Desperate in the sense that they're now claiming that if the people whose lives get disrupted by fracking get a share of the money from fracking then this would be bribery. Rather than what we might normally call it, compensation:

Jim Ratcliffe, the 61-year-old industrialist who founded the chemical giant Ineos, is promising to hand more than 6% of future shale gas revenues to those sitting on the reserves or affected by their extraction, in an effort to replicate efforts in the US where shale gas has created scores of new millionaires. The situation in America contrasts starkly with that of the UK, where efforts to develop the controversial new energy source have been delayed by landowners, environmental groups and the planning system.

Simon Clydesdale, UK energy campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “This is just more of the same bribes and bulldozers approach that has already proved a failure. With one hand the fracking industry goads the government into steamrolling people’s right to oppose fracking under their homes, with the other it offers cash incentives.

“The industry forgets people have legitimate concerns about fracking that won’t be easily assuaged by cash sweeteners."

It's all very Dave Spart isn't it?

Leaving the Trotskyist Hippies aside the interesting part of this is that we seem to have reversed, to some extent, the nationalisation of fossil fuel reserves that happened many decades ago. It's a standard of landowning law that the landowner owns the minerals underneath it. Except for gold and solver and then later we added fossil fuels to the list nationalised. Given that there would therefore be no benefit to landowners of fracking under their land there's been a certain resistance to allowing it.

However, the government has lowered the tax rate on gas and oil brought up through fracking: allowing that Coasean bargain to be struck again between the drillers and the landowners. There's now room in the sums for compensation to be offered: and thus compensation is being offered.