(en) Irish Anarchist Review #9 - Fracking Hell - how it is coming to Ireland & the development of resistance

On the 26th of March 2010, the Fianna Fail / Green governing coalition announced that they 
were inviting applications for ?Onshore Licensing Options over the Northwest Carboniferous 
Basin and the Clare Basin.? The senior minister in the department at the time was Green 
Party TD, Eamon Ryan. Conor Lenihan (Fianna Fail) was the department?s junior minister. 
---- On the day this invitation to the oil and gas industry was announced Conor Lenihan 
stated that ?over recent months there has been renewed interest in targeting the natural 
gas resource potential of the two basins, which had been identified in earlier 
exploration. Finding and producing our indigenous natural gas resources is critical to 
enhancing Ireland?s security of energy supply and reducing our reliance on imported fuels?.

A similar licensing process had been underway in the UK from 2007 onwards. The process 
there has been sped up by the Cameron government over the last two years and at this point 
in time, pending the outcome of an Environmental Assessment report commissioned by the UK 
Government from a fracking related engineering firm - AMEC, 60% of the land mass of the UK 
may soon be licensed for exploration.

Campaigners, established environmental groups such as Greenpeace, and the Guardian 
Newspaper have made clear over the past 12 months that the present UK government is 
thoroughly penetrated by a network of advisors, led by Lord Browne, with substantial 
financial interests in the nascent Fracking industry. It is thus highly likely that 
massive areas of the UK will be added to those already licensed in the very near future, 
leading to an intensification of the ongoing and increasingly public conflict between 
communities and the fracking industry. This conflict has become highly visible over the 
past year at test well locations at Balcombe outside London and Barton-Moss outside 
Manchester.

A trail of destruction
On the same day in 2010 that the Fianna Fail / Green Party government made their initial 
announcement, Reuters published a story concerning the problems surrounding this industry 
with particular emphasis on problems in terms of water pollution. This article was, at 
that time, the latest in a trickle of stories that were beginning to emerge from 
communities and organisations all across the U.S. outlining the trail of destruction this 
industry was causing as it moved closer to areas where people were living.

The release of ?Gasland? in 2010, an American documentary film by artist Josh Fox which 
picked up on some of these stories, was the key catalyst in the appearance of what can 
now, considering the explosive growth of campaigns against Fracking in the US, UK, Poland, 
Romania, South Africa and Ireland etc., confidently be described as a global movement in 
opposition to the extraction of shale gas using hydraulic fracturing. The film provided a 
shared reference point for the numerous groups which were rapidly appearing worldwide as a 
host of companies began to move to bring fracking outside of the U.S. to the rest of the 
planet.

Global risk consultancy firm 'Control Risks' in a 2014 report on the growth of the 
Anti-Fracking Movement noted that the formation of collectives and protest groups in 
opposition to fracking internationally routinely followed community screenings of the 
documentary. In their words ?Gasland brought anti-fracking sentiment to the masses?.

Almost a year after inviting applications for onshore licenses, on February 14th 2011, 
Conor Lenihan announced ?the completion of a detailed evaluation by his Department of the 
applications received for Licensing Options in the Northwest Carboniferous Basin and the 
Clare Basin?. In offering the Licensing Options Minister Lenihan said that he was very 
pleased by the level of interest shown in the competition and by the quality of the 
applications submitted by the companies.

One license was awarded to Tamboran Resources for an area covering 243,635 acres in the 
Northwest Carboniferous Basin. Another license was awarded to Lough Allen Natural Gas 
Company for over 115,398 acres, also in the Northwest Carboniferous Basin. The last 
license was awarded to Enegi Oil covering an area of 122,317 acres in the Clare Basin. 
Between the three licenses awarded, vast areas of eleven counties in the republic were 
zoned for exploration. Tamboran Resources also by that point held a license for 
exploration in Co. Fermanagh. At this point in time in 2011 in the UK Fracking was being 
used by Cuadrilla for the first time in Lancashire. The process caused two small 
earthquakes leading Cuadrilla to suspend operations voluntarily.

