France: The Potential for a Europe-Wide Anti-Fracking Movement
STRATFOR (http://www.stratfor.com)
12 May 2011
Summary
Pressure from environmental and anti-globalization movements has led
the French government to ban the drilling technique to extract shale
natural gas called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” As with the
anti-genetically modified organism movement in the 1990s, the
French-based anti-fracking movement could spread across Europe,
affecting regulations at the EU level. This would work out favorably
for Russia, an energy exporter that has already been portraying
fracking as an environmentally detrimental process.
Analysis
The French Parliament on May 11 voted in favor of a ban against a
drilling technique for extracting shale natural gas known as hydraulic
fracturing, commonly called “fracking.” The bill will now go before a
Senate vote. The crowd that gathered outside the Parliament before the
vote included Green Party presidential hopefuls Eva Joly and Nicolas
Hulot. Fracking has become a politically charged issue ahead of the
French presidential elections (set for April 22, 2012, with a second
round set for May 6, 2012). French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s
center-right party, the Union for a Popular Movement, drafted the
anti-fracking bill.
A fracking ban in France is not significant for the country’s future
energy supply, since France relies overwhelmingly on nuclear power — 74
percent of France’s electricity was derived from nuclear power in 2010
— and has consciously avoided natural gas since the 1970s as a source
of energy. A number of European countries, particularly Poland, still
see fracking as a way to gain energy independence and minimize reliance
on Russian natural gas.
However, French environmentalist and anti-globalization groups’
adopting the anti-fracking cause is bad news for the drilling technique
in Europe. French environmentalist groups previously have opposed
technological advances at home and then championed the cause on a
pan-European level.
The Debate over Fracking
Fracking is seen as a potential panacea to Europe’s dependence on
Russia and North Africa for energy supplies. In light of the Fukushima
nuclear accident, it is also seen as a way for the Continent to tap its
own difficult-to-access sources of natural gas and therefore eschew the
increasingly unpopular option of adopting nuclear power en masse.
Despite the geological potential, there are several hurdles to the
adoption of fracking in Europe, not the least of which is that most
European countries’ energy sectors are dominated by a single national
champion firm. In the United States, smaller energy companies willing
to take risks adopted the fracking technique to get to deposits in
fields otherwise considered to be depleted or highly irregular in terms
of their geological characteristics. These smaller firms had the
financial incentive to hang onto their plots, sometimes for decades,
trying successions of innovative techniques to extract hydrocarbons.
Energy majors, especially those working in foreign environments, do not
always have the time and financial incentives to concentrate on such
ventures.
Nonetheless, because of Europe’s dependence on foreign energy sources —
among them Russia and North Africa, which are geopolitically
undesirable, albeit for different reasons — U.S. energy companies have
sought out European fracking opportunities. Poland, where the strategic
negatives of Russian natural gas exports are most deeply felt, has been
the most receptive, and exploration has been completed on several
potential wells there.
However, the environmental movement against fracking in France now
threatens to add another serious drawback to the efforts to transfer
the technology from the United States to Europe. The French
anti-fracking movement has adopted the same anti-corporate and
anti-globalization line of argument that the anti-genetically modified
organism (GMO) movement used in the 1990s. In fact, some of the same
groups and individuals, such as prominent environmentalist activist and
current European Parliament member Jose Bove, who spearheaded the
anti-GMO movement, are now leading the charge against fracking.
Environmental groups argue that the chemicals used in the fracking
process can seep into the groundwater and contaminate the water supply.
There is some evidence that this indeed happened in Pennsylvania, but
due to well mismanagement, not necessarily due to an inherent flaw with
the procedure. French environmental groups, however, are undeterred.
The fracking issue fits well into their paradigm of environmental and
anti-globalization attitudes, with foreign energy corporations seen as
the perfect confluence of those two issues, as fracking techniques are
almost exclusively used by U.S. energy corporations.
The French Anti-Fracking Movement’s Potential European Effect
France was never intended to be a major target of fracking drilling,
with only a handful of licenses for exploratory drilling in the Paris
basin issued. However, the opposition to fracking is not something that
can be dismissed merely as a problem that will be contained in France.
French environmentalist and anti-globalization movements of the 1990s
were highly successful in essentially halting GMO adoption throughout
Europe. Intense political pressure forced France to shift its position
on GMOs, which, because France is a European power, was felt throughout
the Continent. This was also particularly notable because France is a
global leader in biotechnology, which means that Paris went against
considerable French corporate interest in the case of GMOs due to the
intensity of environmentalist and anti-globalization efforts.
The anti-fracking case is even easier for the French government to
adopt, which is why Sarkozy’s party has taken up the issue so quickly.
There is no French corporate fracking expertise, and the country has no
strategic need for more natural gas considering its commitment to
nuclear power — and environmentalist groups’ opposition to nuclear
power is generally relatively muted. The lack of opposition to nuclear
power can partly be explained as a product of the undercurrent of
nationalist rhetoric among the French environmentalist groups. Nuclear
power is domestically produced by French companies and affords France
energy independence. French environmentalist groups prefer to take on
issues that have a notably globalized — in other words, American —
element to them, which fracking and GMOs certainly exemplify. Such
issues are received better by a wider constituency in France and are
therefore easier to use to mobilize supporters.
If French environmentalist and anti-globalization groups take on
anti-fracking as their first major post-GMO issue, there is a chance
the movement will influence European-level regulatory practice, which
is in its infancy on fracking.
Furthermore, French environmentalist groups could use their links to
Central and Eastern European environmentalist groups to promote the
anti-fracking movement across Europe, potentially making it a political
issue in countries like Poland. Paris was seen as the focal point of
the anti-GMO movement in Europe, and many of the anti-globalization and
environmentalist nongovernmental organizations in other European
countries still have close ties to their French counterparts as the
result of a decadelong struggle against biotechnology companies.
This all works in Russia’s favor. Russia has campaigned vociferously
against fracking, emphasizing its supposed inherent dangers via its
government mouthpiece, Russia Today, the Kremlin-funded,
English-language cable news network. If an indigenous environmentalist
and anti-globalization movement in France takes on the cause as well,
it will be far more difficult for governments to dismiss the
environmental concerns as Russian propaganda.
Source URL: http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110511-france-potential-europe-wide-anti-fracking-movement
Links:
[1] http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20090513_part_1_natural_gas_and_myth_declining_u_s_reserves
[2] http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110316-nuclear-power-europe-after-fukushima-special-report
[3] http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20100615_poland_fracing_rise