Denmark: protest camp against French Shale Gas Company

April 10th, 2015

[ from US EF! Newswire: Editor’s note:  The fol­low­ing piece has been com­posed from words sent our way as well as from var­i­ous arti­cles.  As the oppo­si­tion con­tin­ues, how­ev­er, there will be more updates and rebel­lious cries.  For hin­der­ing Total until its con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed shad­ow retreats from Den­mark and trips on its own grimy machin­ery! ]

Denmark—On June 25 of last year, after many hours of debate and gath­er­ing votes amid the cries of anti-frack­ing pro­test­ers, Denmark’s first drilling license for shale gas was approved in Fred­erik­shavn, a munic­i­pal­i­ty locat­ed in north­ern Den­mark.  The warped deci­sion will enable Total—a French oil and gas com­pa­ny and fifth largest inter­na­tion­al ener­gy com­pa­ny— to begin its degrad­ing explo­ration and estab­lish a well in near­by Dyb­vad.

“We had a good and fac­tu­al debate,” Bir­git Sten­bak Hansen, Frederikshavn’s may­or, told Jyl­lands-Posten news­pa­per. “I am pleased that we can move on in this case after prepar­ing metic­u­lous­ly for the coun­cil.”
Although the Dan­ish Gov­ern­ment has expressed plans to divert from fos­sil fuels and has gained an inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion for “green ener­gy”, its sur­ren­der­ing to Total for the sake of sup­port­ing Denmark’s wel­fare state, as well as its empha­sis on rip­ping through the land in a “respon­si­ble man­ner”, speaks oth­er­wise.

In order for exter­nal indus­tries to oper­ate legal­ly with­in Denmark’s beau­ti­ful land­scape, they have to be approved by the the Dan­ish Sub­soil Act and the Envi­ron­men­tal Committee—the enti­ties in place to autho­rize which com­pa­nies can spit on them. Through such over­sight, Total and North Sea Fund (a state-owned oil and gas co.) were grant­ed two licens­es back in 2010, allow­ing for shale gas poten­tial to be inves­ti­gat­ed in two areas of Den­mark.

Just days ago, we received news that Total is prepar­ing its numb machin­ery to drill the first test well and locals are retal­i­at­ing. A protest camp has been estab­lished on-site and has been active since the per­mits began to be exer­cised.

The atmos­phere of the encamp­ment is quite live­ly with defi­ant song and the num­bers of war­riors becom­ing inte­grat­ed in the fight is grow­ing.

Through­out the last few days, road block­ades have been formed and sus­tained for 2–3 hours by locals and allies to hin­der Total’s truck con­voys from enter­ing the site. While the first bar­ri­cade was dis­persed after a brief debate with police, the most recent end­ed with folks being phys­i­cal­ly dragged from the scene by cops. As sol­i­dar­i­ty is fos­tered between locals and their allies, there will most like­ly be more block­ades and orga­nized revolts to come.

This is the first envi­ron­men­tal­ly-based direct action that is unrav­el­ing in Den­mark since COP15 , as well as the first against the shale gas indus­try. Region­al mobi­liza­tion is gain­ing momen­tum and voic­es of those open­ly oppos­ing Total’ʹs invest­ments are wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ing.  Orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing Green­peace and the Dan­ish Soci­ety of Nature Con­ser­va­tion (Dan­marks Naturfred­nings­foren­ing – DN), have also been broad­cast­ing state­ments of dis­ap­proval.

With Alum Shale’s recov­er­able nat­ur­al gas deposits being esti­mat­ed to con­tain over 6.9 tril­lion cubic feet, there is quite the bun­dle of incen­tive to invite more com­pa­nies like Total to strut through the land­scape. It becomes even more vital, there­fore, for orga­nized upris­ings, such as the cur­rent encamp­ment, to take place.

For Com­mu­ni­ty Auton­o­my and Earth Lib­er­a­tion!