Much of the area in Ireland which was zoned is in the Shannon Basin Region and stretches 
from Fermanagh all the way down to Cork and Kerry. This area covers the natural drainage 
basin of the Shannon itself. Under the EU Water Framework, this area, its waters and 
ecosystems are supposed to be ?protected?, ?enhanced? and ?promoted? as a sustainable 
environment and as ?quality? water resources. This ecosystem includes the rivers, lakes, 
canals, groundwater and surface waters of the region.

A strange shade of green
The licensing options were signed off on by Conor Lenihan in the very short period between 
the Green Party pulling out of government in late January 2011 and the election which took 
place on 25th Feburary. Some activists are convinced that, despite these options being a 
live concern for Eamonn Ryan in early 2011, he failed to bring this process to any kind of 
public visibility.

He confirmed in a telephone conversation with an activist, after having left government, 
that while Minister he had met with at least one of the companies who were subsequently 
granted licenses. This was confirmed at that time by Martin Keeley then of LANGCO who said 
that Eamonn Ryan was 'very much behind the project'. In the same phone conversation Ryan 
confirmed that he was aware, while in office, of the substantial controversy in the US 
around issues linking Fracking to water contamination.

In the eyes of activists - the way in which these options were given out - without any 
public scrutiny whatsoever - by a government who by that stage had no democratic 
legitimacy - has contaminated the process from the beginning. It is also worth noting the 
failure of the remnants of the southern Irish Green Party to provide leadership on this 
issue in the period since, despite this clearly being the type of issue that is within the 
remit of such a party. Conor Lenihan has since his period in government taken up 
employment with San Leon, a company involved in Fracking in Poland.

Over just the few short years since the release of Gasland, in the United States, Canada 
and Australia, as onshore fracking for unconventional gas has drawn closer to inhabited 
areas, where there are water systems, aquifers and rivers, local communities have 
continued to suffer the consequences of this rapidly expanding industry. Anecdotal reports 
of contaminated water in rivers, lakes and domestic water supplies have increased into a 
flood. As time moved on further reports of disappearance, sickness and death in wildlife 
and livestock were also being reported, as well as a rise and commonality of various 
illnesses, including various cancers and respiratory problems in people living in areas 
where unconventional gas extraction was taking place. Over the last number of years in the 
U.S. thousands of complaints have been lodged with the government, the EPA, public 
representatives, health authorities and the industry.

Simultaneously ? more and more peer reviewed scientific reports have cast doubt on the 
safety of the industry for communities. A key recent example is a study of Pennsylvania 
birth records from 2004 to 2011, by researchers from Princeton University, Columbia 
University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which found that infants born 
within a 2.5-kilometer radius of fracking sites have increased likelihood of low birth 
weight and of other health problems. According to a 2011 report by the Centre for Disease 
Control and Prevention, invasive breast cancer is on the rise in the six Texas counties 
with the Barnett Shale?s most intense gas drilling development, even as the incidence rate 
for the disease is falling across the rest of the nation.

There is a very real sense that the quite sudden ?dash for gas? that is apparent in the Uk 
and Eastern Europe constitutes a race between the slow process of peer reviewed scientific 
investigation and an industry that fears the consequences for communities that scientific 
enquiry will reveal.

Manufacturing consent, organising dissent
A massive billion dollar public relations campaign by the industry followed the release of 
?Gasland? and many professionals and individuals who were outspoken about the effects of 
the industry were issued with gagging orders. In the U.S. the national mainstream media 
began to pay some attention, and as New York State became the industry?s latest target, 
the New York Times decided to devote a whole series of investigative articles to ?fracking?.

This series was entitled ?Drilling Down?. One of these articles included leaked, insider 
emails describing the economics of the industry as boom-bust. Other articles covered 
issues of land, air and water pollution, serious health risks, political interference, a 
crash in the value of land and housing, problems of toxic waste disposal, accidents and 
spills. The list goes on. Deborah Rogers, a financial analyst and Obama administration 
advisor who visited Ireland in 2013, concluded in a report she authored that the hydraulic 
fracturing boom could lead to a "bubble burst" akin to the housing bubble burst of 2008. 
?It is highly unlikely that market-savvy bankers did not recognize that by overproducing 
natural gas a glut would occur with a concomitant severe price decline.

