Mr. Decock, what would be the negative environmental effects of the projects Ukraine is currently planning how do you think?

Firstly, I would like to say that we deeply sympathize with the concerns that Eastern European states have about their energy security supply, being dependent on a single supplier of gas like Russia – it’s obviously not a comfortable position to be in. But what we question is whether shale gas can provide an answer to disconcerns about security. First of all we have to get off fossil fuels to do something about climate change and does shale gas take us one step further to more fossil fuels? If so, this is probably not a solution. And secondly, I think there are lots of concerns about water - water contamination, concerns about spills, leaks etc. There’s obviously a land use component – you have to drill a lot of wells to reach the shale gas resources. So last but not least I would add cumulative effect - in commercial production - all those drill wells - they produce contaminated water, there is always a chance of leaking, carbon emissions associated with extraction. These are the impacts that we are worried about.  MORE