The International Solidarity Campaign to Ban Fracking in Northern Ireland – a coalition of more than three dozen groups backed by US actor Mark Ruffalo - is gathering momentum ahead of an important online event tonight.
They claim the granting of petroleum exploration licences would “open the door for fracking in Northern Ireland” – a practice that has been banned in the Republic, Scotland, England, and Wales.
Tamboran Resources and EHA Exploration have two licence applications pending and are seeking to establish the potential for extracting oil and gas from the ground beneath Co Fermanagh and an area around Lough Neagh, respectively.
The group claims public health concerns about the impact of fracking have not been addressed.
Research commissioned in 2020 by the economy minister Gordon Lyons’s predecessor Diane Dodds looking into the impact of fracking alongside conventional oil and gas exploration remains under wraps, though tracts of the Hatch Regeneris report were leaked by a whistleblower last year.
Mr Lyons, is expected to bring a paper looking at policy options for oil and gas drilling to the executive shortly.
The campaign groups says that during public consultation, health professionals submitted over 2,000 scientific studies and reports showing the harms of fracking to public health, water, air, land, livestock and tourism.
Also submitted was a recent report by the Irish Centre of Human Rights that found that fracking presents a “significant threat to human rights” due to its impact on the health of surrounding communities.
The campaigners are due to host an online event tonight (Thursday, February 3, at 7.30pm) and have urged people to register at the website sinnfeinstopfracking.org
