Humanizing hydrocarbon frontiers: the “lived experience” of shale gas fracking in the United Kingdom’s Fylde communities

Abstract

In this study, we explore the lived experiences of communities at the frontier of shale gas extraction in the United Kingdom. We ask: How do local people experience shale gas development? What narratives and reasoning do individuals use to explain their support, opposition or ambivalence to unconventional hydrocarbon developments? How do they understand their lived experiences changing over time, and what sorts of coping strategies do they rely upon? To do so, we draw insights from semi-structured interviews with 31 individuals in Lancashire, England, living or working near the only active shale gas extraction operation in the UK until the government moratorium was announced in December of 2019. Through these data, we identify several themes of negative experiences, including "horrendous" participation, community "abuse," disillusionment and "disgust," and earthquakes with the potential to "ruin" lives. We also identify themes of positive experiences emphasizing togetherness and community "gelling", environmental "awareness," everyday energy security with gas as a "bridging fuel," and local employment with "high quality jobs." Finally, we identify themes of ambivalent and temporally dynamic experiences with shale gas that move from neutral to negative regarding vehicle traffic, and neutral to positive regarding disgust with protesting behaviour and the diversion of community resources. Our study offers context to high level policy concerns and also humanizes community and resident experiences close to fracking sites.

“Do you Know What's Underneath your Feet?”: Underground Landscapes & Place‐Based Risk Perceptions of Proposed Shale Gas Sites in Rural British Communities☆

“…Junod et al (2018) build on this work, concluding that a lower perceived risk to place meaning and identity correlates with more positive attitudes toward development. Beyond these works, several studies have examined local impacts and lived experiences of shale gas, engaging on matters of place without using it as a specific theoretical frame (i.e., see (Ladd 2018; Malin, Ryder, and Hall 2018; Mincyte and Bartkiene 2019; Perry 2012; Ryder 2017; Short and Szolucha 2019; Sovacool et al 2020). Most recently, (Ryder and Devine‐Wright 2021) demonstrate how a shale gas operator failed to account for community identity and place attachment while simultaneously dismissing and challenging place‐based knowledge.…”

Decarbonization, population disruption and resource inventories in the global energy transition

“…More granular data would enable policymakers to address, for example, the distribution of impacts by age, race, gender, socioeconomic status and other intersectional issues. This data could come from population surveys, focus groups, or qualitative interviews, or use ethnographic and anthropological techniques to capture the "lived experiences" of these communities, similar to other work on cobalt mining in the Congo 72 , e-waste scrapyard workers in Ghana 73 or shale gas extraction in the UK 74 .…”

Fracking and epistemic injustice: A feminist critique of knowledge formation

“…The assertion that public viewpoints from women on the matter are something that can be disregarded as irrational goes to the heart of questions of knowledge and objectivity, and how science is framed and utilised to support vastly different perspectives within planning disputes. To date, the intense public debate on fracking, which refers to a key part of the extraction of shale gas from deep subsurface rock, has revolved around disputed knowledge claims regarding the environmental, health, and social impacts on local communities (see Cotton, 2015; Sovacool et al., 2020). Supporters of the industry have deployed arguments that opposition is rooted in the non-rational world of emotions, with women so concerned with their caring roles that they are unable to engage with science in their everyday lives.…”