• tal@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The Americans don’t care about these issues. They have inexhaustible energy resources, as the producers of 20% of the world’s crude oil, compared with 12% for Saudi Arabia and 11% for Russia.

    Well, France, US oil production surged because the US made use of hydraulic fracturing.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking

    France

    Hydraulic fracturing was banned in France in 2011 after public pressure.[8][26][27][28] It was based on the precautionary principle as well as the principal of preventive and corrective action of environmental hazards, using the best available techniques with an acceptable economic cost to insure the protection, the valuation, the restoration, management of spaces, resources and natural environments, of animal and vegetal species, of ecological diversity and equilibriums.[29] The ban was upheld by an October 2013 ruling of the Constitutional Council following complaints by US-based company Schuepbach Energy.[30]

    In December 2017, to fight against global warming, France adopted a law banning new fossil fuel exploitation projects and closing current ones by 2040 in all of its territories. France thus became the first country to programme the end of all fossil fuel exploitation.[31][32]

    • tryptaminev@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      And they did well so, as fracking is disastrous for the environment and local communities. In the towns nearby fracking sites, people effectively lost their previous access to clean water, because the aquifiers are poluted with toxic sludge.

    • tal@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Also, they were talking about oil in the article, but I’d point out that natural gas is also available via use of hydraulic fracturing.

      https://www.velaw.com/shale-fracking-tracker/resources/france/

      According to the European Parliamentary Research Service (“EPRS”), France has the second largest shale reserves in Europe after Poland.1 The EIA estimates that France has 137 trillion-cubic feet (“tcf”) of technically recoverable shale gas resources.2 The country’s most prominent shale reserves are located in several regions including the Paris Basin and the South-East Basin.3 These reserves are unlikely to be developed in the near term, however, because hydraulic fracturing has been banned by the French Government since 2011.4

      More recently, France has begun to explore legal means through which it could ban the importation of shale gas from the United States. Critics of the potential ban have called it “unworkable,” as convention and unconventional gases are typically mixed to together during transportation.