Jonah Field, USA, where shale-drilling/hydraulic fracturing is heavy,and a dense web of roads, pipelines and well pads have turned continuous forests and grasslands into fragmented islands. Bruce Gordon/EcoFlight/Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Information
from Colombia’s National Hydrocarbons Agency shows that at least forty-three
new fracking concessions have been handed out to multinational companies
including Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Drummond.
These
concessions affect over three hundred municipalities, in the departments of
Cesar, Santander, Boyacá,
Cundinamarca and Tolima.
Fracking
(short for hydraulic fracturing) is a particular method of oil and gas extraction.
It uses intense water, air or chemical pressure to fracture rock formations and
release trapped fossil fuels. Studies however have found that the practice can
trigger medium-sized earthquakes, can affect the quality of surface and
groundwater,
and can lead to elevated emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
The
extraction method has already been banned in countries such as Scotland and Germany, and dozens of municipalities across South America have
declared themselves to be “free of fracking”.
But
despite the risks, the Colombian government has moved ahead with an extensive
programme of licensing. “Colombia cannot give itself the luxury of not doing
fracking” explained Juan Carlos Echeverry, the President of state oil company Ecopetrol.
With Colombia’s conventional oil stocks dwindling, the promise of replenished
reserves obtained through non-conventional extraction has repeatedly been
trumpeted by the country’s oil and gas sector.
Exploratory
drilling for non-conventional extraction is already underway in San Martin
(Cesar province) and Anapoima in the province of Cundinamarca. In San Martin,
American fossil fuel giant ConocoPhillips has teamed up with Canacol on the
VMM-2 project. For months, local communities in San Martin have organised
non-violently to protest the project, led by the Association Defending Water,
Land & Ecosystems (Cordatec in Spanish). In September, they blockaded the entrance to the
exploration site,
preventing the entry of company equipment. In October, riot police moved to
repress the protest, injuring ten demonstrators.
The
opposition to fracking has also taken place on a national level. The Alliance for a Colombia Free of Fracking
– a coalition of environmental organisations, trade unionists and land
defenders – recently signed an open letter calling on Colombian
President Juan Manuel Santos to declare a moratorium on fracking, citing its multiple
environmental, seismic and public health impacts. The letter also declares fracking activities
to be in violation of Colombian constitutional principles that guarantee
citizens the right to life, the right to water, and the right to a healthy
environment.
Although
the Colombian government has adamantly defended the strength of its own
regulatory framework, the country’s own Comptroller has warned of irregularities, and has ordered the
National Hydrocarbons Agency to “to refrain from signing contracts for the
exploitation of non-conventional oil deposits”. The country’s Ministry of Environment is also set to release a
study showing that the country is not ready to monitor or regulate
non-conventional fossil fuel extraction.
In a
country with over one hundred active
socio-environmental conflicts, the expansion of fracking risks aggravating
tensions. Colombia is still in the process of implementing a landmark peace
agreement brokered in late 2016 between the government and the FARC
(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which drew five decades of civil war
to a close.
Last
October, Cordatec wrote that the government’s
actions to push through fracking “demonstrate the real way in which the
national government is building “territorial peace”. While it sits in Havana,
negotiates and comes to an agreement with the FARC to put an end to fifty years
of war, in benefit of multinational companies and economic interests…it uses
violence against communities who defend life, water, land and ecosystems.”
Approved exploration contracts for
fracking overlap
with the territories of Indigenous communities such as the Yupka, Wiwa and Wayúu
peoples. They also cross the “Black Line”
– an established demarcation of territories in the Sierra Nevada region that
hold sacred value for the Kogi, Wiwa, Kankuamo and Aruaco peoples.
In
addition to contravening the land rights of Colombia’s Native peoples, the
Colombian government’s issuance of contracts for fracking has prompted fears of
possible human rights violations, given the oil industry’s historic record in the
country. Since oil companies first arrived in Colombia at the turn of the
century, numerous local communities have experienced gross ecological and
social impacts, ranging from water depletion to brutal intimidation. Drummond,
an American company party to five new fracking-related
contracts,
has previously been linked to paramilitary payoffs and
violence in the northeastern region of Cesar.
The
new fracking concessions also threaten a range of páramo ecosystems, including the
Chingaza páramo, a unique water ecosystem that provides the capital city of
Bogotá with four-fifths of its water. The Sumapaz páramo, the largest in the
world, is also under threat. In other parts of the country, unique wetland ecosystems could
also be at risk.
While
the scale of Colombia’s fracking concessions is unprecedented in the region,
the extractive practice is no newcomer to Latin America, with fracking ventures
active in at least seven countries. Argentina, home to the second largest shale
reserve in the world, has seen a flurry of extraction projects in northern
Patagonia, with Royal Dutch Shell recently announcing major investments.
Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Mexico have also seen the use of
fracking.