Commission prepares shale-gas guidelines

Guidelines are to help co-ordinate the national policies of the member states that choose to extract shale-gas, but member states will be free to ban exploration.

The European Commission will next week publish guidelines on shale-gas exploration that aim to provide greater clarity for the extractive industry and rule out the prospect of cumbersome EU-level restrictions on hydraulic fracturing (known as fracking).

The process – in which a high-pressure water mixture is injected into rock to release the gas inside – is controversial, with claims that it may contaminate groundwater and cause small earthquakes.

The guidelines for shale-gas constitute one of four climate papers that will be adopted by the Commission on Wednesday (22 January). The others are a communication proposing a 40% emissions reduction target for 2030 and a renewables target, a proposal to make structural adjustments to the EU’s emissions trading scheme in order to raise the price of carbon, and a study into the causes of high energy prices.

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The Commission, under pressure from environmentalists and some member states, including France, that have banned fracking, had been considering binding EU-wide rules covering environmental damage and safety. The Commission’s environment department had even drafted possible legislation to that effect.

But there have been warnings from the oil and gas industries, and pro-shale countries such as Poland and the UK, that adding red tape would inhibit exploration and prevent the EU from taking advantage of an indigenous, low-carbon (compared to coal) energy source. They say that existing EU and national laws on drilling already cover fracking.

The guidelines are supposed to help co-ordinate the national policies of the member states that choose to extract shale-gas, but other member states will be free to ban exploration, according to a draft of the proposal. However, it stipulates that, if the Commission finds that member states are not following the recommendations, the EU could make them legally binding in 2015. The recommendations include conducting site inspections to examine if there is groundwater contamination, restricting drilling in areas prone to flooding or earthquakes, and monitoring methane emissions.

The subject is causing divisions within the Commission, according to sources. Janez Potocnik, the European commissioner for the environment, has suggested unofficially that it would be better to put forward nothing at all rather than weak, non-binding guidelines.

A leaked UK government document dating from November, seen by European Voice, gives details of a concerted lobbying campaign against Potocnik’s plan for binding legislation. In a letter to the British government, Ivan Rogers, the UK’s permanent representative to the EU, wrote that the combined efforts of Potocnik, the European Parliament and several member states in favour of binding legislation should be resisted with “continued lobbying at official and ministerial level”.

“Our main allies on shale are Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which means that we are currently short of a blocking minority on the issue should legislation emerge,” the letter says. “Shale might be used as a lever to influence Poland’s difficult position on [greenhouse-gas] targets,” the letter says. Poland has been opposed to setting emissions- reduction targets beyond 2020.

The decision not to propose EU-wide restrictions will be seen as a green light for the UK and Poland to increase exploration.