Jędrzej Winiecki
Dobrich joins protests. The city, located in northeastern of Bulgaria, with a population of approximately 110 000 inhabitants, wants immediate end to the exploration operations of shale gas deposits in neighboring Romania. The distance from Dobrich to the border is approximately 40 kilometers and is even more so in the area where the American company Chevron will begin geological surveys, but these distances mean nothing to protesters.
They fight against energy companies, which they charge that would destroy the historical region Dobruja, located on the border between Bulgaria and Romania.
The main point of contention is the extraction method, called hydraulic fracturing. Dobrich activists believe that the injection of large amounts of water mixed with sand and chemicals, including detergents, at a high pressure, in the spaces between the stones, for the shale gas extraction, it will contaminate the entire region.
In Dobrich, where protests have been steadily for a year and a half, people are aware of the power of street demonstrations. A such wave of massive protests, supported by a well-organized environmental movement, forced the Bulgarian Parliament to introduce a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in January 2012, Bulgaria becoming the second European country after France to ban shale gas exploration and extraction .
Tap fire
The inspiration for the kind of Dobrich protests came from the United States, where shale gas extraction fight was the most intense. The bulgarian movement against shale gas, like all similar protests in Europe, is using the same arguments and listens the same "prophet", the documentary filmmaker Josh Fox. Anyone who sees his documentary from 2010, Gasland (The gas territory) will become, very likely, a vehement opponent of shale gas.
Fox went through several U.S. states and gathered testimonies of people who suffer from chronic conditions. His study provides evidence of increased cancer cases, associating them with air pollution and contamination of water sources. In one of the most exciting scenes of the documentary, an owner of land in Weld County, Colorado, ignites with a lighter the gas which is exiting from a water tap, in his own home. Gasland documentary sparked a global hysteria and earned an Emmy Award and an author Oscar nomination.
Meanwhile, three journalists, two from Ireland and one from Poland, initiated a campaign to approach what they believe it is misinformation about the hydraulic fracturing method for the extraction of shale gas. Their documentary, FrackNation (Fractured Nation), was funded by the public through the website Kickstarter, the required amount – 150,000 dollars (116,018 euros) – was collected in just three weeks, the average donation being $ 60 (45 euros).
The FrackNation documentary filmmakers announced at the outset that their objective is to demonstrate that shale gas is a safe and viable energy source. First, they tried to verify the allegations made against hydraulic fracturing in the Gasland documentary. They found numerous inconsistencies and even some aspects completely untrue.
However, the FrackNation documentary was not appreciated as much as Gasland. This highlights a fundamental difficulty to have a rational discussion on the technology used for shale gas: ordinary people still do not know whether or not hydraulic fracturing is a safe method.
Routine Skepticism
Before the moratorium imposed by the Bulgarian Parliament on hydraulic fracturing, the government in Sofia did not see anything wrong in using this technological methods, and some companies, mainly in the United States are interested in shale gas deposits in Bulgaria, estimated at over 500 billion cubic meters. If exploit shale gas, Bulgaria would probably reduce the dependence on energy imports from Russia, an addiction that will increase in the coming years by opening the South Stream pipeline, which will cross the Bulgarian territory.
The opposition to shale gas is fueled by the fear that the popularization of this resource will significantly affect the European energy landscape. Nuclear power industry in the Czech Republic and Hungary considers shale gas a threat, given that these countries develop nuclear power plants in hope of finding new buyers for energy.
In Germany, the introduction of exploiting shale gas technology threatens to undermine the entire project of green energy, which not only refers to produce electricity, but also to the sale of technologies for obtaining energy from water, wind, sunlight and biomass. If a cheap alternative would be available in Europe, including Poland, German companies would be forced to turn to other markets in the world.
Similar considerations, including concerns about the effects on the highly developed nuclear energy, motivated France, the most vocal opponent of European shale gas. Meanwhile, President François Hollande thinks that hydraulic fracturing generates unwanted results and strongly opposes the use of this technological methods.
Shale gas threatens Russian economy
Another country that has introduced a moratorium on shale gas exploration deposits – mainly from environmental reasons – is Lithuania. This country is based solely on imports from Russia, which pays 40% more than Germany, so Vilnius is concerned about energy independence. Deposits of shale gas in Lithuania could meet the energy needs of the country for ten years and it is no coincidence that Günther Oettinger, EU Commissioner for Energy, has chosen Vilnius to convey an important message, recently, on March 10: the message that shale gas technology would be an important card in EU negotiations with Gazprom.
The state company, that has a monopoly in Russia, is the largest natural gas producer in the world and enjoys a monopoly position close to several European countries, that’s why Moscow's been trying to temper in all modes the enthusiasm related to shale gas technology. Although, officially, Gazprom doesn’t consider shale gas a threat, the scale of the Russian campaign against these resources suggest that hydraulic fracturing technology could be the biggest threat that the company has faced so far.
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