Reform target seats would be among those first to be fracked, analysis shows

Dozens of constituencies that are prime Reform UK targets will be among those first in line to be fracked if the party delivers its promise to lift the moratorium on fracking, an Unearthed analysis has found. 

The news comes after the right-wing party’s deputy leader Richard Tice announced last week that Reform would immediately lift any fracking ban if it took power. 

Tice, who claims it would be “grossly financially negligent to a criminal degree” to leave Britain’s shale gas underground, has told oil and gas executives to start “getting applications ready” for fracking licences ahead of the next general election.

But Unearthed analysis of the areas most likely to see licence applications shows that they include dozens of parliamentary seats that will be critical Reform targets in that election. 

The analysis comes as new polling shows fracking is a divisive issue among “Reform-curious” voters, and unpopular among those who have previously voted Labour.

Unearthed mapping identified 127 constituencies across England and Wales where drilling licences were issued over shale gas reserves in the years before the current fracking ban was imposed. More than a quarter of them (34) are parliamentary seats where Reform came first or second in the last election. The majority of these are Labour-held seats in the north west, Yorkshire or the east midlands.

They include the constituencies of two of Reform’s four sitting MPs: Lee Anderson, MP for the Nottinghamshire constituency of Ashfield, and Sarah Pochin, who narrowly won the seat of Runcorn and Helsby from Labour in a by-election earlier this year.

Unearthed has reached out to Reform UK, as well as the offices of Anderson and Pochin, but all declined to respond.

The moratorium on fracking in England was put in place in 2019, after fracking at a site in Preston, Lancashire, triggered a series of minor earthquakes. This method of extracting fossil fuels has remained deeply unpopular with the UK public. Over the past six years, YouGov polling has consistently shown around 50% opposition to a British shale gas industry, against around 25% support.

Tessa Khan, executive director of campaigning group Uplift, told Unearthed: “Fracking is a dangerous distraction that continues to be deeply unpopular across the UK, where communities have long resisted its introduction. That’s why it’s been effectively banned or subject to moratoriums in every nation of the UK.

“It is pointless to pretend there is a future in fracking in the UK. It creates enormous amounts of toxic pollution and has a history of creating tremors where people live. Trying to drill these complex, expensive fields also ignores the fact that we cannot develop new oil and gas projects if we want to maintain a liveable climate.”

Reform-curious

Reform’s base tends to be pro-fracking, in sharp contrast to the population at large. However, new YouGov polling for the not-for-profit Persuasion UK, shared with Unearthed, shows that the policy is divisive within the coalition of voters the party will be seeking to build. 

The polling, carried out in August this year, shows that people who voted Reform in the 2024 general election oppose a ban on fracking by a large margin, and are even slightly more likely than not to say they would support new fracking sites in their local area.

However, Reform-curious Labour voters are more likely to support than to oppose a UK-wide fracking ban, and are opposed to having new fracking sites in their area by a clear margin. The polling also shows that people who first voted Reform after the 2024 election are more likely to oppose than to support fracking in their local area.

This is reflected in some of the party’s recent experiences in local government. Earlier this summer, Scarborough Town Council – which was taken by Reform in the May elections – came out in opposition to an application for a “fracking-style” appraisal well on nearby land. The proposed well would use a technique called “proppant squeeze” that has been described by some as “small-scale fracking” and a “loophole” in the moratorium.

The Reform-led council listed a range of objections to the proposed site, and said it stood in “full support” of local residents in “opposing a fracking-style hydrocarbon development that threatens the area’s landscape, geology, biodiversity, tranquillity, and road safety”. 

Meanwhile, Lancashire’s Reform-led county council has told the BBC that its Fylde Coast is “not conducive to fracking, and there are no plans for it to take place here”. Simon Evans, deputy leader of the council suggested that more activity was expected in the east, rather than the north west of England. 

Tice has since insisted that fracking remains possible in Lancashire, and downplayed the seriousness of tremors caused by shale gas exploration.

The north west, in addition to parts of Yorkshire and the east midlands, is home to the Bowland shale formation, which has Britain’s largest estimated reserves of shale gas. Before the moratorium was imposed, the north west – and Lancashire in particular – was considered the area with the most potential for commercially viable fracking, and was the site of extensive test drilling. 

A spokesperson for the British Geological Survey (BGS) told Unearthed that the latest research “supports a consensus” that although UK shales have a “similar composition to some of the commercially exploited rocks in the US” the amount of gas they contain is likely to be “relatively minor” compared to the initial estimates published by the BGS in the previous decade.

They said UK shale rocks were also smaller in volume and more fragmented than those fracked in the US. “When combined, this results in UK shales being more difficult to map and challenging to exploit,” they added. “These conditions are likely similar for both [north west] and [north east] England.”

Though oil and gas licensing is controlled by the UK government, planning and environmental regulation are devolved issues for Scotland and Wales. The Scottish government has had an effective ban on fracking in place since 2015, and the policy is unlikely to be reversed. In Wales, however, Reform is leading the polls for next year’s Senedd (Welsh parliament) election.