Liz Truss’s claims gas from fracking could flow in six months has been called into doubt – with one company estimating it could take as long as 18 months.

The government lifted the ban on fracking on Thursday, despite warnings from climate campaigners and geologists.

Ms Truss is hoping the move will help make the UK more self-sufficient for energy, but campaigners have warned it would do little to alleviate the huge bills Britons currently face.

And the fracking industry has said the planning and environmental permit process would need to be sped up and earthquake limits relaxed for their investment to make sense.

Firms need both environmental and planning permits to start fracking, as well as licences, Health and Safety Executive scrutiny and consent from the Business Department, according to the UK Onshore Oil and Gas (UKOOG) industry body.

The government’s fracking tsar has quit the post after just six months, claiming policy relating to the controversial process means there is “no purpose” to her job.

Natascha Engel told the business secretary, Greg Clark, that developing the industry would be “an impossible task” despite its “enormous potential”. In her resignation letter, she said environmental activists had been “highly successful” in encouraging the government to curb fracking.

Engel, a former Labour MP, wrote the letter following two weeks of protests by the Extinction Rebellion group, which brought parts of London to a standstill with demands to cut emissions to zero by 2025.

She wrote: “A perfectly viable and exciting new industry that could help meet our carbon reduction targets, make us energy secure and provide jobs in parts of the country that really need them is in danger of withering on the vine – not for any technical or safety reasons, but because of a political decision.”

Engel complained that a traffic light system that halts fracking when a tremor with a magnitude of 0.5 is recorded “amounts to a de facto ban”.

Fracking company Cuadrilla has requested an urgent review of existing earthquake safety levels, in the hope permission to generate larger tremors will allow it to extract greater quantities of shale gas from Lancashire.

Currently the company must suspend drilling when quakes measuring over 0.5 magnitude are detected.

Though numerous legal challenges and protests were not enough to prevent the company from beginning explorative drilling at its Preston New Road site late last year, it is now the government’s “traffic light system” for seismic activity which the industry appears to consider the greatest threat to its survival.

Despite it emerging that senior figures in the company had believed they would not cause tremors serious enough to halt operations, the company has had to stop drilling on several occasions after surpassing government limits.

In results published today, Cuadrilla said since they began drilling in October last year, they had confirmed there is a “rich reservoir of recoverable high quality natural gas present”, but that the seismic operating limit remains a barrier to the industry.

Fracking has been paused at a site in Lancashire after the second earthquake in the space of three days.

A series of small tremors were detected at the Preston New Road site, peaking at a magnitude of 0.9 which meant operations had to stop.

Readings above 0.5 are ranked “red” on the traffic light system used to monitor these events, and mean fracking must be suspended immediately.

Fossil fuel exploration company Cuadrilla began pumping again at the site this week for the first time since October, when small tremors meant activity had to be repeatedly paused.

Within days of starting again, a minor earthquake of 1.5 magnitude struck – the largest to hit the site since shale gas exploration began this year.

A spokesperson from Cuadrilla said: “A series of micro seismic events in Blackpool have been recorded on the British Geological Survey (BGS) website today 14 December.” 

“The largest recorded was 0.9ML (local magnitude) at about 2pm. This occurred whilst we were hydraulically fracturing at the Preston New Road exploration site.

The government is facing a fresh legal challenge to its proposals to fast-track new fracking sites by loosening planning regulations.

Ministers said this summer they would drop the requirement for shale gas wells to obtain planning permission by designating fracking sites as national infrastructure projects.

Greg Clark, the business secretary, used a written ministerial statement to tell local authorities they should abide by a definition of fracking that campaigners say is looser than the current one.

Opponents say the new definition allows some companies to claim that their operations do not meet the technical definition of fracking and therefore do not have to face tougher planning decisions.

On Monday a high court will decide whether to allow a legal challenge, brought by the mayor of a town in north Yorkshire against two government departments, on the grounds they should have undertaken an assessment required by EU law before Clark’s statement.

The case has been brought by Paul Andrews, the mayor of Malton, which is the nearest town to the KM8 well that Third Energy intends to frack.

