Shale Gas in Eastern Europe: Local Hostility and Grassroots Protests

• In Event: The Pluralistic Politics of Resource Extraction

Abstract

In the United States, shale gas has revolutionized the energy industry. Several circumstances made it possible: a land ownership system that rewards owners for production of what lies beneath their holdings, a fiscal and legal system that encourages production and an advanced oil and gas industry that provides services like drilling and hydraulic fracturing quickly and at an affordable cost. A few years ago, Central and Eastern Europe looked like the region with the best opportunity in Europe to put the lessons learned in the United States to work. The most recent developments show however that all major players left the region and abandoned all efforts to find and produce natural gas from shale rock in Central and Eastern Europe. So, why didn’t shale gas work in Eastern Europe? In order to explore the various models of shale gas management, my project compared and contrasted policies adopted in Romania (the case selected to represent a weak institutional environment) and the state of Pennsylvania (the case selected to represent a strong institutional environment).
The article documents the results of my fieldwork in Romania. With the aim of collecting original and comprehensive information, I organized a fieldwork trip to five different locations in Romania where citizens mobilized in large numbers against shale gas exploration. Snowball sampling was the method used to select respondents for the in-depth interviews. In order to explain why local hostility remains the largest obstacle to unconventional gas development in the region, I interviewed journalists, academics, geologists, protest leaders, protest participants and local officials.
My main research question attempted to identify the factors that made the experience of Pennsylvania difficult to replicate in Romania. The project studied the relationship between democratic institutions, public participation and natural resources. It attempted to answer a few key questions surrounding the large-scale anti-fracking protests that occurred in 2013 in Romania: Why did the protesters decide to take the risk of confronting gas companies and local authorities? Why did they continue to protest even when they faced severe repression? How did the people involved in anti-fracking protests differ from other environmental activists in their experiences and ideas?

Author

• Andreea Raluca Maierean, Wilkes University