This site has been inspired by the work of Dr David Korten who argues that capitalism is at a critical juncture due to environmental, economic and social breakdown. This site argues for alternatives to capitalism in order to create a better world.
“Whenever Chevron
organised anything, we demonstrated,” said Barbara Siegienczuk, 54,
leader of the local anti-shale gas protest group Green Zurawlow in
south-eastern Poland.
“We made banners and placards and put posters up
around the village. Only 96 people live in Zurawlow - children and old
people included - but we stopped Chevron!”
For 400 days, farmers and their families from Zurawlow and four
nearby villages blockaded a proposed Chevron shale drilling site with
tractors and agricultural machinery. Eventually, in July, the company
abandoned its plans.
The Zurawlow blockade influenced the UK’s anti-fracking protests at Balcombe in the summer of 2013, and similar battles have flared across Poland since the country became Europe’s front line for shale gas exploration.
A soon-to-be-updated study by the Polish Geological Institute in
March 2012 estimated that recoverable shale gas volumes under the
country at between 346bn and 768bn cubic metres - the third biggest in Europe and enough to supply the country’s gas needs for between 35 and 65 years.
Bordering volatile Ukraine and heavily reliant on gas from Putin’s
Russia, the promise of secure domestically-produced energy made
politicians sit up. A year earlier, in September 2011, the country’s
then-president Donald Tusk made a bold claim that the shale industry would begin commercial drilling in 2014.
“After years of dependence on our large neighbour (Russia), today we
can say that my generation will see the day when we will be independent
in the area of natural gas and we will be setting terms,” he said,
adding that well conducted exploration, “would not pose a danger to the
environment.”
But things haven’t turned out that way. Plans for a shale gas-fuelled
economic revival appear to be evaporating as test wells have not
performed as expected or have suffered regulatory delays. Foreign
investors have pulled out and sustained environmental protests like that
in Zurawlow have hampered drilling plans.
Officials privately talk of the shale experiment as a ‘disaster’.
In September, 3Legs Resources became the latest firm to call a halt on investments after disappointing results. Six weeks before, its chief financial officer, Alex Fraser, had said they were “potentially on the threshold of a very significant result,” involving “potentially hundreds of wells”.
“Companies’ expectations were very high and now we learn that this
is a long term process,” said Pawel Mikusek, a spokesman for Poland’s
environment ministry. “The experience of the US is that it also took a
long time to reach industrial use - 10-15 years - so we need to be more
patient. We don’t have such high expectations as two or three years
ago.”
But with falling oil prices, continued supplies of cheap coal and EU
pressure to increase cost-competitive renewable power generation, the
shale gas industry needs positive results fast, and less controversy.
2015 will be a “pivotal” year for the Polish industry, according to
industry group Shale Gas Europe.
Multi-billion dollar tax incentives are in the pipeline and a new law
should soon speed up permitting processes that can take years. But this
has already sparked an EU legal action for allowing firms to drill at depths of up to 5,000m without first assessing environmental risks.
Seven of the 11 multinationals which invested in Poland - including Exxon, Talisman and Marathon
- have already pulled out, citing permit delays and disappointing
results. Most shale activity is now being led by Poland’s
state-controlled PGNiG, and by Orlen and Lotus.
Just 66 wells have been drilled to date - 12 involving horizontal
fracking - and permits for a further 27 drills were put on hold in the
southeastern Tomaszów Lubelski region last month, pending the outcome of
a lengthy inquiry.
Analysts blame regulatory hold-ups for fraying investors nerves, but
in Tomaszów Lubelski, which is home to a forest protected under
Europe’s gold-standard ‘Natura 2000’ scheme and a proposed Unesco
biosphere, environmental protestors claim credit for throwing a
pitchfork in the industry’s wheels.
Barbara Siegienczuk, leader of the
local anti-shale gas protest group Green Zurawlow, with her husband and
co-activist, Andrzej Bak. Photograph: Stanislaw Wadas/Demotix
Poland’s environment ministry says that shale gas is hugely popular
but mobilisations against it were impressive and fuelled by claims that
damage had already been done.
“Roads were damaged and destroyed when seismic tests were done with
heavy machinery,” said Slawomir Damiluk, 50, a farmer in nearby Rogow.
“The fact is that people’s houses had cracks in their walls afterwards.
When Chevron tried to start up with their machinery, I was one who was
involved. We blocked the entry roads.”
Supported by urban greens, anarchists, squatters and vegans,
villagers set up a colourful protest camp - complete with a cinema,
online live-streaming, samba bands and installation art - and occupied
the site around the clock.
“The women who lived here began learning how to cook without meat
because during the protest we had agreed that nobody would go hungry,”
Siegienczuk said. “We opened our minds and hearts to people who looked
and ate differently, from another culture.”
Dozens of protesters were arrested in the 14-month campaign, and
many more were filmed by mystery cameramen whose stills were used in
subsequent court cases. Siegienczuk believes that her phone was tapped.
“Once, I heard several people talking on the line and a male voice
asked ‘are we going to tap this woman’s phone too?’ I was terrified and
passed my phone to other protestors who heard the same voices. After
that, my mobile phone turned off,” she said.
Zurawlow, in south-eastern Poland,
where people successfully campaigned against drilling by Chevron. The
protest banner reads: ‘Poland has gas, America has profits.’ Photograph: Stanislaw Wadas/Demo
Sally Jones, a spokesperson for Chevron, told the Guardian: “Chevron
respects the right of individuals to express their opinions, however it
should be done within the law. Chevron remains committed to building
constructive and positive relationships with the communities where we
operate.”