He said Clark’s comments had completely undermined protections against fracking in North Yorkshire county council’s local minerals plan.

Farmers joined campaigners during part of a protest against fracking in North Yorkshire.

About 60 people staged the demonstration over preliminary plans for fracking in Kirby Misperton, near Ryedale.

Third Energy has been granted permission by North Yorkshire County Council to frack for gas at the site.

Farmers drove tractors from the nearby village of Great Barugh to the protest where they were greeted by cheers from other protesters upon arrival.

Anti-fracking group Farmers Against Fracking staged the rally on Tuesday (26 September).

Campaigners fighting a Government decision to approve a fracking site in Lancashire have lost a High Court action.

The Preston New Road Action Group (PNRAG) and campaigner Gayzer Frackman had urged a judge to find that the decision to grant a planning application for the site in Fylde was not fair or lawful.

But Mr Justice Dove, announcing his decision at the High Court in London on Wednesday, dismissed their judicial review actions.

MPs have voted to allow fracking for shale gas 1,200m below national parks and other protected sites.

The new regulations – which allow drilling from outside the protected areas – were approved by 298 to 261

Opposition parties and campaigners criticised the lack of a Commons debate – and accused ministers of a U-turn as they previously pledged an outright ban on fracking in national parks.

The government said its plans would protect “our most precious landscapes”.

It said the UK had “one of the best track records in the world for protecting our environment while developing our industries”.

Ballot papers

MPs overwhelmingly rejected a bid to suspend drilling for shale gas in a Commons vote in January, during which ministers also pledged an “outright ban” on fracking in national parks.

Labour has said the government’s plans, contained in a draft regulation, represent a U-turn on this commitment, and called for stronger safeguards.

The proposals, first set out in July, would only allow fracking 1,200m below national parks, Areas of Outstanding National Beauty, the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads and World Heritage Sites.

I don’t really know enough about fracking to say whether an indefinite ban is a good or a bad thing, but unlike in England, where the whole debate on big business covering the countryside in windmills and solar panels, involves an uneven struggle between local communities and rich companies, this moratorium seems to be a policy driven in response to popular sentiment. Makes you think – the article tells us:

SNP ministers have announced an indefinite ban on fracking in Scotland as they intensified their general election battle with Labour over which party is promising the greatest restrictions on the controversial practice.

Fergus Ewing, the Scottish Energy Minister, declared a moratorium on granting planning permission for “unconventional” oil and gas projects that blocked all schemes north of the Border under development.

In a statement to MSPs, he said the ban would last however long it took to carry out a full public consultation on the extraction of shale gas and research into its impact on the environment and public health.

But the Tories and Liberal Democrats said Mr Ewing and Labour were indulging in “political posturing” over who could be seen to be most hostile to fracking ahead of the general election, regardless of the damage to the Scottish economy.

An expert group commissioned by Scottish ministers reported last year there were no significant technological barriers to the development of an unconventional hydrocarbon industry and that it could be extracted safely.

Controversial plans for fracking in Lancashire should be refused because the drilling would cause “unacceptable” increases in noise and heavy traffic, according to the county council’s planning officers. Their recommendation will be considered by councillors ahead of the deciding votes next week.

The application by shale gas company Cuadrilla to drill wells at two sites also faced objections on a series of other issues, including public health, air and water pollution, subsidence and earthquake risk. But Lancashire county council (LCC) planning officers said these impacts “would be low or could be mitigated” and “concluded that the principle of exploration for shale gas would be acceptable”.

LCC’s planning committee will vote on Cuadrilla’s planning applications on 28 and 29 January. If approved, it will be the first full scale shale gas exploration in the UK. If they reject the plans, Cuadrilla can submit modified plans or appeal, with communities secretary Eric Pickles potentially making the final decision.

David Cameron has said the government is “going all out” for fracking in the UK, claiming it would create jobs and cut the country’s reliance on gas imports. But opponents argue the high pressure fracturing of rocks to release gas risks health and environmental impacts and drives climate change.