Romanian Villagers and Priests Occupy Chevron Fracking Site in Protest

9/2/14

Roman­ian police clashed with vil­lagers on Wednes­day as they tried in vain to force them off a field they have occu­pied for a third day to pre­vent U.S. ener­gy giant Chevron from drilling for shale gas.

9/2/14

Roman­ian police clashed with vil­lagers on Wednes­day as they tried in vain to force them off a field they have occu­pied for a third day to pre­vent U.S. ener­gy giant Chevron from drilling for shale gas.

Hun­dreds of pro­test­ers blocked access to the site at Silis­tea in east­ern Roma­nia where Chevron plans to drill an explo­ration well, lying down in the mud and hold­ing hands to form a human chain.

Some 250 anti-riot police engaged in an hours-long stand-off with the pro­test­ers, with skir­mish­es as they phys­i­cal­ly tried to force them off, but the demon­stra­tors pushed their way back onto the field.

The group of pro­test­ers, some of whom have been sleep­ing at the site since Mon­day, had grown to about 500 on Wednes­day, pre­vent­ing Chevron bull­doz­ers and exca­va­tors from access­ing the site.

Ortho­dox priests also joined the protest.

Many of the vil­lagers in the rur­al region arrived on horse carts, some brought their chil­dren who held up signs read­ing: “Stop Chevron!”, while an elder­ly woman leaned on her cane beside them.

They are afraid of the envi­ron­men­tal and health impact of the high­ly con­tro­ver­sial method used for shale gas drilling, called hydraulic frac­tur­ing or ‘frack­ing’.

The tech­nique con­sists of pump­ing water and chem­i­cals at high pres­sure into deep rock for­ma­tions to free oil and gas.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ists say frack­ing may con­t­a­m­i­nate ground water and even cause small earth­quakes.

Chevron has per­mits to explore for shale gas in three vil­lages in this part of east­ern Roma­nia as well as on Romania’s Black Sea coast.

“Chevron is com­mit­ted to build­ing con­struc­tive and pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships with the com­mu­ni­ties where we oper­ate and will con­tin­ue our dia­logue with the pub­lic, local com­mu­ni­ties and author­i­ties on its projects,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment to AFP.

“Our pri­or­i­ty is to con­duct … activ­i­ties in a safe and envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble man­ner con­sis­tent with the per­mits under which we oper­ate,” it added.

Also Wednes­day, more than 2,000 peo­ple staged a protest in the cap­i­tal Bucharest, shout­ing “no to shale gas”.

Romania’s rul­ing cen­tre-left coali­tion has been defend­ing shale gas explo­ration after fight­ing it when it was in the oppo­si­tion.