Weekend Economists Mark D Day, 2014 June 6-8, 2014

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25. Fracking firm’s advances raising fear in northern Spain

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/06/05/inenglish/1401964788_858179.html

On May 14, Janet Ortiz, who runs a cattle farm in an area known as Las Merindades, in Burgos, northern Spain, received a letter from a law firm advising her to sell her 3.5-hectare holding or face the risk of it being “forcibly expropriated.” She contacted the law firm, and was told that it represented BNK Petroleum, a US hydrocarbons company that wants to extract gas in the area via fracking, a method that involves forcing water and air into underground shale deposits to extract gas trapped there. The practice has met with widespread opposition in much of Europe, as well as among Ortiz’s neighbors.

Ortiz posted the letter on the social networks, and it was soon being discussed throughout Las Merindades, an area rich in hydrocarbons, which has been explored for the last century: Spain’s only onshore oil well is located at Ayoluengo, 60 kilometers from Ortiz’s home, and has been producing since 1964.

Ortiz’s strategy of bringing the threat of fracking out in the open put BNK on the back foot, which was obliged, through its law firm, to apologize for threatening to expropriate her land. But local people are now very wary. “Janet’s letter has got us all worried,” says Pepe Casado, a local councilor and member of a local action group set up to prevent fracking in Las Merindades: “We know the wolf is at the door.” The local council, run by the Popular Party, has been forced to declare Las Merindades a non-fracking zone, even though the move has no legal validity.