Earlier this year, the UK government published a report on the effect of shale gas mining (i.e. “fracking”) on rural economies (link to PDF document). One can only assume that their findings were not very positive, because most of this document has been censored, and they’re not telling us why. Even the author’s name has been replaced with the word REDACTED.
For example, here is section 4 of the document, in its entirety:
Section 4: Conclusion
This report has examined the potential economic, social and environmental impacts that are likely to be associated with an expansion in shale gas exploration. REDACTED
To a large extent these effects are already experienced by those rural communities located near established extraction activities e.g. quarrying, mining and conventional gas extraction.
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Current proposals from both government and operators appear to be following a similar approach. Under the commitments of the UK Onshore Operators’ Group (2013), shale gas exploration could provide a community contribution of £100,000 per hydraulically fractured site as an initial benefit, equivalent to total UK payments of between £3 and £12 million. Meanwhile, the government recently announced that English councils which give the go-ahead to shale gas developments will be allowed to keep 100 per cent of the business rates they collect from consented sites. This is estimated to be worth up to £1.7m a year for a typical site.
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I was fairly ambivalent about fracking before I saw this, but now its quite clear that the people behind it are a bunch of faceless REDACTED who have got Whitehall stuck so far up their REDACTED that they can’t even REDACTED REDACTED
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(via UsVsTh3m)
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