Mexican communities on guard against oil thirst(2)

Oil, page 2

Now that Mexico has opened up its oil industry to private foreign capital, there is a risk that these kinds of problems will mushroom, while pressure on water, large amounts of which are needed to extract shale gas will mount.

“The government does not have the technical or human capacity to stand up to transnational corporations,” said Waldo Carrillo, a veterinarian who raises livestock and hunts white-tail deer on his ranch in Piedras Negras, in the northern state of Coahuila. “The populace has no idea about what shale gas is or the impacts of extracting it.”

In that area lies the Cuenca de Burgos, a gas deposit that also extends to the states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, and which includes shale gas.

“What we want is to inform society from another perspective. We want to warn people of the risks,” said Carrillo, one of the founders of the environmental organization Amigos del Río San Rodrigo, which is fighting to preserve the ecosystem of the San Rodrigo river.

“The government talks about jobs, investment and growth, but it isn’t seeing things from that other side. It basically has an optimistic discourse,” he said.

The state-run Mexican Petroleum Institute acknowledges that the public has a negative image of shale gas, which it attributes to “limited or poorly handled information.”

Since 2011, PEMEX has drilled at least six wells for shale gas in the northern states of Nuevo León and Coahuila. And it is preparing for further exploration in the southeastern state of Veracruz. It also plans to drill 20 wells by 2016, with an investment of over two billion dollars. Foreign oil companies have their eyes on the new wells.

Enormous quantities of water and a broad range of chemicals are required in the hydraulic fracturing or fracking process used to extract shale gas.

In Coahuila, water is not abundant. In 2010 the state suffered an intense drought. The groundwater recharge volume is 1.6 billion cubic meters per year, but groundwater consumption is 1.9 billion cubic meters per year, according to the state government.

In nine of the 28 aquifers in Coahuila extraction exceeds recharge, the National Water Commission reported.

“People need more information,” said Carrillo, whose organization is preparing an intense awareness-raising campaign on shale gas and fracking for 2014.