Lincolnshire MP welcomes company dropping out of oil drilling plans
The MP for Louth and Horncastle has welcomed Union Jack Oil pulling out
The MP for Louth and Horncastle has welcomed a decision by the company behind a proposed oilfield to step away from the project.
Victoria Atkins (Conservative) told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that a decision by Union Jack Oil and its partners to withdraw from its planning appeal for the proposed side-track drilling and oilfield development in Biscathorpe, near Louth, was a “victory for the residents”.
Union Jack Oil held a 45% interest in the scheme which previously secured planning consent in 2023. The application was later quashed following a High Court ruling relating to downstream emissions.
Operator Egdon Resources appealed the ruling and submitted an updated environmental assessment to the Planning Inspectorate.
But Union Jack Oil has now pulled out from the partnership and said the project was no longer commercially viable. It said the British economy was too unstable for it to continue.
David Bramhill, the company’s chief executive, blamed a “changing macro-economic environment” and the “continued regulatory uncertainty”.
Ms Atkins said she was pleased with the company’s decision and said residents have been concerned about the proposed development for years.
She added: “I’ve been working and supporting local campaigners who were very worried about the impact that these oil wells would have on, let us not forget, a very beautiful part of the Lincolnshire Wolds.
“I thank those campaigners for all their work over the years and I am really pleased for them and local residents that these plans have now been stopped.
“Local residents must be listened to on this sort of application and I’m just so relieved for them that this has now come to an end.”
The Louth and Horncastle MP felt the proposed oilfields would ruin the landscape.
Ms Atkins added: “It’s also the construction costs and the traffic travelling through tiny country lanes to and from the site that was worrying for residents.
“If you step back and look at our country as a whole, the plans that this government has for our great agricultural country are truly worrying.”
She accused the Government of looking to ‘plaster’ the countryside with solar panels and said plans for a string of pylons through the county would be a ‘scar’ on Lincolnshire.
She added: “This is a victory for the residents of Biscathorpe, but my goodness me, there’s many more campaigns and battles ahead to preserve other parts of our beautiful county as well.”
National Grid plans to build 87 miles of pylons from Grimsby to Walpole in Norfolk, which will go through the Lincolnshire Wolds – with substations required to connect cables to the electricity system.
Ms Atkins said: “From the very start, I have worked with local campaign groups against these pylons and against the industrial substations that are threatened for villages around Alford.
“Just to put it in context, these substations will be the size of Amazon warehouses and we know how vast those warehouses are.
“Imagine the impact they will have on what is a very undeveloped and rural countryside across the coastline.
“This is going to have an enormous impact on our ability to grow food but also, of course, on our tourist industry.”