But local people in the area covered by Chevron’s concession, claim
that such relationships went beyond what might be reasonably termed
constructive.
Villagers allege that one woman whose water well became polluted at
the same time that seismic tests were being conducted in the area
received a building renovation paid for by Chevron, and promptly stopped
complaining about the issue.
Shortly after that, a local protest leader dropped out of the
movement and took up work as a Chevron security guard, leading to
accusations that he had been bought off.
Wojciech Zukowski, mayor of Tomaszów Lubelski town, south-east Poland. Photograph: Stanislaw Wadas/Demotix
Wojciech Zukowski, the recently re-elected mayor of Tomaszów Lubelski
town, in Poland’s southeast, said that he saw no conflict of interest
in accepting private or public gifts from multinationals. “I’m not
trying to hide that some forms of sponsoring and support takes place
here,” he told the Guardian.
“We are open for it,” he said, adding that a town sports club with 250 members would benefit from corporate sponsorship. Chevron declined to respond to the villagers’ claims but insisted
that “we comply with laws and regulations in all counties we do business
in.”
The company has donated to several charities in the US and Romania,
where it has also invested in shale exploration. In southeast Poland,
it has provided charity services to villages at Christmas and offered
gifts to residents’ children such as fluffy tigers carrying Chevron
logos, and sweets.
“We demonstrate our commitment to the communities where we operate by
creating jobs, employing local workforces, and developing and sourcing
from local suppliers,” a company statement said.
The Tomaszów Lubelski district has been hard-hit by unemployment and jobs have been a key persuader for the industry.
Close to the exploratory shale drill in nearby Susiec, Jacek, a
40-year-old shop worker said that the shale gas plans “are going to be
good as there will be jobs for us and gas will be cheaper. It’s a jobs
issue. Possibly my kids might have jobs there.”
The town’s pro-shale mayor ran a campaign on the economic benefits
that shale gas could offer the depressed town, hanging a ‘Putinologists –
bugger off!’ banner in the town square. But in a regional trend, he was
deposed in favour of a more shale-sceptic opponent in November, who
advanced an alternative geothermal energy-based plan.
“We don’t need shale gas,” said Maria, a 39-year-old worker in the
same store as Jacek. “It’s one big scam. Nobody informed us about what’s
happening. The ex-mayor was useless. He just promised work for everyone
but there was nothing. We are not going to work on the well. The people
who have agro-tourism businesses know that it’s not beneficial as the
environment will be destroyed and people won’t come here anymore.”
Deer run across an icy field in Majdan Sopocki, a village in Tomaszów Lubelski county, south-east Poland. Photograph: Stanislaw Wadas/Demotix
On the Natura 2000 site that borders the Susiec well, Narnia-style
pine tree forests are frosted in ice and snow. Deers and eagles flit in
and out of the fog like phantoms. But at the fence marking the shale
well, the deer tracks abruptly stop and double back on themselves.
Fears that one of Poland’s last remaining redoubts of biodversity
could be damaged have mobilised local feeling, as polarisation and
bitterness have spread across the Tomaszów Lubelski district. Zukowski
suggested that village protesters were being manipulated by dark forces.
“It could be said that their actions were inspired by the government
of Mr Putin,” he said. “I don’t have such knowledge but [the protests]
went hand in hand with the Kremlin’s intentions.
Gas
and oil are a useful tool for Russia to get involved in other
countries’ energy security. It is a proxy to pressure authorities to
take certain decisions along the Kremlin’s lines. It is like a political
secret. Everyone knows it but no-one wants to name it.”
A shale gas exploration drilling rig near Majdan Sopocki, owned by the Polish state-owned oil and gas company PGNiG. Photograph: Stanislaw Wadas/Demotix
Jones at Chevron described such claims as speculation. But similar accusations have been levelled by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of Nato, and by pro-shale officials in Romania and Lithuania, as cold war-style tensions have ratcheted.
But with falling oil prices, continued supplies of cheap coal and EU
pressure to increase cost-competitive renewable power generation, the
shale gas industry needs positive results fast, and less controversy.
But even the patriotic case for pressing ahead with shale gas has
been dented by claims from campaigners in Pomerania that toxic waste
from shale drills was dumped in a rural stream.
Environmentalists believe that water tainted by shale salts may have
entered the Radunia river used for supplying water to Gdansk, the
birthplace of Poland’s Solidarity movement.
T-shirts and caps with anti-fracking messages at the headquarters of the Zurawlow anti-fracking movement.Photograph: Stanislaw Wadas/Demotix
In November, the French water company, Veolia, was ordered to stop
processing shale effluent in a nearby water purification centre because
of permitting infractions.
The Polish environment ministry denies that Gdansk’s drinking water
was ever put at risk, but such allegations undercut the energy
independence case for shale gas, and feed nationalist objections. “The
people of Zurawlow might have liked shale gas investment but the issue
was these were Americans,” Damiluk said. “We don’t want foreign
investors on a land that belongs to us.”
Chevron, the last of the big multinational shale investors is still
holding on to its sole concession in Zwierzyniec, which was extended for
a year in December. However, the decision’s small print limits future
drilling to a small parcel of land the company has already explored.
“If Chevron’s partner PGNiG wins permission to drill in Tomaszów
Lubelski, I hope the people there will use the same tactics to block new
drills that we did,” Siegienczuk said. “We are open and ready to give
any support we can.”
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