Anti-fracking comes to Scotland

A tanker carrying 27,500 cubic meters of ethane from U.S. shale fields had reached Grangemouth, the site of the petrochemicals plant owned by multinational corporation Ineos who plan to eventually transport more than 800,000 tons of ethane, using eight specially built ships, across the Atlantic every year. Anti-fracking activists in Scotland and in Pennsylvania—where the fracked gas originated—oppose the delivery.

"Americans are being sacrificed by having this production near their homes, schools and farms," read a statement from Citizens for Clean Water a group based in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania.  "I have witnessed first-hand how the fracking industry has brought permanent damage across the Pennsylvania region, polluted our air, land, and water and is destroying our livelihoods," Ron Gulla, a former resident of Hickory, Pennsylvania, who leased his own land for fracking in 2002, explained. "Those living near drilling, infrastructure, or waste sites have suffered water contamination, spills, wastewater dumping, and gas leaks, as well as multiple health impacts”

"It is completely unacceptable to attempt to prop up the Grangemouth plant on the back of environmental destruction across the Atlantic," said Mary Church, head of campaigns for Friends of the Earth Scotland. "Only today we have heard from the U.K. Climate Change Committee that global warming is already impacting Scotland, and that we should expect to see an increase in extreme weather events like last year's floods. To pursue a future for the Ineos plant based on the consumption of ever more fossil fuels is utterly irresponsible in the context of what we know about the devastating impacts of climate change…Fracking should not happen here in Scotland," said Church, "and our country should not profit from it happening anywhere else."

Mark Lichty, executive producer of the cautionary documentary Groundswell Rising, declared in a statement:

“The arrival of the Ineos Dragon ships in the U.K. is not an event to celebrated, but rather to be mourned. The event means the message and commitments made in Paris, go virtually unheeded. Fracked gas with its methane and carbon dioxide emissions fuels the climate crises. The earth speaks resoundingly of its climate-induced pain through unprecedented heat waves, floods, forest fires, etc.  The infrastructure to process the gas is a black hole sucking money into it that could be spent on a bright, job-producing, alternative future. Voices are beginning to be heard that we must have a WWII style mobilization effort to rise to the climate crises. Then as now this is an enemy we can combat. Let the U.K. and U.S. stand together. United we stand, divided we fall. “