Fracking law in Scotland.

[vanordinaire]

Just a (slightly topical) question from a layman's point of view to any Scottish Legal experts out there .
Since the abolition of the feudal system in Scotland, my understanding (may be completely wrong) is that no-one has any feudal rights to my land. I think this includes extraction of minerals beneath my property.
If this is right, would it preclude any fracking activity which may extract gas from beneath my land (even if the 'minehead' is located outwith my boundaries?

[vanordinaire]

TooMany2cvs said:

IANA(S)L.

But this seems to suggest that oil and gas rights are separate, and held in the public interest.
http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2014/05/2852/2981...

Thanks for that, I had had a look but couldn't find these exceptions. There still might be an issue if the gas which, in fracking, has to be hydraulically forced out from the shale is not considered as "any mineral oil or relative hydrocarbon and natural gas existing in its natural condition in strata" .

[vanordinaire]

jshell said:

vanordinaire said:

gas which, in fracking, has to be hydraulically forced out from the shale

I strongly suggest that you do some research into what exactly Frac'ing is, as you demonstrate a woeful lack of understanding with that statement...a position most, if not all opponents to frac'ing share. If the feckwits that opposed it took some time to understand it, perhaps they would feck off and make themselves actually useful to society somewhere, but I doubt it.

Wooooooh! Get you! Someone got out of bed on the wrong side today.
I didn't start this thread as an argument against fracking, I'm only looking at possible legal issues which might affect future decisions by myself and others.
I have a reasonable understanding of what fracking is, just used simple terms for my purposes, most people do that who don't want to introduce technical complexities into a simple argument.
I'm not entirely opposed to fracking, but in some areas (such as where I live and work)the water which is trapped in the rock beneath us is far more important to us than the hydrocarbons which are present too and with all due respect to the 'experts', they cannot tell exactly where the artificially introduced fractures will occur and what effect they will have on ground water supplies.
Society as we know it may or may not survive if we run out of underground sourced hydrocarbons, but I know for a fact that it will not survive if we run out of food. I have respect for the the people who work in the petrochemicals industry(I did myself some time ago), but I don't think they are more useful to society than those who produce our food (as I do now). I've no intention of 'fecking' off somewhere else, but feel free to do your fracking there instead.

[vanordinaire]

jshell said:

Explain your understanding of it then...

I may have over-reacted slightly to your post, but I'm sick of the endless spurious shyte that's spewed up about the subject by those least familiar with it.

Thanks for responding in a reasonable way to my overenthusiastic post.

I'm not going to explain my understanding of fracking, I could easily spend half an hour googling to ensure my 'average' understanding of fracking is as good as I think it is then you would come back with your expert knowledge and pick it to bits and this thread would become another argument on the pro and cons of fracking. There is at least one other thread on here which does that very well already.

I raised this on the SP&L section of the forum because I felt there may be scope for a discussion into the legal aspects of fracking in Scotland and whether there might be a route for landowners to have some say in what goes on beneath them.

I share your concerns about energy supplies and realise that a properly controlled industry may go a long way to providing us with a few more decades worth of hydrocarbons, just don't like being ridden roughshod over by multinationals and arms length politicians who don't have the same commitment to my country that I do.

I'd like to think I could retain some control on what happens beneath my feet and was hoping that there might be some aspects of the law that could help me in this.