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Music against gas drilling

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stage

Preparing for the music gala. Photo: Heaven or sHell.

drill-protests

Protesters outside one of the test drilling sites in December last year. Photo: Göran Gustafson.

The Urkult festival wasn’t the only big music event this past weekend. In the old alum works area of the Christinehof Ecopark in Skåne in the south of Sweden artists filled the whole Saturday with music, in a manifestation against the planned extraction of fossil gas in Skåne.
Ever since the energy company Shell started their test drillings in three of the county’s municipalities, protests have been growing.
According to the protest network “Heaven or sHell”, drilling for gas would mean great risks for the groundwater, but also affect air quality, the landscape and its inhabitants.

Recently European statistics showed that Sweden is leading the European

drilling-site
One of the drilling sites, before the drillings started. Photo: Lotta Nordstedt.

league when it comes to our share of renewable energy compared to total energy consumption. This is much thanks to our big rivers providing us with hydropower enough to cover about half of the country’s electricity needs. But “to invest in fossil energy in 2010 instead of in environmentally friendly and sustainable alternatives is grave”, the anti-gas drilling network writes on its web site.

One of the big discussions about this project has circled around the choice of words. While the drilling company talks about “natural gas” and claims that this gas leads to less emissions than burning coal and oil. Activists, on their hand, underscore that the gas is still a fossil fuel, contributing to global warming, and point out that few people actually know that natural gas and fossil gas is the same thing.

Another thing largely discussed is the current mineral law in Sweden, which does not give the local municipality a veto right when it comes to gas or oil extraction, which is the case with new wind power plants or uranium extraction. This is expected to be an issue for the coming elections.

At the moment Shell is waiting for the result of the test drillings before deciding whether or not to apply for a permit to extract gas. That decision will probably be taken around the end of this year.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

August 9, 2010

  • Pol – Croatia

    It really looks as wonderfull nature and calming landscape. There should have to be realy strong reason to drill and build there. Several years ago there where serious disccusions in my region also about building a new coal powerplant, which was proposed at national level. The old coal powerplant was quite dirty especially for local population. One of the main problem was emiting and dissposal of radioactive ash which was put in relation with lots of health problems, cancer deseas and animal deformations in that area.

    The new coal powerplant which was finaly build seems much cleaner then old one, even if regional goverment have proposed gas powerplant as far cleaner alternative (even when for CO2 / methane emissions i am not sure), but it was to late by then. It also turned out that gas powerplant would produce less power output then coal one. However, there is a relatively new underwater gas-drilling platform in cooperation with Italy nearby (with possibile future liquid gas facilities in vicinity), so this could be some future option.

    This drilling platform is situated on sea, so it is less visible what changes it produces in that area, even when there was some protest where the pipes and land processing facilities will be located and coming out from the sea. I’ve noticed also that it is also important not to sell land lightly to someone who could possibly missused it. Morover when it is case of a solely a private foreign company (i don’t know who own’s Shell or where they main corporate center is), which is by it’s logic intrested predominantly in bussines and maybe doesn’t understand local significance of a place well. …

    On the other hand maybe there should be done in advance an entire national study and survey of all possible actions, alternatives and outcomes related to this and other topics, to be able to consider the future reasonably in advance, because in the end some alterantive has to be choosen and it is better to consider before the final decisions are made close. But sometimes ordinary people aren’t properly introduced with all aspects of it, like something is hidden from them or decision maker subjectivity could be obscured by expert terminology. With increasing private property and market economy the narrow selfinterests are naturaly even more justified, even when false decisions can be made in the name of more common interest as well. …

  • Sara Jeswani

    Thanks, interesting to hear about the experiences from Croatia.
    The city that was recently appointed Sweden’s most environmentally friendly is situated in the same county as the gas drillings are taking place. They have far-reaching goals when it comes to renewable energy, that I will shortly write more about on this blog. So developments are sometimes a bit contradictory.

  • Kristin Follis

    Thanks Monica!

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Kanika-Kukreja/100001254008860 Kanika Kukreja

    Those are some really good pictures; loved them :)

  • Kristin Follis

    Thank you Kanika!

  • http://www.plumbingsuppliesandfittings.co.uk/ plumbing

    Many organizations are against drilling because of its effect. It ruins the natural soil structure which can cause soil erosion.