Fracking

The Guardian and a number of other papers ran a story today about the refusal of the Cabinet Office to publish an unredacted version of a 2016 report about fracking.

Where redacting seems to mean blacking out completely 37 of the 48 pages and not leaving many of those which are left alone. Which certainly contravenes the spirit, if not the letter, of a Freedom of Information court order.

Whatever is so secret about fracking, that they cannot let us great unwashed have a peek at a three year old report?

As far as I can make it out, the report is about what the government might do to get said great unwashed to be a bit more positive about fracking, presently the subject of lots of demonstrations, protests and so forth. Whatever were the government thinking of doing that they can't tell? What is their problem? Does Eton College hold a big block of fracking shares which needs to be protected?

Maybe I will get around to reading all the stuff at reference 2. In the meantime, I thought to ask the Cabinet Office, getting a not very helpful 176,228 results to my inquiry, the first few pages of which appeared to be completely irrelevant. Maybe there is a case here for them to get into bed with a proper search engine, like the ones from Microsoft or Google. Maybe even the home grown Autonomy (over which HP caught a bad cold) would do a better job than they can do for themselves.

For myself, I think I have moved from being mildly positive - on grounds of balance of payments and energy security - to being mildly negative - on grounds of save the planet. A messy technology which the world should be getting out of, not deeper in. And if one has to have it, let the north Americans with their unpopulated wastes do it. That should be enough to stop the Saudis being too greedy.

Reference 1: https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/.

Reference 2: https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2019/12/02/government-finally-releases-secret-fracking-report/. Contains what appears to be the redacted report, on its side. Perhaps Greenpeace were forbidden to publish it the right way up. I have only got as far as the bit which says that no part of this report is to be released under the Freedom of Information Act.