This price decline, however, opened the door for significant transactional deals worth 
billions of dollars and thereby secured further large fees for the investment banks 
involved. In fact, shales became one of the largest profit centers within these banks in 
their energy M&A portfolios since 2010. The recent natural gas market glut was largely 
effected through overproduction of natural gas in order to meet financial analyst?s 
production targets and to provide cash flow to support operators? imprudent leverage 
positions?.

The growth of an anti-fracking movement in New York, again in a manner mirroring events in 
Ireland and the UK, was boosted by the Occupy movement which quickly provided a high 
visibility platform for anti-fracking activists. Sadly for many communities all over the 
U.S., Australia and Canada, the damage is already done. But because of these people 
speaking out and standing up alongside others who are currently being threatened by this 
industry there is a truly global people?s movement emerging right now to ban 
unconventional gas extraction. In the U.S. some opponents of the industry say it is not 
possible to shut down the industry immediately - that this would take time. However it 
still is possible to stop it from spreading and being introduced elsewhere and that is 
what is happening presently in New York state and elsewhere in the US.

In a chemical world, It's very, very, very cheap
The extraction of unconventional shale gas is inherently a contaminating, flawed 
industrial process. A mixture of up to 500 chemicals is used during the process. Eighty to 
three hundred tonnes of chemicals can be added to one to eight million gallons of water 
each time a well is fracked. Scientists in the US are still trying to find out which 
chemicals various companies are using during the process. This mixture of chemicals, sand 
and water is pumped down through aquifers at high pressure which fractures the shale and 
props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow out of the well. Apart from chemicals 
being added to the water, scientists have stated that the process is also dislodging and 
mobilising naturally occurring radioactive compounds such as uranium, radium, and 
strontium, as well as other heavy minerals.

Problems of water contamination mainly come from leaking well casings. In Josh Fox?s more 
recent short documentary ?The Sky is Pink?, the director explains how through leaked 
industry documents, the problem of leaking well casings for the industry has been known 
for some time and is, by their own admission, insolvable. From information obtained from 
industry documents, Fox states that over thirty years, 50% of all well casings fail.

He goes on to say that there is a period for which we need these well casings to last, so 
that they do not allow our water to be polluted, that period of time is ?forever? and this 
is one of the major problems that the industry will not own up to. In Europe and here in 
Ireland, the industry, aided by the EU and our government are trying to tell us, that 
shortly the process to extract unconventional gas will be improved through regulation, 
more monitoring and better cement well casings.

They are also claiming that very soon there may be fracturing which does not use chemicals 
or even water. As the industry, supported by government, scramble to sell us a non- 
existent improved process - what they fail to realise, is that the problems surrounding 
this industry are not just about the technology or one aspect of how it pollutes. The 
problems caused by this industry are multi-faceted. Basically speaking, the problem is the 
industry itself, from beginning to end.

Scientists have clearly indicated that the full effects this industry will have on people 
and the environment will not be known for years to come. Not only will the industry cause 
irreversible pollution to our water, land and air through various stages of the process, 
it will also industrialise hundreds of thousands of acres of our landscape. It takes 
hundreds of trucks over two months to service one well.

North-West networks of resistance
Tamboran who intend fracking in Fermanagh and Leitrim propose to have up to sixteen wells 
on each well pad. A well pad can be up to five or six acres in size. They envisage having 
hundreds of pads all over the north-west, which would entail miles and miles and miles of 
pipes linking these pads. Once these wells have been drilled they are there forever. There 
is no ?fill them in and forget about it? option. These wells will continue to leak and 
release highly toxic substances for their entire lifetime.

The introduction of this type of industry on this scale, will threaten existing 
sustainable industries such as farming, tourism and renewable energy. It will also 
threaten the future supply of the country?s domestic water. Plans are already underway to 
take water from the Shannon Basin region for the Dublin metropolitan area. Unconventional 
gas extraction and the resultant local use of this fossil fuel will also threaten any 
hopes we have of meeting our carbon emission targets, and seriously undo efforts to reduce 
the growing negative impacts of climate change.

