The Scottish Government will consider public opinion as well as science when it comes to deciding whether to allow fracking, energy minister Paul Wheelhouse has pledged.
Support for controversial fracking has fallen to a new low, according to an official Government survey.
Only a fifth of people (21%) back extracting shale gas for use in the UK, the lowest level of support since the quarterly public attitudes survey by the Department of Energy and Climate Change first quizzed people on the issue in December 2013.
Overall 28% of people opposed fracking, with 46% expressing no opinion either way, the survey of 2,118 UK households found.
But the level of opposition was higher among people who said they knew about fracking, with 54% of those who know a lot about the process opposing it, compared to 32% backing it.
