.
Indeed a higher proportion of our electricity came from coal in 2014 than in 1999.
Read more: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/amber-rudds-speech-on-a-new-direction-for-uk-energy-policy
Britain’s desperate electricity crisis is exacerbated by the accelerating retirement of North Sea gas fields, which threatens to make Britain even more dependent on unstable Russian gas supplies, and vigorous domestic political opposition to nuclear power and fracking.
As Rudd admitted, British energy market is so politicised, nobody is investing without government guarantees and incentives. I personally doubt this latest move, to try to make fracking more attractive, will improve the situation. As long as Britain’s opposition parties remain vigorously opposed to fracking, and given that even the current British government still pays lip service to the pre-eminence of renewables, despite slashing renewables subsidies, Britain will likely remain a politically unattractive destination for desperately needed fossil fuel energy infrastructure investment.
Good for the Brits. Can we expect that part of the revenues derived therefrom will go into improving the upkeep of their National Parks?
Tucci78
Can you clarify your cryptic comment?
National parks are not state owned but a notional boundary within which are numerous private holdings, as well as large tracts that can be owned by such as the National Trust. As such they are dynamic, living, interesting entities that reflects the life and traditions of the people living in them.
I have never been to a badly maintained one. I live just a few miles from Dartmoor and was in the New Forest just a few weeks ago
tonyb
My apologies, then. Chalk it up to ‘Murrican provincialism, ’cause on this side of the pond if it says “National” it means “owned and mismanaged by the federal bureaucracy.”
One of the most favorite ways for National Socialist Democrat American Party (NSDAP) politicians to screw the people of a state that consistently turns up “Red” in national elections is to declare vast swathes of previously “open” federal lands to be National Parks or “Monuments” (see what Bubba did in 1996 to punish Utah by declaring the establishment of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, thereby preventing planned petrochemicals fuel extraction in that area – and let’s note that our Irrumator-in-Chief had put the “monument’s” vast desolation under the administration of the Bureau of Land Management rather than the National Park Service).
Is there any nastiness expected to adversely impact the “private holdings” within those National Parks in the U.K. as dirigible drilling, fractional casing perforation, and hydraulic fracturing goes on those thousands of feet below impervious rock and any aquifers that might meander beneath folks’ houses and fields?
Despite the Watermelons’ endless lying about how awful-horrible-nasty-polluting “fracking” is supposed to be, it’s been all to hellangone over the reaches of the Marcellus shale without significantly adverse environmental impact.
At the state level, even the National Socialists recognize the industry as a cash cow, and no amount of ‘viro squealing and lawfare has been able to do that much to prevent these resources’ exploitation.
Hah! Owned and mismanaged.
One of these days they may realize that natural land does not need managed. This is like Leo D saying he’s going to restore an island in Chetumal Bay to its natural state by building a resort on it then managing it in an eco-friendly way.
Only in your dreams. Bear in mind at all times that in these United States, you’re talking about politicians and bureaucrats of the cancerously invasive and malignantly destructive federal government.
Tucci, in some American National Parks we have the same situation. Here’s a story of the Park Service not having enough money to buy a valuable plot within Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, so some citizens are trying to raise the money.
http://www.cpr.org/news/newsbeat/campaign-begins-fold-private-land-rocky-mountain-national-park
Good.
It’s great for two reasons:
1 – it’s eminently sensible
2 – it’ll irritate the hell out of the warmistas
Read the last paragraph again, that sounds pretty ominous to me.
Asybot,
Good point. Ominous sounds about right
Why frack when there is millions of tons of good coal under Britain and yet we close our last deep mine to buy cheep coal from abroad that is mined in unsafe and with children as miners
UK imports are from Russia, USA and Columbia. Not sure about Columbia, but not many kids work in the other two.
Besides, you fail to give the full story. If the UK uses its deep coal, the price would have to rise approx 10-fold. This would make UK products uncompetitive on world markets, its companies would go bust, unemployment would rise, and the economy would enter a deep recession. Or, the government could subsidise UK coal, overspend its budgets, borrow on world market, go into default, crashing the currency and forcing the economy into a deep recession.
