Putin plotting to halt UK fracking, warns Nato chief
RUSSIAN agents are secretly working with environmental campaigners to halt fracking operations in the UK and the rest of Europe, the head of Nato warned yesterday.
Vladimir Putin’s government has ‘engaged actively’ with green groups and protesters in a sophisticated operation aimed at maintaining Europe’s reliance on energy exports from Moscow, said Nato SecretaryGeneral Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
He said the Russians had mounted a highly developed disinformation campaign to undermine attempts to exploit alternative energy sources such as shale gas.
Moves to start fracking in the UK have been disrupted following a sustained campaign by environmentalists that has created fears about its impact.
Speaking at the Chatham House foreign affairs think-tank in London, Mr Rasmussen said: ‘I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.’
He declined to give fuller details of the alleged plot, but said: ‘That is my interpretation.’
He would not say what form the Russians’ apparent engagement with the environmentalists took or whether groups concerned were aware that they were dealing with Moscow’s agents.
According to Mr Rasmussen, who supports the experimental fracking operations, improving energy security is of the ‘utmost importance’ and requires European nations to develop more diverse sources of supply.
‘It also, in my opinion, involves the better functioning of the European energy market so that one single supplier is not able to blackmail one single nation,’ he said.
Britain has vast reserves of shale gas trapped in rocks thousands of feet underground that may be extracted by firing water and chemicals to fracture the rock.
Scientists say we are sitting on deposits of enough shale gas to supply the whole country for at least 40 years, mirroring the North Sea oil boom of the 1970s.
But shale gas development has not yet taken off here, unlike in countries such as the US where it has proved highly popular. Opponents in the UK have warned that the process risks causing earthquakes, polluting water, blighting the countryside and affecting house prices.
There have been fierce protests against the technique, with exploratory drilling near the village of Balcombe, West Sussex, abandoned last year after the site was overrun by demonstrators.
Mr Putin has repeatedly voiced concerns about fracking, once telling a global economic conference that ‘black stuff comes out of the tap’.
And Russia’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom, the world’s biggest gas producer, says fracking has ‘significant environmental risks’ including water contamination.
David Cameron has told opponents to embrace fracking as part of efforts to reduce dependence on Russian energy supplies. Mr Rasmussen’s comments drew an angry response from Greenpeace, which saw a group of activists threatened with up to 15 years in jail last year after they staged an anti-drilling protest on a Russian off-shore oil platform.
A Greenpeace spokesman said:
‘The idea is preposterous’
‘The idea we’re puppets of Putin is so preposterous that you have to wonder what they’re smoking over at Nato HQ.
‘Mr Rasmussen should spend less time dreaming up conspiracy theories and more time on the facts.
‘Fracked gas will probably cost more than Russian imports. There’s little chance fracking will generate more than a small fraction of Europe’s gas needs and it won’t even do that for at least ten years.’
Friends of the Earth’s head of campaigns, Andrew Pendleton, was equally dismissive. ‘Perhaps the Russians are worried about our huge wind and solar potential, and have infiltrated the UK Government,’ he said.