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The UK fracking industry was left in total disarray yesterday after Lancashire County Council voted overwhelmingly to oppose fracking in the North West of the country.

Growing community and political resistance means that the US shale revolution will not be replicated in Europe, one of the gas industry’s leading figures has warned.

If you ask communities on the frontline of the fracking industry in the US what their greatest concern is about the controversial technology, often the reply is the threat to their drinking water.

The global oil price rose slightly this morning on the back of the news from the US government that US shale oil output is expected to fall for the first time in four years.

The wave of anti-fracking protests sweeping the globe have now spread as far as North Africa.

It is pretty hard nowadays to pass a gas station and not notice the plummeting price. Fuel prices have been falling so persistently that it appears that Americans have rediscovered their taste for gas guzzlers.

The largest ever scientific study examining the overall health of people living near fracking wells in the US is being published today and once again it sends alarm bells ringing.

n the blinkered rush to frack the globe - first in the United States, secondly in Europe and thirdly in the rest of the world - the oil industry always undermines the risks of the technology. But this brutal technique has a dangerous downside, ranging from air and water pollution, to the use of vast amounts of sands and chemicals. And then there is, of course, the huge volumes of water used in the fracking process.