North Yorkshire fracking plans submitted to council

Third Energy has applied to fracture near the village of Kirby Misperton

Plans to frack for shale gas in North Yorkshire have been submitted to the county council.

Third Energy has applied to fracture underground rocks at a site near the village of Kirby Misperton in Ryedale and then pump gas from them.

John Dewar, from Third Energy, said operations would be "conducted safely and environmentally".

Anti-fracking campaigners are concerned about the effects of the process and the waste water generated.

Fracking is a technique for extracting gas or oil trapped between layers of rock by forcing the layers open using water under high pressure.

Mr Dewar said the application was an "important milestone" in the project to produce gas from the Bowland strata beneath North Yorkshire.

"We know that the gas is present but it is only by actually hydraulically stimulating the rock that we can understand the potential of the gas to flow and the likely volumes that can be produced," he said.

The application is for test production - if gas is found it will be extracted by the company for six weeks.

The site already has a well, known as KM8, that was drilled during 2013.

The KM8 well was drilled during 2013

Chris Redstone, of Frack-free Ryedale, said: "Fracking produces huge quantities of waste water which contains hydrocarbons and heavy metals, many of which can be carcinogenic."

North Yorkshire County Council confirmed the application had been received.

It said it had yet to be validated and would go through the normal planning procedure, including a wide-ranging consultation.

"No timetable has been set, it's a long process", a spokesperson said.

Analysis by Danni Hewson, Business Correspondent at BBC Look North

While Cuadrilla has been garnering the lion's share of national attention Third Energy has been quietly streaking ahead in the fracking race.

The gas and oil company, predominantly owned by Barclays, has already carried out exploratory tests at their site in Kirby Misperton. They already have a pipeline in place to siphon off any gas produced and a power station on the grid to turn shale into electricity.

While Cuadrilla's latest planning application is a lot further down the line and wider in scope, in terms of logistics they are still at the starting gate.

They have no well ready to go at either of their two proposed sites and still need to test what's under the ground there.

Third Energy's operations manager is aware his company could become a reluctant trail blazer.

If planning permission is granted KM8 would be fracked for six weeks, though not continuously. What happens after that depends on how and if the gas flows.

Energy resources firm Cuadrilla has applied to extract shale gas at its sites in Little Plumpton and Roseacre Wood, near Blackpool in Lancashire.

The decisions on whether to allow fracking are due to be made by Lancashire County Council in June.

IGas, another energy company, has also found shale gas at a test drilling well at Barton Moss in Salford.

The technique was suspended in the UK in 2011 after fracking for shale gas deposits near Blackpool was linked to two minor earthquakes.

However, a government report published in June 2012 concluded fracking was safe if adequately monitored.