The Independent: Barton Moss: The latest front line in Britain’s unconventional energy revolution against fracking
It took two hours for the lorry to make the quarter of a mile journey down Barton Moss Road today. The 50 demonstrators offered noisy resistance to the phalanx of police as they slowly but firmly cleared the path for the rig that next week will begin drilling 10,000ft down through the former peat bog and into the coal bed methane and eventually reaching shale in search of natural gas.
During the pushing and shoving three men and a woman were arrested for obstruction. Yet for those that have spent the past two weeks camping on the side of the muddy lane in thundering earshot of the M62, it was just another day in Britain’s unconventional energy revolution.
Many of those that are here on the outskirts of Eccles at a spot best known as one of the original stops on the world’s first inter-city railway between Liverpool to Manchester are veterans of this summer’s clash between protesters and drillers down in Balcombe, West Sussex. MORE