Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
government won votes that will permit fracking to continue in
Germany, saying the technique may help the country’s energy
supply security.
Merkel’s coalition government defeated motions from the
Green Party and Left Party that called for banning hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking, after the opposition argued the
technique is harmful to the environment. The vote was 309
against the Green Party’s motion, 259 in favor and two
abstentions. There was no count for the second motion.
There’s no reason to prohibit a technique that’s been used
in Germany for many years without incidents, said Andreas
Laemmel, a lawmaker with the Christian Democratic Union.
“We need the technology and we need natural gas as a
resource won domestically,” Laemmel said in parliament in
Berlin before the vote. The U.K. government earlier today lifted
a ban on shale-gas fracking.
Companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. have drilled test
wells into unconventional natural gas reservoirs in Germany in
an attempt to emulate the U.S. shale-gas boom. While a
successful drilling campaign would redraw the energy map across
Europe — a continent reliant on Russia for about a quarter of
its gas — little headway has been made in Germany, largely due
to public opposition on environmental grounds.
Fracking involves drilling hundreds of wells and cracking
shale rocks with a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and
chemicals, to unlock gas or oil from impermeable stone. The
Green party says the method should be banned until possible
risks related to groundwater pollution and seismic shocks can be
managed.
Fracking has been practiced in Germany since the 1960s, and
has been used at least 275 times at conventional gas and oil
wells in Lower Saxony state, according to a study presented by
the Environment Ministry in September. It was outlawed in France
last year and the practice is also banned in Bulgaria.
The government has commissioned studies on fracking to
further evaluate the method and will adopt regulation if
necessary, Laemmel said.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Stefan Nicola in Berlin at
snicola2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Reed Landberg at
landberg@bloomberg.net
