Woodburn Reservoir: Belfast City Council to contact ministers over oil firm's drill plan

Woodburn Reservoir near Carrickfergus supplies 700 Belfast streets with drinking water

Belfast City Council is to write to two executive ministers asking them to overturn permission for an oil company to drill close to a County Antrim reservoir.

The firm, Infrastrata, has permission to drill an exploratory well for oil and gas within the catchment area for Woodburn Reservoir near Carrickfergus.

The proposed well head is about 400m from the reservoir.

Woodburn supplies 700 Belfast streets with drinking water.

Opponents claim the well could impact on the quality of the drinking water.

A Green Party motion calling for a review of the decision to allow the exploratory well was passed by 28 votes to 15.

It expressed concern that drilling would involve "harmful chemicals" and that no strategic environmental assessment had been carried out before permission was given for the work.

The company has been issued with an exploration licence by the Department of Enterprise.

The drilling was approved by the Department of the Environment under what are called permitted development rights, meaning it did not require planning permission.

Belfast City Council will now write to those ministers seeking a review of the decisions. It will also write to Mid and East Antrim Council within whose area Woodburn Reservoir sits.

'Robust regulatory process'

Green party councillor Ross Brown, who proposed the motion, said the public "have not been granted permission to participate in a process where concerns about this activity could be aired and should have been discussed".

"This ought to be the very basis of what is required," he added.

"It is crucial that the most robust regulatory process is applied, especially given the fact that there are a wide range of studies which demonstrate that well casing leakage is a widespread and intractable problem.

"It has been estimated, for example that 5% of new wells leak in the first year and by 30 years, 60% suffer from leaks."

NI Water, which leased the land to Infrastrata for the exploratory well, has always said that it does not believe the work poses any threat to the public water supply.

In a statement, it said: "The safeguarding of water quality is of primary importance to NI Water and the company is satisfied that the proposed work will have no detrimental impact upon the impounding reservoir or the public water supply.

"However, no work will commence until NIEA and DETI are fully satisfied with all of Infrastrata's proposals and their impact on the wider environment."

The drilling project was dealt a blow earlier this month, when it emerged that Infrastrata's partner company had pulled out leaving a £2.8m hole in the project's finances.

The company said work could not proceed until it had closed the funding gap.

If Infrastrata does find oil and wants to extract it, it would then need to apply for full planning permission.