Algeria Fights Back: 40 Police Injured in Anti-Fracking Protests

March 2nd, 2015

from Earth First! Newswire

New devel­op­ments in a sto­ry we’ve been fol­low­ing for some time now.

Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple in Alge­ria have joined a mass move­ment to halt frack­ing. These protests have involved peace­ful block­ades and march­es with broad swaths of soci­ety.

The mass move­ment has been met by state repres­sion, as we report­ed last week. But instead of deflat­ing the move­ment, state repres­sion inflamed the anger on the streets. On Sun­day, riots erupt­ed in the dis­trict of In-Salah in which 40 offi­cers were injured, and the police head­quar­ters, the chief’s house, some police bar­racks, and a police truck were all set ablaze.

Here’s AFP with more:

Forty police offi­cers were wound­ed Sun­day in clash­es with demon­stra­tors opposed to shale gas explo­ration in the Alger­ian Sahara, the Inte­ri­or Min­istry announced.

“The town of In-Salah saw inci­dents involv­ing pub­lic order, ini­ti­at­ed by a group of young peo­ple protest­ing against shale gas oper­a­tions in the region,” the min­istry said in a state­ment.

It said the clash­es “caused injuries to 40 police offi­cers, includ­ing two who were seri­ous­ly injured.”

Pro­test­ers set fire to the head­quar­ters of In-Salah dis­trict and the res­i­dence of the dis­trict chief, as well as part of a police dor­mi­to­ry and a police truck.

The secu­ri­ty forces man­aged to “take con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion and bring calm to the city,” the state­ment said.

Increased protests

Anti-shale gas demon­stra­tions have increased in the cities of the Alger­ian Sahara since late Decem­ber, when Alger­ian oil com­pa­ny Sonatra­ch announced it had suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed its first pilot drilling in the In-Salah region.

Sonatra­ch announced in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary that its explorato­ry drilling for shale gas using hydraulic frac­tur­ing would con­tin­ue despite mount­ing hos­til­i­ty among peo­ple liv­ing near­by.

Con­tin­u­ous demon­stra­tions were held for two months at In-Salah, the town clos­est to the drilling sites.

Alge­ria has seen mas­sive invest­ment in shale gas to com­pen­sate for declin­ing oil rev­enues, but faces oppo­si­tion from peo­ple liv­ing near the fields, con­cerned about the con­se­quences on the envi­ron­ment.

Accord­ing to inter­na­tion­al stud­ies, Alge­ria has the fourth biggest recov­er­able reserves of shale gas glob­al­ly, after the Unit­ed States, Chi­na and Argenti­na.