What's to Become of France's Troubled Fracking Commission?

France has banned hydraulic fracturing and thus any developments of unconventional resources since 2011. Four years later, a key provision of the anti-fracking law voted in during Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency has never been fully implemented…  

The law required the establishment of a "national commission on the orientation, monitoring and assessment of the exploration and exploitation techniques of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons." Two lawmakers from the French parliament were appointed as members of the commission in 2012: Fabrice Verdier, a socialist representative from the National Assembly and Jean-Claude Lenoir, a senator from what was previously the UMP, a right-wing party now rebranded as Les Républicains. But the commission has never convened a single session.

The Constitutional Council (a body similar to the Supreme Court in the United States, which has the power to overturn a law) restated this past summer that both the creation and the object of the commission have a legislative nature. The decision came on July, 22, 2015--471 days after the initial bill was passed.

The ruling means that another law may be needed to change or scrap the commission.

Under the law, the commission has to convene national and local elected officials, environmental groups, and employees and executives of the industry. The goal was to assess the impact of hydraulic fracturing and other techniques on the environment as well as controlling the way potential experimentation would be conducted.

The commission could have played a significant role in the fracking debate.

Green activists boycotted the commission

If the commission failed, it’s partly due to the opposition of anti-fracking groups, which decided not to participate in the body. From the beginning, they have asserted that the commission's goal was to implement a report commissioned by the Ministers for Environment and Energy Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet and Eric Besson in February, 2011.

The government report included a proposal to “test hydraulic fracturing as part of a shale oil prospect program in the Paris Basin and then conduct shale gas explorations in Southern France in areas with important natural constraints because of the karstic subsoil," says Nicolas de Metz, a member of Stop Gaz de Schiste, a coalition of citizens organizations against fracking.

Back in 2011, when the bill was discussed on the floor of both chambers of parliament, environmental groups criticised the fact that the legislation bans fracking but without giving a legal definition.

They implied the law would not prevent gas companies from using hydraulic fracturing during explorations licensed by the government and monitored by the commission. “The purpose of this commission is not to have a debate. It’s a commission with a very specific agenda, a provision of an imperfect law passed in a hurry to avoid a controversy before the 2012 presidential race,” Nicolas de Metz alleges.

In addition, for green activists, the focus should be renewable energies and not shale, he says. “It’s not our role to say if this law is fully respected. We have no interest nor intention to be involved in a debate over how we should use fossil fuels. What we want is to redirect state funds towards clean energies and carbon-free solutions “.

A highly sensitive issue for Hollande

The French government also holds its fair share of the blame for the current situation. French president François Hollande repeatedly said he will not authorize any shale gas explorations or developments during his time in office. The commission works may have potentially weakened his majority and alienated his allies on the left especially the greens. The government buried its own report, which highlighted an alternative technique to fracking that may be safer for the environment. 

“Actually, the government has absolutely no intention to convene a commission meeting," Jean Claude Lenoir told Natural Gas Europe. The French senator regrets that decision and blames the government. “The Environment Minister doesn’t support the extraction of hydrocarbons to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by principle," he adds.

Being critical of the government's actions or inaction is easy for a member of the opposition party but, for Jean-Claude Lenoir, it’s not just pure politics. The senator from the Orne department, which is part of the Lower Normandy region, is one of the few French lawmakers to be openly in favor of shale gas developments. “I disagree with the government decision, which is not pragmatic at all. I do think unconventional resource developments can be part of the energy transition."

Back in February, Lenoir, who is the president of the Senate Committee on Economic Affairs , along with some of his colleagues, tried to amend the energy transition bill to repeal the anti-fracking law passed in 2011 but the effort was rejected by the upper chamber of the Parliament.
In 2013, Senator Lenoir also co-wrote a bi-partisan congressional report with Christian Bataille, a pro-fracking socialist representative.  
The report outlined the idea that natural gas is a much better choice than coal to decrease carbon emissions. The two lawmakers argued that the exploitation of non-conventional resources would fund the “very costly” investments of the energy transition but also fulfill the needs of consumers for “several decades to come."  

These arguments are not very popular on the left. Opening a debate over shale gas could be politically deadly for François Hollande’s socialist party and its allies on the left before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris and the 2017 presidential contest. “It’s unlikely that the issue will evolve by the end of the parliament term," Jean-Claude Lenoir confesses.

More importantly, 60% of French voters remain opposed to shale gas developments according to a poll from October 2014. There is no reason to believe that people have changed their minds since then.