Canatxx Gas Storage - an American Company -have submitted an application to Lancashire County Council to store two million tonnes- that’s twenty billion cubic feet -of gas at extremely high pressures under the Wyre Estuary. They clearly expect to make a great deal of money, buying and storing cheap gas and selling it back at peak rates. The plan is to store the gas in caverns in the salt deposits,pumping water down bore holes to dissolve the salt and discharging it into the Irish sea 2.3 km off Rossall school. The gas will be stored in up to twenty caverns -each of which will be - in the words of Mr Dennis Volter, the Head of Canatxx - the size of the London Eye.

In January 2001 gas leaked from similar storage caverns under the town of Hutchison,Kansas, seven miles away. the resulting explosion destroyed property and killed two residents. Kansas law now prohibits the construction of gas caverns within three miles of a municipal settlement. We have no such law in the UK. Aside from this the area is a designated SSSI and damage would be caused to the salt marsh habitat and the bird life on the mud flats. The saturated brine would be discharged at a rate of eighty million litres per day over a ten year construction period and would kill off any seabed life within fifty metres of the outflow.

A number of local pressure groups have come together to oppose the application which goes before Wyre Borough Council in March for approval - see www.thorntonactiongroup.co.uk for further details.