A nation can subsidise one sector, but needs other profitable sectors to balance the books. And at present, the UK produces nothing, and almost every sector of the economy is holding out the begging bowl looking for subsidies. Not quite as bad as the bankrupt economy of the USSR before it went tiits up, but not far behind. In short, while it might be a nice fantasy to use UK coal, the bigger picture would be an economic disaster.
Ralph
As I understand it, one of the reasons, if not the only reason, that CFPS’s are shutting down is not so much CO2 emissions but particulate carbon and sulphate emissions. Some CFPS’s can’t meet EU standards. The Germans are refurbishing and building new CFPS’s so they must somehow be able to afford to fit the scrubbers needed. It can’t be CO2, although the Germans rigged their 1990 base date emissions level for future savings and Blair/Brown/Miliband in their ignorance legally committed us to future CO2 reductions far higher than anyone else. They apparently made a mistake forgetting about gas for heating – probably for 80% of our domestic heating and a great deal of industry/commercial heating. There is little, if any, open cast coal left in the UK and UK deep mined coal is far more expensive than coal available from overseas.
The UK Energy Policy for the last 20 years or more has been a total disaster. I went around the UK’s designed and built Calder Hall Nuclear Power Plant on a school visit just after its opening in the late 50’s – the first ever commercial plant in the world. Now, we effectively have no nuclear power capability and others are screwing us and delaying us building new ones for us, but at an enormous cost and with massive minimum unit power price guarantees. Forests of Wind Turbines abound and growing, particularly offshore ast whatever the price others want and our base load Installed Capacity operating margin gets smaller and smaller reaching emergency levels. The government has arranged banks of diesel engine and resurrected old plant standby’s to fill the Energy Gap.
You could dream it up in your worst nightmare.
The only route now is a massive programme of Gas Turbine PS’s, fracking for UK gas and a programme similar to China’s for Thorium Reactor PS’s R&D and implementation before the gas runs out!
You missed out IFA1 (interconnexion France-Angleterre) where we imported 15.1 TWh from France being 4.5% of our electric, guess its when solar / wind fail. IFA2 is being built in 2018, its just gone through its first round of public consultation. This seems to be where our future energy is going to be coming from.
We’re facing similar problems here in Canada. The Energy East pipeline which has faced so much “not in my backyard” opposition in Quebec and Ontario, will now cost $3 billion more to complete, if it ever does get off the ground. This anti fossil fuel movement is getting more insane by the minute. What corporation in its right mind would invest in this industry, with its 20 to 30 year payback horizons? I know what’s going to happen. We’re all going to have to face fossil based energy shortages with no practical alternatives to pick up the slack before our brilliant leaders see the light. Anybody old enough to have lived through the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo knows what that feels like.
I think people will eventually come to their senses. It’s 17C below outside right now with wind gusts to 20kph. Not much of a wind but it feels a lot colder. I have a nice fire going. Now imagine this:
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And don’t forget the LNG the UK has to ship in gas from Algeria (another ‘stable’ region) in LNG carriers.
I don’t understand the Greens. They seem quite happy that the UK brings ships into its waters, holding as much energy as a small nulear bomb in tanks only 1mm thick, but get apoplectic if anyone drills a hole.
As I always say to them if they really don’t like fracking they should turn off their gas tap, to prevent any possibility of hypocrisy.
My dad had a funny story about LNG. One of the holding tanks in the refinery where he worked cracked while it was full, and they had nowhere to put the 100s of tons of LPG inside the tank, so the welders had to repair the tank while it was still full of gas, with a sheet of fire 12 ft long shooting out of the hole.
Beats the dickens out of a fire fueled by hydrogen. You can’t see a hydrogen flame with the unaided eye. It’s one of the reasons why every ambulance, rescue truck, and fire engine crew keeps at least one broom aboard.
In addition to sweeping out the box, it’s your go-to hydrogen fire detector. You hold it out in front of you while approaching what you think might be a hydrogen-fueled fire.
When it bursts into flames five feet in front of you, you’ve got yourself a “positive” reading.
