Fracking and Resistance in the Land of Fire

RIFFO, LORENA

NACLA Report on the Americas

Routledge

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2017 vol. 49 p. 470 - 475

1071-4839

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Argentine state along with oil and gas companies have been looking for ways to increase the reserves of fossil fuels in Argentina, given their decline in recent years. For example, in 1989, at-then rates of extraction, it was calculated that 14 years of oil and thirty-years of gas reserves remained. By 2009 these estimates had been reduced to ten and eight years respectively. Given that the national energy matrix is highly dependent on fossil fuels, the state and the industries are planning and implementing extractive strategies that push the boundaries of fossil fuel exploitation both in terms of surface territory and in terms of territory beneath the earth.In this context, unconventional hydrocarbons extracted by fracking occupy a central role. Fracking in Argentina has been initially concentrated in the province of Neuquén, at the northern end of Patagonia. This area is home to one of the largest unconventional oil and gas reserves in Latin America and the world: the geological formation known as Vaca Muerta (Dead Cow). In addition, a good deal of infrastructure built for the extraction of conventional hydrocarbons is also located there, which has facilitated the expansion of exploration and drilling associated with fracking. While governments have argued that fracking?and fossil fuels?are crucial to staving off a national energy crisis, social and indigenous resistance to fracking has been on the rise, as people become more aware of threats to health, livelihood, and democracy. Against the tide of national energy security, opponents of fracking have demanded a different approach to management of natural resources, indigenous self-determination, and the transformation of the energy matrix itself. Patagonia and Neuquén are at the center of these struggles. What unifies this struggle, at its heart, is the recognition that natural resources must be de-commodified, as must energy itself, to build a new relationship between society and nature that breaks with modern capitalist instrumentalism. In Neuquén, extractive activities related to energy, such as hydroelectric dams and oil, are dominant in the region. The discovery of oil dates back to 1918, when Neuquén was not yet officially a province of Argentina. It is relevant to note that the region was incorporated into the nascent Argentine nation after it expanded its national boundaries in the wake of the genocidal assault on native peoples known as the ?Campaign of the Desert,? waged in the latter part of the 19th century. After that massacre, this area became a ?national territory? that came to depend directly on the national government. In 1955, this and other territories became reorganized as ?provinces.? Oil activities increased in the post-World War II era of import substitution industrialization, when crude oil from Neuquén fueled the development of the country´s hegemonic metropolitan centers, principally the provinces of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe. The province?s productive matrix, based on oil, consolidated in the 1980s and 1990s. During these decades three new oil fields were discovered, adding to some six others. During this period the volume of exports increased, as did amount of revenue generated for the provincial budget. In addition to oil, the Neuquén basin also solidified as the country?s main producer of natural gas, contributing more than half of its total natural gas production (Favaro, 2005).