We will receive nothing beneficial from this industry apart from a few short-term, low 
paid jobs. The gas extracted will be sold on the global market to the highest bidder. In a 
recent article in the Irish Times it was reported that there is perhaps just enough shale 
gas in the North West Carboniferous Region to supply Ireland for a mere 12 years. Five 
Irish county councils have called on the government to ban shale gas extraction in Ireland 
and two of these ? Donegal and Leitrim are in the process of inserting bans on Fracking 
into their County Development Plans. Several countries, various states in the U.S and 
federal regions in other countries have banned or are putting in motion plans to ban the 
industry.

The campaign which has emerged in Ireland since summer 2011 began according to the 
?Gasland? script identified by the ?Control Risks? report. Filmaker and Green Party 
activist Johnny Gogan, in his role as curator of the 'Leitrim Mobile Cinema' began in 
early 2011, to screen Gasland in Leitrim. The screening of Gasland which took place in 
Drumshanbo in summer 2011, was the first opportunity for a relatively large group of 
interested locals to get a sense of what the shale gas industry was and what fracking was. 
At that point it was already quite widely known in the north-west that a number of 
companies had been granted onshore licensing options, allowing for desktop studies of the 
potential for shale gas extraction, by the Fianna Fail led government immediately before 
the Feburary general election.

In the aftermath of that screening a campaign began to form. After a number of meetings, 
drawing in activists from the geographically dispersed areas for which licencing options 
had been granted - more localised ad-hoc campaign groups began to form in Leitrim, Sligo, 
Donegal, Clare and Dublin. During these early meetings a reasonably clear consensus 
emerged, that a top down national campaign would be less effective than a series of 
networked but largely autonomous campaign groups.

A network of activists - working with the tiny Lough Allen Conservation society - began in 
August 2011 to plan a meeting to take place in Carrick on Shannon. This was in response to 
the fact that Tamboran Resources, one of the companies granted a licensing option, had 
very clearly begun a public relations campaign in the Leitrim area. In retrospect, this 
period was vital for the emergent campaign - and the speed with which it responded to 
Tamborans 'campaign' in the area was key in successfully undermining their story about gas 
and its potential for development in Leitrim.

Five days before Tamboran were due to meet with Leitrim County council, to brief them on 
their plans for the area, a meeting organised by the LACS drew a massive crowd to the Bush 
Hotel in Carrick on Shannon. The hotel management at the time estimated that over 600 
people attended and the tenor of the meeting was clearly in opposition to the prospect of 
a Fracking industry making any headway in Leitrim.

A substantial protest greeted the initial meeting of Tamboran with Leitrim County Council 
just five days later. When Tamboran held a public information meeting just two days after 
that in Carrick on Shannon - a huge and again mostly hostile crowd turned out to grill 
them on their plans. The combination of these three events served to make clear that 
Tamboran had failed in this initial push to gain the consent of the local community. This 
initial failure of the company to gain community consent gave activists time and space to 
strengthen and deepen their campaign over the following two years ? a process which led 
eventually, despite the opposition of Fine Gael members of the Council, to a majority vote 
in early 2014 in Leitrim County Council to insert a ban on Fracking into their draft 
County Development plan.

The ?dash for gas? in the Republic is ?on hold? at present as a comprehensive EPA report 
on Fracking is in the process of being commissioned and completed. This delay in the eyes 
of campaigners is due to the unwillingness of the current government parties to push 
through a clearly unpopular initiative in the runup to local, European and national 
elections. Campaigners very much suspect that this process will not go ?live? again in the 
Republic until after this cycle of elections.

They have also noted the ominous nature of Centrica?s imminent takeover of the gas 
infrastructure presently operated by Bord Gais. Centrica are a leading energy company in 
the UK and have substantial investments in Fracking companies including notably Cuadrilla. 
It is a different story at present in the North. There it seems that the Department of 
Enterprise, Trade and Industry, led by the DUPs Arlene Foster, are determined that 
Tamboran begin test drilling in Fermanagh in the next 6 to 9 month period. At present an 
increasingly intensive process of networking and planning for this eventuality is taking 
place between activists and groups in Fermanagh and Leitrim.

Info on Campaigns in UK and Ireland
1. Frack Off UK: http://frack-off.org.uk
2. Fracking Free Ireland: http://frackingfreeireland.org/
3. Facebook: NO FRACKING IRELAND group.