We also import coal from other countries, because “it’s cheaper” – how can that be? Imagine if Saudi Arabia closed down its oil fields and imported oil from another country saying it’s cheaper? Our coal is free – you just have to dig it up – anything else makes the balance of payments worse – and we already owe £1,600,000,000,000. Accountants should “tot-up” the money in the currency of the country in which we are spending the money and then we would be able to see the problem (instead of converting it all to pounds).
Eric
I think the fracking notion under National Parks is a bit of a red herring.
Very few fracking sites have been set up as yet in landscapes of limited value, so it is hard to see why companies would want to make themselves very unpopluar by fracking into National parks as the land immediately around National parks is often nearly as attractive as the parks themselves.
tonyb
“Fracking” involves not just fractional casing perforation and hydraulic fracturing of shale in oil-and/or-methane-bearing strata but dirigible drilling such that horizontal shafts can be driven from a single rig into broad volumes of exploitable subterranean meaty goodness.
The consideration you’re failing to focus upon is the fact that once the vertical shaft is created, the site becomes an access point in all feasible directions down there. Are you honestly expecting the exploration companies to forbear exploitation of this considerable “sunk capital”?
Norbert
The UK’s very last deep coal mine closes this very day. It is situated 7 miles away by train from Drax. Coal apparently cost £43 per ton from this mine. It is apparently now going to be imported from Colombia.
Whatever anyone thinks of coal, it is very difficult to see how it can be imported cheaper from Colombia nor that it makes any ‘green’ sense in adding huge amounts of tranportation miles to what is already viewed as a dirty fuel.
tonyb
Agreed climatereason, it seems unlikely many developers will take advantage of this new law.
I think the British government want it both ways – they want to be green, yet they know they need fracking, and are trying to attract investment, without giving up the greenwash.
Don’t be silly, nothing is ‘free’. Water falls from the skies, but it is not free at the tap. Wind just blows, but the electricity it produces is far from free.
See my post above. The UK’s deep and well-fractured coal seams would be very expensive to mine, and therefore be very expensive and cause great problems for the UK economy. Yes, the UK balance of payments is dire, and the UK depends on cheap products produced by slaves in China to remain solvent, but increasing the costs of UK products is going to do nothing for production, exports or the balance of trade.
Ralph
No National Union of Mine Workers in those “other countries.”
Study up on the various U.K. miners’ strikes.
Let me get this straight. In your opinion, anything produced locally is by definition cheaper than stuff bought from other countries.
By that logic every country could close their borders and stop all international trade, and as a result everyone will be richer.
Sheesh, 500 years of economic wisdom just went out the windows.
Nothing is free.
Tucci78
The point is they wouldn’t want the bad publicity in drilling what are considered national treasures especially as there are plenty of sites available elsewhere.
Tonyb
@climatereason
You don’t seem to be taking in what Tucci78 has explained. Once the vertical whole is drilled they can drill horizontally in any direction. So from a site adjacent to but outside a National Park previously they could dill in some directions horizontally but not in others, thus limiting the amount of gas that can be extracted; now they can drill in all directions, thus maximising the amount of gas that can be extracted. That could make the difference between the site being viable and it not being viable.
And what “bad publicity” would a firm get from drilling outside a National Park? Fracking rigs are not particularly conspicuous, much less so that wind turbines, and the drilling will bring money and maybe jobs to the local area.
Ralf,
Not sure where you get the 1mm tank wall thickness.
I never actually served on LPG/LNG tankers but have piloted a lot, and for a ship with spherical tanks the tank wall thickness would be 30mm give or take.
Maybe there is a gas man out there who knows better than me.
Very good news indeed. A lot of the gas will be used for chemicals as Ineos, a large manufacturer, has just won a fistfull of licences to drill. Jim Ratcliffe the live wire owner has just built two large tankers to ship in Shale Gas from the USA. It’s ironic that his main plant is in Scotland, where the lunatic devolved Government has banned fracking outright.
The potential economic benefits to the UK of exploiting our Shale Gas reserves are massive. The sooner the better.
