Fracking could lift Spain economy and show Europe the way

Bloomberg:

A few years ago, fracking in Spain seemed as likely as bullfighting in Britain.

These days, energy companies from Texas, Canada and Ireland are going after exploration and drilling permits in hopes of capitalizing on geology that indicates Spain has a sizable chunk of the 883 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in shale estimated to sit under Europe.

What’s changed? A sluggish economy for one — the energy industry estimates fracking could eventually create tens of thousands of jobs in a nation with an unemployment rate of 26 percent. Unlocking gas deposits might ease what consumers pay for the heating fuel. It’s about triple the U.S. price.

As important, the national government, with the economy in mind, took a pro-fracking stance even as regional and local authorities harden what’s long been widespread European environmental opposition to oil and gas development of any kind.

In December, two years after ousting the Socialists, the People’s Party-led Parliament changed a law to foster shale exploration with new environmental safeguards. Since then, the PP government sought Supreme Court approval to wrest control over land use from regional authorities who try to block fracking. And it’s kept intact a tax break for explorers established in the final years of the dictatorship in the 1970s.

“Spain is one of a handful of countries in Europe that is most hospitable to unconventional gas,” said third-generation oil man George Yates, a New Mexico native who worked in oil and gas exploration projects in Europe for about two decades. “And it’s under-explored territory” for shale rock.

Europe is dividing into fracking camps. On one side are mostly conservative-leaning governments like those in the U.K., Poland and Spain that court shale explorers. On the other are those that have banned them such as France. Germany temporarily won’t allow toxic chemicals mixed into fracking water.
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There is more.

Europe is hampered by its fracking phobic thinking about energy production.  To suggest that fracking is done with harmful chemicals is grossly misleading.  Some of the active ingredients besides sand and water are food additives like gar which expands when wet.

Spain is trying to dig itself out of the economic hole it dub with heavy investments in inefficient alternative energy that required subsidies they could not afford.  If they can find and exploit natural gas it will give them a chance they will never have with their solar investments.