Oil rig to be set up at Biscathorpe, an area of outstanding natural beauty

Written by Jane Air

Environment secretary Michael Gove recently put a halt to an oil company wanting to drill an exploratory well near to Leith Hill in the Surrey Hills, a designated area of natural beauty. This was mainly on account of the detrimental impact it would have had on the ancient trees that surround Leith Hill as well as the impact of lorries on the historic tree-lined country lanes to and from the well site. 

Biscathorpe, nestled in the Lincolshire Wolds, is also at the heart of an area of outstanding natural beauty. It is set to become the location for the construction of a well site for exploratory oil drilling likely to be completed this month with a view to conventional oil drilling in the Autumn.

Biscathorpe is on the site of a medieval village and even gets a mention in the Doomsday Book. It may not have as many ancient trees as those that surround Leith Hill but it does nevertheless have a rare and pristine chalk stream that runs across it. Chalk streams are fed by groundwater from a chalk geology. A threatened species of crayfish, the native white-clawed crayfish, is currently making a comeback in the Lincolnshire Wolds and they prefer to live in running streams.

Lincolnshire County Council and the Environmental Agency are both sponsors of the Lincolnshire Chalk Streams Project. I attended the Chalk Stream festival held at Spout Yard in Louth last year and learnt about the precious and delicate nature of our chalk streams.

The Lincolnshire Chalk Streams Project monitors and helps to protect the health of our chalk streams. It informs us about how these rare habitats support some of our most threatened plants and animals such as the water crowfoot, water vole, otter, European eel and Brown trout. It has played its role alongside local conservation groups in helping the native white-clawed crayfish make its return to the Lincolnshire Wolds.

Both the Lincolnshire County Council and the Environment Agency are also the regulators of the onshore oil and gas industry. The Environment Agency is the agency that issues environmental permits for onshore and gas exploration. 

It is conventional oil drilling that is intended for Biscathorpe. Egdon Resources are the operating company with a 35.8 stake involved in Biscathorpe-2 Prospect. On the Edgon Resources website it states clearly that  'The proposals will involve conventional drilling for oil and for clarity the operations at the site will not involve the process of hydraulic “fracking” for shale gas. This area of Lincolnshire does not have the specific rock-formation types that contain shale gas'.

Despite this declaration Egdon Resources are involved in the fracking industry. To my knowledge there has been no fracking in Lincolnshire so far and I for one hope that this remains to be the case for the future of Lincolnshire.

I believe the issues currently at stake are whether or not an oil rig should be allowed to set up in an area of outstanding natural beauty and the measure and nature of the risk that it might pose to the rare chalk stream that runs across it, where the cattle drink from, and where the native white-clawed crayfish are currently making a successful return.