Re read the last paragraph again, here it goes
“As Rudd admitted, British energy market is so politicised, nobody is investing without government guarantees and incentives. I personally doubt this latest move, to try to make fracking more attractive, will improve the situation. As long as Britain’s opposition parties remain vigorously opposed to fracking, and given that even the current British government still pays lip service to the pre-eminence of renewables, despite slashing renewables subsidies, Britain will likely remain a politically unattractive destination for desperately needed fossil fuel energy infrastructure investment.”
I doubt anything is going to happen any time soon. Sad.
Official production/import/export numbers as of Q2 2015:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/462554/Gas.pdf
Majority of imports come from Norway via pipeline and Qatar as LNG.
Just a minor correction, there are no “fracking rigs.” The picture shows a drilling rig and there are also completion rigs which are often called completion units or pulling units. Hydraulic fracturing (“Fracking”) can be done using any of these units although usually a completion unit is used. To accomplish the hydraulic fracturing operation, sand and water are trucked in (or the water is obtained from a nearby source) and large diesel pumps are used to pump the mixture underground. No “Fracking rig” is required, nor has one been built to my knowledge. The term “fracking” was made up by the press at some point. In the business we often say “Frac” or “Frac’ing” but we’ve never spelled it with a “K.” I’ve often suspected that the “K” was added by some reporter who thought it made the word look like a common expletive.
Hey..Frack off !!….ummm no..
There is a history here:
Shooters – A “Fracking” History
Ever since America’s earliest oil discoveries, dynamite or nitroglycerin detonations increased a well’s production. Hydraulic fracturing came in the 1949.
http://aoghs.org/technology/hydraulic-fracturing/
Sometimes the word is spelled with 2 cc -s. Regardless, the k-sound is there.
UK Coal is far too expensive, if only because it’s deep mined and not opencast. The UK is saddled with the nightmare of legally committed CO2 reductions far and above anyone else’s simply because the government’s “experts” forgot about gas for heating when calculating what reductions were possible. UK CFPS’s are old and some do not have the necessary scrubbers to remove sulphates, and particulate carbon as required by our commitments to the EU.
Now we have the obscenity of:
1. Paying for old and clapped out CFPS’s and even diesel generators as standby’s to fill an alarming rapid reduction in our Power Generation Installed Capacity operating margin.
2. Paying massive subsidies for renewables such as Wind Turbines and Solar Panels.
3. Paying massive costs for the enhanced and extended Power Transmission works needed to connect remote renewables to areas of actual Power Demand.
4. Paying further massive subsidies for Gas Turbine PS’s used, not as base load units, but as the necessary base load standby’s to the renewables to meet current varying power demand during the frequent and often extended periods of no/low wind and sun. The subsidies are needed because these GTPS’s will operate intermittently and at loads generally well below their peak efficiency level.
5. Paying for others’ Nuclear Plants because we let the UK’s pre-eminence, in building the world’s first NPPS, disappear and at an exorbitant escalating price with very high guaranteed minimum unit power prices and continuing delays.
You couldn’t dream up anything worse – even in your worst nightmare. The UK governments have created this problem over the last 20-30 years. We are miles away from the open competitive free market we desperately need in the cost-leadership commodity market that the Energy/Power market should be. The Suppliers are de-motivated in that they have the subsidies to survive and so don’t have to risk R&D and innovative engineering investment. The recent market mechanism in the USA, of CFPS shutdowns and backruptcies in competition with cheaper and far more competitive GTPS’s, is what should be happening here!
Our only chance is to get on with fracking and generate UK gas for 200 years or so, an emergency programme of UK engineered GTPS’s as base load units and, in parallel, copy China and have a military style emergency R&D programme for commissioning commercial Thorium Reactors before the gas runs out.
You missed a step. First you have to expunge the green blob, particularly in Whitehall and its environs.
“You couldn’t dream up anything worse – even in your worst nightmare.”
This is absolutely correct. I regret having ever taken an interest in the topic.
There are times in the past when some new aspect of this constantly deteriorating theatre of the absurd, has emerged – and caused me severe psychological trauma for months afterward.
