LONDON, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Cuadrilla Resources, a British energy company, will be met with "stiff opposition" when it starts its hydraulic fracturing campaign, Friends of Earth said.
Cuadrilla said Tuesday it selected two sites in Lancashire, a city in the northwest of the country, for hydraulic fracturing, the controversial drilling practice known also as fracking.
Helen Rimmer, a campaigner for Friends of Earth, said local communities have already expressed concern about the operations.
"These plans will be met by stiff opposition from local people rightly concerned about having the U.K.'s first attempted multiple-well fracking operation under their feet," she said in a statement Tuesday.
The British government enacted fracking legislation in 2012 after minor tremors were reported near Cuadrilla fracking operations. The company was the target of major demonstrations last summer when its work in the southern village of Balcombe was viewed as a prelude to a fracking campaign.
Cuadrilla said it would have a light footprint in Lancashire though Rimmer said it still hasn't "cleared up the mess from the botched fracking operation that caused earth tremors" near one of its proposed sites in Lancashire.
Cuadrilla said in March it believes there are 200 trillion cubic feet of shale natural gas in the Bowland basin in Lancashire.
