ExxonMobil
test drilling makes brewers fear for their livelihoods, but others see fracking
as alternative to coal and nuclear energy
The Guardian, Philip Oltermann in Lünne, Tuesday 17 June 2014
 |
'Fracking could spell the end of our existence,' says Friederike Borchert at her
family’s brewery in Lünne, Lower Saxony. Photograph: Christian Jungeblodt
for the Guardian |
"Germany
is a beer nation: if their beer has no flavour, people will mount the
barricades," says Friederike Borchert. At her family's brewery in Lünne,
Lower Saxony, about 800,000 litres of beer are produced a year: a light
pilsner, a dark beer and a buckwheat brew. Borchert, 27, dreams of one day
making her own India pale ale, though now fears she may have to put her
aspirations on hold.
Many locals
are now convinced that Lünne has been earmarked as the country's first site for
fracking, the controversial method of extracting gas by injecting water, sand
and chemicals into the rock at high pressure. Earlier this month, a leaked
letter by the economy and energy minister, Sigmar Gabriel, hinted at permitting
fracking from 2015, apparently confirming their suspicions.
"For
brewers fracking could spell the end of our existence," says Borchert.
Water used for brewing has to be "even cleaner drinking water". The
fear alone that chemicals used during fracking might enter the local ground
water could ruin the brewery's reputation. But then Germany is a beer nation,
she says, and when brewers speak up politicians tend to listen.
Only a big
black valve in a metal cage tells of ExxonMobil's activities in Lünne. But the
horizon illustrates the wider debate around Germany's energy future: there is a
windfarm in the field next door, a coal power station in Ibbenbüren to the
south and a nuclear power station in Lingen to the north.
Allowing
fracking, some argue, needs to be an acceptable compromise if Lünne wants to
switch off the two power stations and boost the wind farms. If this proves as
successful as it was in the US, it could help lower Germany's high energy
prices and thus ease the Energiewende project to phase out nuclear by 2022.
Many
factors would make Lower Saxony the obvious place to start exploratory
fracking. Most of Germany's shale reserves are located here, and 90% of the
natural gas produced in the country is extracted by conventional means in the
region. What's more, only a small percentage of the shale lies in areas that
cannot be touched for fear of contaminating ground water.
The
Netherlands has already announced it will frack close to its border with Lower
Saxony. If you can't escape the risks, some locals say, why not make some
money? Unlike wind power, profits would not go to the farmers who own the land,
but to the regional authorities.
"We
are not against big energy per se, you can see that from all the power stations
here. But there's a point where enough is enough," says Markus Rolink, who
has been organising protests in Lünne since 2011.
"There
has to be a perspective. With the windfarm there's the perspective that the
nuclear power station will eventually get switched off. With shale gas I just
see an investor at ExxonMobil pocketing the money and risking damage to our
environment in the process."
Protests in
Lünne and around 30 other sites across Germany put companies like ExxonMobil
off further exploratory drills two years ago. And in spite of industry lobbying
and political tension in the Ukraine, it looks like Germany's beermakers and
anti-fracking protesters may be able to claim victory in the long term too.
Since last
summer, its brewers association has been lobbying the environment minister,
Barbara Hendricks, to update the water protection law to include even smaller
brewers' wells and private mineral springs, further threatening the commercial
viability of fracking in Germany. It appeared to work. A spokesman for the environment
ministry said it intended to "considerably tighten" legislation
around fracking.
Any
fracking-enabling legislation would have to be approved by the Bundesrat, the
upper house of the German parliament in which the ruling coalition parties do
not hold a majority. The last government tried and failed to pass a similar
"fracking law" last year. The draft bill for new legislation,
originally scheduled before the summer recess, appears to have already been
postponed to the autumn.
Many of the
key shale regions are represented by Green party environment ministers who want
Germany to follow France's example and ban unconventional fracking across the
country. "We want Germany to have the world's strictest fracking
safeguards," Lower Saxony's environment minister Stefan Wenzel says.
"If ExxonMobil wants to have a future in Germany, they should invest in
renewable energies."
Were the
government to pass legislation that enabled fracking, the relevant region could
block planned drills by using local laws, as Wenzel's counterpart in
Schleswig-Holstein, Robert Habeck, told the Guardian he would. On 11 July, he
is submitting his own proposal for a nationwide ban to the Bundesrat.
Varying
estimates of Germany's shale resources and concerns about the commercial viability
of fracking could play into their hands. ExxonMobil says fracking could allow
the country to cover its gas needs for the next 20 to 25 years.
The
president of the German Agency for Geoscience and Raw Materials, Hans-Joachim
Kümpel, says that while there is enough shale to cover a third of Germany's gas
needs for 40 years, it was "unrealistic" to expect that Germany can
achieve complete gas independent .
Other
experts suggest that only a billion cubic metres would realistically be
frackable every year, covering no more than 1% of the country's annual use.
The costs
for industry remain considerable: even the test drill in Lünne cost ExxonMobil
€2.5m (£2m).
Stefan
Lechtenböhmer of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy
says he believes fracking will cover Germany's gas consumption for nine years
at best, and lower gas prices by no more than 1% or 2%. "Fracking won't
solve Germany's energy dilemmas. It's a homeopathic measure."
