A blue-on-blue row over fracking is expected to reignite this week as dozens of Tory MPs increase pressure on ministers to overturn a moratorium on drilling.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, will receive a British Geological Survey (BGS) report in the coming days on whether scientific developments have made the extraction of shale gas safer. He said last week that while it would inform his “next steps” on whether to lift the ban, the government would be “led by the science” and support from “local communities”.

Senior backbenchers have expressed concern that the BGS review ignores “scientific strides that have been taken since 2019”. The Net Zero [Scrutiny] group of Tory MPs and peers, who are sceptical about the government’s green agenda, have launched a campaign urging Kwarteng to use the review to “unlock” domestic supplies to bolster energy security.

In a statement on [the Net Zero Watch] website yesterday, the group pointed to statements by the Oil and Gas Authority, the Royal Society and research sponsored by the business department that they say show “fracking can be conducted safely”.

Craig Mackinlay, who chairs the group, said since April his constituents had been paying up to 54 per cent more for gas than in October “because we have been meeting more and more of our gas needs from the Russian-dominated European market, while our domestic supplies have sat idle”. Sir Iain Duncan-Smith, the former Tory leader, added: “We are sitting on an island of oil and gas and it is absolutely absurd we aren’t using it.”

Fracking involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer to release the gas inside. It is opposed in rural areas and by environmental groups and was suspended in England in 2019 after a report on earth tremors by the Oil and Gas Authority.

Chris Skidmore, a former science minister who chairs the rival Net Zero Support Group of Tory MPs, said: 
“The UK has shown international leadership in showing the rest of the world how to decarbonise and create new sovereign forms of energy through wind and nuclear for the future. We don’t need fracking. Even if there wasn’t an environmental crisis, oil and gas are industries of the past.”

Skidmore also warned that restarting fracking would only compound the Tories’ electoral woes across rural areas of the country.

KeyFacts Energy Industry Directory: Net Zero Watch