Fracking earthquake victims to be offered 'goodwill payments' by Cuadrilla to repair damage to homes

Lancashire residents to receive money to cover damage they say resulted from 2.9-magnitude tremor caused by oil and gas drilling

Fracking firm Cuadrilla will make small “goodwill payments” to residents near its Lancashire drilling site who claim their homes have been damaged by an earthquake.

A 2.9-magnitude quake caused by Cuadrilla’s controversial shale gas operation in August forced drilling to be suspended indefinitely.

The company, which is currently the UK’s only fracker, claims there is no proof that the tremor caused any “major damage”.

However, Cuadrilla has revealed it will pay out a few hundred pounds each to some residents who say their homes have been affected. Chief executive Francis Egan said damage reports number in the “low two figures”.

He told the PA news agency that it would be impossible to say whether damage was caused by fracking or was “just natural settlement in the building”.

“But we do want to retain goodwill, so we will make some payments,” he added.

The earthquake, which hit on the August bank holiday weekend, was more than 250 times larger in magnitude than is allowed under government rules.

Local residents reported windows shaking in their frames and some said cracks had emerged in their properties. However, Mr Egan said that some “obviously egregious” damage claims had been submitted.

“Lots of people have showed us cracks with weeds growing out of them, for example, or cracks that when you look on Rightmove you can see the exact same cracks in photographs taken well before the tremor,” he said.

The incident came just days after Cuadrilla resumed fracking at its drilling site at Preston New Road, the only site in the UK where the process is taking place.

Fracking, the technique of pumping high-pressure liquid into the ground to split rocks and extract oil or gas, is controversial.

The National Audit Office concluded last week that the government had made false assurances that the Environment Agency would be able to go after fracking companies and landowners for the cost of restoring damage to sites.

Fracking sites could become permanent blots on the landscape because of holes in decommissioning rules, the spending watchdog warned.

In August, a study by scientists at Cornell University found that fracking has “dramatically increased” global emissions of methane – a potent greenhouse gas.