Essay by Eric Worrall
North Yorkshire councillor and anti-fracking activist Steve Mason has demanded a little known loophole in Britain’s fracking ban be closed.
Government urged to rewrite definition of fracking
BY RUTH HAYHURST ON
…
The proposed new definition would close loopholes that currently allow lower-volume fracking, the author said.
The call came in a briefing document, published just before the definition of fracking could be critical in deciding a controversial planning application.
The briefing is by Steve Mason, a North Yorkshire councillor, member of the North York Moors National Park Authority, campaign director of the anti-fracking network, Frack Free United, and a sustainability researcher.
…
The law currently defines associated hydraulic fracturing as fracking for shale or strata encased in shale that uses more than 1,000m3 per stage or 10,000m3 in total.
This volume threshold would allow plans by Europa Oil & Gas, to be decided on Friday (24 April 2026), to frack at Burniston in North Yorkshire.
…
Read more: https://drillordrop.com/2026/04/21/government-urged-to-rewrite-definition-of-fracking/
I just have one question – how did someone like Steve Mason ever get elected as a councillor in Yorkshire? Farming is the backbone of the North Yorkshire economy. Don’t farmers need lots of diesel? Yet one of their elected representatives is campaigning against a tiny legal loophole which might allow a trickle of locally sourced fuel to be made available.
I’ve never known Yorkshiremen to be backward in coming forward. Perhaps it’s time Yorkshire farmers made it known to their elected representatives what their priorities should be.
….To match the extraction of one of his few brain cells.
Yes, indeed, but . . .
What qualifications related to pure sciences and engineering does this complete and utter idiot posses that could possibly enable him to make the DEMANDS he idiotically makes? Is he a Member or, indeed, a Fellow of any meaningful science or engineering institutions?
You know what? The answer is . . . NO.
So . . . a politically motivated charlatan.
Useful idiots are everywhere and willing.
The Libdems, like the Greens, attract peculiar people to their party. Does that mean their voters are also peculiar, or are there other reasons for them voting as they do?
They ‘attract’ minority groups on purpose to grow their voter rolls. Voting today gets down to 1 to 2% margins so every little bit counts. By pandering to perceived and manufactured injustices against the minorities they gain their favor. Think about it, what exactly is their political platform? Nobody knows because their only selling points are “we’ll take care of the minorities and hate the Conservatives”.
This comes across as someone demanding that you fall on the sword for some nutball cause like fighting climate change, and if he got his way, it would have zero effect on anything except to perhaps harm the local economy. Fracking across North America will offset your plan a hundred times over, so why bother?
Steve Mason is a typical Liberal Democrat moron. The leader of the Liberal Democrats is Ed Davey who openly boasts that he single handedly stopped fracking in Britain when he was in the coalition government. The Liberal Democrats have completely swallowed every ludicrous piece of alarmist propaganda about the climate.
Liberal Democrats (previously known as Liberals) have perfected the art of lying to gain votes. Years ago in Richmond upon Thames the Liberal administration made great play on removing all council business from Barclays Bank because of its alleged association with apartheid in South Africa. Some weeks later, while I was cashing money at Barclays, (Sir) David Williams, the then Leader of Richmond Council, was at the next till paying a cheque into his personal account at that branch.
Ed Davey leader of the Liberal Democrats is notorious. He was deeply involved in the Horizon Scandal, the biggest financial crime ever perpetrated in the UK, but far from apologising and resigning from politics, he has gone on to lead his party of hypocrites and idiots.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67892045
https://thomaster.substack.com/p/the-untouchable-hypocrite-ed-daveys
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ed-davey-post-office-horizon-it-bates-b2474822.html
Well, we know where the councillor resides so it should not be difficult to interrupt his supply of fuel and energy when the Ed Miliband Rationing comes in.
I know North Yorkshire very well (me Mam’s from there), and I have observed how the area has been gentrified over the years. In Kirbymoorside specialist tea shops and antiques dealers now outnumber tractor garages and grain merchants. True Yorkshiremen have been replaced by well-off Middle Class poodlefakers who vote Green and Liberal Democrat.
Steve Mason CV watch (this one is priceless!): Furniture Design and Technology, Leeds Arts University
Perhaps his courses also included talking rubbish as an art form. He probably got a gold star for that module.
Old fart wants people to suffer after he’s gone.
Mason should instead insist that the treatments be done properly.
If Mason went this way, he’d either get the benefit of the production, or producers deciding that doing it the right way is too expensive (my bet). And minimal local impact no matter what.
