Residents will hold their own "town hall meeting" to discuss a fracking proposal near the North York Moors National Park tonight.
Proposals for a gas drilling rig at Burniston Mill in Scarborough will be discussed at a public meeting organised by residents on Thursday, September 19.
The town hall meeting, at 7pm in Burniston Village Hall, will also be attended by Scarborough and Whitby MP Alison Hume who has spoken out strongly against the hydraulic fracking plans.
It comes as Europa Oil & Gas confirmed its intention to proceed with a full planning application for a 30m high derrick and gas drilling rig in Burniston which is formally due to be submitted in November.
The project could take up to 17 weeks and would establish whether gas in an underground reservoir could be extracted for “commercially viable production”.
Residents have said they are concerned about the environmental impacts of a potential fracking project as well as the impact on local communities and highways from more than a thousand estimated HGV movements, should plans go ahead.
However, Europa’s CEO William Holland has said that “no one’s going to notice” due to the “small volume” of the project and that he hoped that the possibility of new jobs and investment “would be attractive to the local community”.
This summer, more than a hundred residents attended a meeting of Burniston Parish Council to “unanimously” oppose the plan and the ‘For Frack Free Scarborough’ campaign group has been actively organising against the plans.
Also set to speak at Thursday’s meeting are Simon Bowens from Friends of the Earth, Dennis May of Frack-Free Misson, Frack Free Ryedale campaigner Sue Gough, and Chris Garforth of For Frack Free Scarborough.
Europa has said it will “listen to people’s concerns” and will be organising a drop-in consultation session on September 26 at Burniston Village Hall.
CEO Mr Holland said he hoped to have “as many people as possible” attend the meeting.
“Hopefully we can show people that they’ve got nothing to be concerned about and there’s a reason why the [moratorium on fracking] does not include conventional hydraulic fracking,” he added.
York and North Yorkshire’s mayor, David Skaith, has joined MP Alison Hume in opposing the scheme, recently stating that the plan was not something he wanted to see happen and there were “real concerns” about it.
Ms Hume said: “I will do all I can to support the local community in Burniston to stop this fracking application going any further.”
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