Pressure builds against France's ban on fracking

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-france-fracking-20140622-story.html#page=1



The nuclear plant in Fessenheim, France, is set to close in 2016. The country gets 75% of its energy from nuclear power.

Pressure builds against France's ban on fracking
Henry Chu
6.22.2014

Deep beneath the City of Light lies what some believe to be an energy bonanza ripe for harvest.

If the rosy forecasts are correct, France is sitting on one of the biggest deposits of shale gas in Western Europe, enough to supply the country for decades and even some neighboring ones as well. French companies such as energy giant Total already boast the know-how for conducting the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, needed to extract the natural gas.

There's just one hitch: Fracking is forbidden in France. And the current government has pledged to keep it that way.

French officials side with those who consider fracking dangerous and environmentally damaging because of its deep-bore drilling and use of high-pressured, chemically treated water to blast apart rock to release the gas trapped inside. Backers of the ban say that estimates of French shale gas reserves are wildly optimistic and that the focus should be on reining in fossil fuel consumption, not encouraging it.