Oil and chemicals company Ineos and a group of landowners have been granted a court order banning protestors from sites it runs that are connected to fracking.
In a ruling at the High Court in London yesterday judge Mr Justice Morgan granted an injunction banning “persons unknown” from trespassing on eight sites, interfering with vehicles and obstructing rights of way.
The sites are mostly in Yorkshire, but also include Ineos’ headquarters in Knightsbridge, London. The claim was brought by Ineos, a number of its subsidiary units and the freeholders of one of the sites earmarked for drilling.
The ruling extends an interim order granted by the judge in July. This new order will last “until trial or further order”. However, in his ruling, Morgan J said “I cannot predict whether this case will ever go to trial.”
Ineos, which is a privately-held company, has been rapidly expanding in the UK, and has secured a number of strategically important sites.
Because of its involvement in fracking, however, it has become a target of protestors.
The company is involved in various planning applications and environmental screening procedures on land that it wants to use.
In his ruling, Morgan J said that he did not necessarily agree that the protests that have been threatened are illegal. However, he said that Ineos should still have the protection of a court order.
“I do not consider that Ineos should be told to wait until it suffers harm from unlawful actions and then react at that time,” he said.
“This particularly applies to injunctions to restrain trespass on land. If protestors were to set up a protest camp on Ineos’ land, the evidence shows that it will take a considerable amount of time before Ineos will be able to recover possession of such land,” he said.
He refused to grant an order protecting the claimants from harassment, saying that the term lacked clarity.
Ineos Upstream and others v Persons Unknown and others
Business and property courts (Morgan J) 23 November 2017
