Boris Johnson is poised to announce a moratorium on fracking, amid rising concern that controversy about the technology could dent Tory election hopes.
Government sources said that an effective ban on new fracking would be announced within days, following an earthquake in Lancashire in August.
Mr Johnson hinted at the ban on Wednesday, telling MPs an announcement about the future of fracking would be made shortly ‘in view of the considerable anxieties that are legitimately being raised about the earthquakes that have followed various fracking attempts in the UK’.
A Government source said the intervention would stop short of a total ban, but would mean there would be ‘no new fracking’.
A source said ministers were waiting for a report from the Oil and Gas Authority into the incident near Blackpool this summer in which a tremor measuring 2.9 on the Richter scale was recorded at the UK’s only active fracking site
The Department for Business, which oversees fracking regulations, declined to comment in detail.
A source said ministers were waiting for a report from the Oil and Gas Authority into the incident near Blackpool this summer in which a tremor measuring 2.9 on the Richter scale was recorded at the UK’s only active fracking site.
But ministers have come under mounting pressure from Tory MPs worried that controversy about potential fracking in their constituencies could cost them votes.