Thankfully, I have the internet these days and I am able to rapidly establish that their are voices out there loudly objecting.
Unfortunately though, for the time being, the UK energy system has been taken over by malevolent clowns, the accomplices of such clowns and the leagues of useful idiots and grinning do-gooders who applaud every new corrupt scheme and or wild fantasy that is served up.
Of course, politicians were never going to be able to competently transform the energy sector, since with very few exceptions, they have no scientific or engineering background, and therefore do not know what energy is.
It’s as simple as that – they talk about energy, but they do not know what energy is.
Yes, they hire “experts” to advise them.
But, the politicians do not even have the expertise required to determine who is and who is not an expert.
And so, with almost limitless money and limitless gullibility they have set themselves up as the perfect target for manipulation by special interests.
I see little chance of improvement in this situation.
The correction of the current trend would require govt. to step away from the energy sector.
And that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
I live in the Barnett Shale region of Texas where the first horizontal/fracked gas wells were drilled. Each well site actually has many separate wells pointed in different directions. The sites are clean, small (about 50′ x 50′) and the drilling companies have surrounded them with beautiful evergreen hedges, so the landscape doesn’t suffer. Where we are, people own the minerals under the land, and have gotten an extra income from the gas production. The state taxes at the wellhead, and the county government gets income as well. The only people who complain are those who do not have mineral property.
…and those in New York who have mineral rights and can’t use them.
When reporting this the BBC and other TV News failed to mention that the Well Head had to be outside the National Park. I think there is a minimum distance involved.
The issue of fencing in National Parks with Wind Turbines is swept under the carpet in the MSM
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/turbines-leave-mountains-snowdonia-fenced-10381134
It is planned giant pylons through National Parks to connect wind turbines to the grid. Work that out if you can.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/9351382/Giant-pylons-for-wind-farms-planned-for-National-Parks.html
Actually, it should read, ‘UK Government authorises fracking under national parks in England.’ I appreciate that this is a bit confusing for people living in countries which have sensible (ie. federal) systems of government, but the UK Government has no say over fracking in national parks in Scotland. (it’s even more confusing for people who can’t get their heads round the highly complicated (sarc) difference between England and Britain.) Unfortunately, Scotland has an SNP (Scottish National Party) government which totally believes in the renewables energy route. There is currently a moratorium on fracking anywhere in Scotland. But while this issue is controlled in Scotland by the Scottish government, it is the UK Government that decides issues such as defence and foreign policy for the whole of the UK. Highly unlikely that it would ever happen but the UK Parliament could abolish the Scottish Parliament any time it chooses to do so. That’s the difference between devolution and federalism. But who knows, sometime in the future people in Kirkcudbright could be looking enviously over the Solway Firth at the lights on in Cumbria.
Of course they will also be looking at all the windmills on Robin Rigg leaning over at increasingly odd angles.
“Scotland has an SNP (Scottish National Party) government which totally believes in the renewables energy route”
Well they claim to do so but the SNO ‘renewables only’ policy is based on … coal, gas & nuclear.
The SNP policy (even if they had won the independence referendum) is for a UK grid so that they can sell expensive renewable electricity to England if they have a surplus and to buy reliable coal, gas & nuclear electricity from England when the renewables aren’t delivering the goods.
The UK has smart meters that can selectively switch off or reduce power to consumers. The ‘greens’ should identify themselves to power companies, then they would only be given the percentage of power available from renewables at that moment. After all they would not want to be hypocritical and use coal, gas and oil.
“The UK has smart meters that can selectively switch off or reduce power to consumers.”
Not yet we haven’t.
There have been one or two pilots, with the usual SNAFU results, including the meters catching fire.
Also, there is no agreed standard for the meters, different suppliers use their own incompatible tackle, so if a consumer swaps suppliers the expensive (>£350) meter has to be replaced.
Then there’s the problem that mobile phone coverage can be very patchy in parts of Great Britain, incredibly there are even parts of London where it is impossible to get a signal.
So, business as usual basically.
I don’t understand why the fracking industry in the UK has not found a site in an already industrialised area, preferably near a user of large amounts of energy. Why do they always seem to be looking for greenfield sites?
When bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he replied “That’s where the money is.” I’ guessing that they have to drill where the gas is.
Willie claims he never said that:
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/sutton.asp
Good story, though.
@John
Well that was interesting. Thanks at least for helping me fill my quota for learning one new thing per day!
Bloke: The people in our area who live close to wells complain about the noise, at least while the wells are being established. There are rules about not putting wells too close to town, but I think they grandfather in the wells that are already in existence in town.
My point was that if you drill in an area with heavy industry, the noise etc. will go unnoticed. I suppose I’ve answered my own question in that the remnants of British heavy industry has already been killed off by green legislation.
Oh, then there’s the issue of earthquakes.
Yes, in the last 50 days the UK has had 42 earthquakes
NONE of them anything to do with fracking
http://earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes/recent_uk_events.html
“Yes, in the last 50 days the UK has had 42 earthquakes”
And not a single one of them was strong enough to have rattled the ornaments on the mantelpiece.
I live on one of the most active faults, and in the last half century total damage ha amounted to one tree branch and one chimney pot – both of which were only staying up due to force of habit anyway.
You can predict the headlines in 6 mths
‘An earthquake almost every day since fracking approved – mantelpiece ornaments in peril’
Not forgetting the Energy and infrastructure consultants, Vivienne Westwood, Caroline Lucas, Emma Thompson, Bonio, Stink and Geldof who are the only ones allowed to pass an opinion on the BBC.
The fracking rigs can’t be erected inside the parks
There is no such thing as a fracking rig. There isn’t even a fracking crew on the lease in that picture. Fracking is done after the drilling is finished, the casing has been done, and the hole has been logged and the casing has been perforated at zone level.
Tonyb says “I think the fracking notion under National Parks is a bit of a red herring.”
Sounds about right.
As I read the comments here I learn a little about the UK and the impeccable reasoning of the global warming adherents GWA).
My advice is to go nuclear – do research, do the engineering, determine the best means of finance – and so on. Build at home and enjoy, then sell to the rest of the world.
But no, that makes no sense to the GWA. Rather the plan seems to be to declare bio-mass (lignocellulose, I think) renewable and “carbon” neutral. Then use whatever is in sight that will burn – well the forests of the US East Coastal Region are not actually in sight of the Drax Power Station. But never mind that, the Atlantic is a small ocean, easily crossed with large ships powered by diesel engines.
What’s not to love.
These people are nuts!
Presumably, those who want to ban fracking at 1200 m depth below a national park, also want to ban any other sub-surface activity that has a risk of polluting groundwater: road tunnels, rail tunnels, sewer networks, septic tanks, petrol stations. Then we can ban all surface activities that have a risk of polluting groundwater and/or air: roads, vehicles, household waste storage, petrol stations. Or am I wrong to presume logical and consistent thinking amongst the anti-frackers?
The UK National Parks are vaguely defined areas, with stricter planning controls than other areas. However this does not stop development of any kind
For instance in the Peak District National Park there is the Hope Cement Works, Britain’s largest. The Google image search is here. This is just a few miles from where edge of the Bowland Shale area.
There are a number of limestone quarries, which serve the cement works and provide limestone aggregate for road building. Some of these major routes also cut through the National Parks.
A few drilling sites will make little difference to this general.
Below is an image of the village of Castleton from Peveril Castle I took in May 2013. The Cement works are about two miles to the right. The edge of the Bowland Shale about a mile to the left.
The Bowland Shale starts with Mam Tor, a hill 1700 feet high. The rock is soft shale, hence the reason for the exposed rock face. The photo I took on the same walk as the one above. Most of the extensive shale formations are below other rock types.
G & T Earle opened the Hope Cement works in 1929.
Peak District National Park opened in 1951, 19yrs after the famous mass trespass on Kinder Scout (just up the road) took place in 1932.
The Cement plant has a capacity of ~1.5 million tonnes / year.
A couple of miles away is ‘Derwent Dam’ where 617 Squadron ‘The Dam Busters’ practiced for the famous raid.
Those fracking Brits!
John