Is Fracking a clean and green energy that’s the question? A uk government department are trying to pass it off as such whilst also contributing to the impoverishment of local people.

I had a call from Mr X the other day. He said an old school friend of his was telling him “Fracking was a jolly good clean way of extracting oil,” but that he himself (Mr X that is) had “missed a putt playing golf near Blackpool earlier this summer when the Earth shook, and evidently this was caused by an earthquake triggered by a local fracking site.” As a consequence he no longer felt “quite so sure about fracking, and wanted me to look into it.” He’d also heard of some colleagues in government classifying fracking as “a green energy” so that intrigued him too.

Of course I promised to do so, and the next morning whilst packing my rain coat and booking a ticket to glorious Lancashire, a dossier arrived on my desk (ok browser not desk, but desk is more poetic): It came from some investigative journalists* and shared the story of the Mapuche people in Argentina.

Now the region they lived in for generations is the “Vaca Muerta,” (Spanish for dead cow) and areas of this had already been fracked by Argentina’s own oil company, YPF, but then in 2013 a further area including a specific piece of land the Mapuche understood to be fully recognised as theirs, was opened up by the government for fracking by international companies. These included Chevron, Shell and Pan American Energy (a subsidiary of BP). Protesters against this were met with tear gas, and the day after it was signed, a special structure that the Mapuche people had set up on their own land to monitor infringement and the oil companies’ activities, was burnt down in what was described as a “deliberate incident.”

The article shares that Fracking produces “large quantities of toxic biproduct.”  At one site in the region half a million litres of toxic waste arrives at the site every day from nearby extraction sites. The conditions in which this waste is stored risk contaminating local water supplies and violate local regulations being too close both to habitation. One site in the region oil leaked for 36 hours across the land, to the extent it was visible with satellite images. The increase in activities from Chevron and others has also led to sustained loss of vegetation irreversibly damaging the homelands of the Mapuche people and with it their traditional way of life.  

Ok Mr X I think we can answer this one, Fracking cannot be claimed as a clean way to extract oil.

But what about this other claim that it’s a green energy?

Well I think even I can answer that one. Fracking is used to extract fossil fuels which are both a limited resource (so not renewable) and also responsible for the vast majority of man made carbon dioxide in the environment, and climate scientists suggests the best place for fossil fuels given the climate emergency is to remain IN THE GROUND.

So where and which GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT does the claim that it is green come from? Well yet again a dossier crossed my desk, in this case from Jillian Ambrose** sharing a Friend’s of the Earth report that has uncovered that:

“The UK is planning to invest in Argentina’s controversial oil shale industry using a £1bn export finance deal intended to support green energy, according to government documents seen by the Guardian.

UK Export Finance, the government’s foreign credit agency, promised in 2017 to offer loans totalling £1bn to help UK companies export their expertise in “infrastructure, green energy and healthcare” to invest in Argentina’s economy.

Instead official records, released through a freedom of information request, have revealed the government’s plan to prioritise support for major oil companies, including Shell and BP, which are fracking in Argentina’s vast Vaca Muerta shale heartlands…..

Tony Bosworth, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “With the world hurtling towards catastrophic climate change, and parliament declaring a climate emergency, it’s outrageous that the UK government is continuing to back huge fossil fuel developments abroad.”

Separate records, also uncovered by Friends of the Earth, revealed that there had been no fewer than 13 meetings between the UK and oil companies operating in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta hydrocarbon reservoir since the beginning of last year…..

There have been no meetings with renewable energy companies, according to the records.”

So it would seem Mr X’s government colleagues in “Export finance” are the one’s trying to pass off fracking and shale gas as green so they can frack a dead cow in an area i guess where they and other colleagues don’t play golf.

EcoAction: could be worth letting the department of export and finance and others know we have seen their little ruse to pass off fracking as green and are unimpressed!

* Nicholas Williams, Marina Costa and Katie Lamborn, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2019/oct/14/how-fracking-is-taking-its-toll-on-argentinas-indigenous-people-video

** https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/22/uk-to-use-1bn-meant-for-green-energy-to-support-fracking-in-argentina