So far, one predictable Debbie Downer with no rebut. The audible dog whistle of wanting to effectively communize the environmental, safety, responsible care (ES&RC) costs of oil and gas onto the rest of us is a common feature of so many of these WUWT posts. Add up all of the costs the producers want to shirk/are shirking, and they total much more than the green start up helps given and contemplated. Jet ’em all. Milton Friedman would approve…
shut up you feeble-minded zealot.
I see you had 2nd thoughts about your fact free, emotional post, and tried to expand. Good start.
as usual, you have no idea about what you are talking about.
Onshore UK O&G exp/app/prod wells and pad design and execution have some of the most vigorous Legislative rules to adhere to.
Your comparison of L48 O&G extraction to UK is like comparing a hillbilly to a lawyer
Dolt.
Read for comprehension. None of my comments mentioned “exp/app/prod wells and pad design and execution”. You might have God’s own well construction (we do), and also have inadequate haz waste disposal capacity (we do), old school frac fleets (we do), paid up regulators (we do) and systemic shirking of asset retirement obligations (we do)- the latter being the case in your North Sea operations.
Address the issues I actually mentioned, in the detail you claim to understand, and then we can exchange views rationally.
BOB, YOU ARE A RELIC. You don’t know your namesake industry. If you ever worked oil & gas exploration & production (doubtful), you must have retired about 40 years ago. I spent significant parts of my 50 year environmental career cleaning up and regulating the industry (29B pit closures in Louisiana; spill cleanups and site closures in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana, Kansas and Montana; assessment and restoration of saltwater damaged lands; waste disposal facility, designs, operations, and monitoring; gas well blowout responses; protection of prime farmlands; well plugging and abandonment (P&A); orphaned site and Superfund site restoration; real estate acquisitions with existing oil and gas production; etc.)
Most of the problems you cite were from the early days of the industry, which has come a long way since the wildcatting days of the early20th century. You also fail to note that the industry in Texas is largely credited with development of one of the best networks of rural farm-to-market, ranch and county roads in the world, not to mention the vast number of good paying jobs and tax revenues.
… but with you, I waste my breath.
You’ve kept your eyes shut for the last 40 years. More to the point, the PDR you lifted from your linkedin has nada to do with my post.
The necessary and sufficient conditions I describe for Mr. Mason to approve “low volume”1 stimulation treatments all reflect current Ben Dovers extant in US upstream operations. US shale fraccing has always been a hot house flower, fertilized with a combo of high prices, ES&RC Ben Dovers, and a world class business/tech culture, with geoscientists and petroleum engineers (like me) spearheading. But time’z up. Most oil tier 1 reservoir volume has been effectively drilled up. Incremental ROR 25 OpEx/CapEx costs/boe are just about what NYMEX was, pre Iran. We petroleum engineers are out of MacGyvers to delay the increasing headaches of competitive drainage and frac hitting. And the juiciest new plays are deep, offshore, international, and controlled by kleptocrats.
So, AGAIN, direct bans are goofy. If Mr. Mason can get UK operators to move forward properly, or if they already do so, Mo’ power to him/them. I just know where my Polymarket bets would go.
1 Is THIS compatible with the UK countryside? Aksing because it’s what’s required for these “low volume” operations.
Not rhetorical. If the UK countryside can approve basically west Texas operations, let them fill their boots!
As bad as the Cuomo family in New York?
The UK has lots of solar panels. They are an energy super power. No need for oil & gas.
And when the sun goes down? The UK never has cloudy days or no wind, eh? What about the other 600+ chemicals from oil and gas that allow so many useful products and pharmaceuticals? Don’t want them as you think you do not need them? Modern medicine is not possible without these products, but then you seem to have medieval medicine goals (for the peasants).
Petey has the IQ of a canary
That much?!!
Presumably you’re being deliberately stupid . . . in which case, why the hell would you do that?!!
Over the last 12 months, solar generation installations in the UK provided 2.03GW, this from an installed capacity of 21.5GW. So they operated at a Capacity Factor – efficiency – of 9.44%.
Who in their right mind would decide that this was a good idea?! . . . notwithstanding that more than 85% of solar panels are constructed in China using coal-fired power and processes, and their installation results in the destruction of some of the best farmland on the planet!! Oh, and we mustn’t forget that it gets dark every night . . . pillock.
you forget that the central nervous system of North Yorkshire and the Council, is in the capital, York; a proper nest of progressive nuttery.