Europe: Anti-fracking NGO's received russian money

Investigations by different media suggest that european environmental NGO's opposed to fracking received money injections from russian sources, WELT:

The interests of western climate protectionists and the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin coincide, albeit for very different reasons: slowing down the promotion of fossil fuels in western countries is their common goal. For the activists, this is a stage on the way to a CO₂-free industrial society, for Putin, whose country benefits enormously from the international oil and gas business, it is an important trump card.

For years there have been indications that Moscow is supporting activists in the US and Europe in their fight against fossil fuels in order to be able to sell Russian gas and oil better. In the mid-2000s, the Kremlin decided to fill what it called a “value vacuum”: using so-called “soft power” to place its own views and interests in other countries. According to various sources, Russia also financed non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Europe and the USA in order to push through its agenda.

Many NGOs enjoy special rights in the West: the EU and the United Nations grant environmental organizations extensive legal standing and information rights. Germany grants many organizations the tax-privileged status of "non-profit". As a rule, the NGOs do not have to disclose where they get their money from.

Researchers who analyzed NGO funding on behalf of the European Parliament in 2016 had to admit their failure: "The analysis reveals a complex web of intertwined NGOs, linked by the membership of numerous overlapping networks that pursue many different purposes," she said Conclusion. “It is often difficult to identify which organization in a network is engaged in which activities, or how grants flow between them in relation to those activities.”

There is an "obvious gap between NGOs' declared commitment to accountability and transparency and actual practice," the researchers concluded. Entries in the transparency register of the EU would mostly be avoided. It often remains unclear what interests the funders of the associations really have.

Anyone who demands insight into the funding of NGOs is therefore dependent on key witnesses. The Russian government has transferred 82 million euros to European climate protection associations whose aim is to prevent natural gas production in Europe, an informant told scientists at the Martens Center for European Studies.

Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reported back in 2014 that Russia had supported environmental organizations "in order to maintain European dependence on Russian gas". "What are they smoking at NATO headquarters to spread such accusations?" Greenpeace countered the allegations. Due to the lack of transparency of the money flows described, it is not possible to make a conclusive, independent assessment of whether they are correct or not.

At least NATO stuck to their description. "We share the concern of some allies that Russia may seek to impede potential shale gas exploration projects in Europe in order to maintain Europe's dependence on Russian gas," a NATO official told Foreign Policy. Experts have puzzled over the "sudden" emergence of well-organized anti-fracking environmental groups in Eastern Europe, where Russia has been selling its energy but previously had no public concerns about natural gas production, the magazine wrote.

Fracking, which involves breaking up rock in the ground with a liquid to produce gas, has gotten a bad rap, although it's been tried and tested for decades with few problems now. Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had also advocated fracking, but reported unusual resistance. In a private speech in 2016, made public by Wikileaks, she lamented: "We were dealing with fake environmental groups, and I'm a big environmentalist, but they were funded by the Russians."

American security expert Fiona Hill, former director for Europe and Russia on the Trump administration's National Security Council, reported on a conversation with Putin in November 2011 in which he made it clear to experts and journalists that he saw fracking in the US as a "major threat of Russian interests”. "We were struck by how much emphasis he put on the subject," Hill said.

American media reported on documents that were supposed to show that energy managers from Russian companies had transferred millions to American environmental organizations - which they, however, rejected. Representatives of American energy companies also accused the Kremlin of covert financing of climate protection groups. "Russia is funding the anti-fracking movement in the US," the head of Continental Resources claimed.

Climate and environmental protection organizations distributed misleading films of places where fracking is being done: Drinking water from the tap was burning, toxic gases and chemicals were seeping out of the ground, and entire regions were contaminated. Mass media picked up on the scenarios, particularly aggressively by the Russian channel “Russia Today”.

He labeled fracking companies as child molesters, falsely claiming natural gas extraction would cause cancer in children. A US National Security Agency report saw Putin's people behind the reports, which "probably reflected the Russian government's concerns about US natural gas production and potential challenges to Gazprom's profitability." "We have seen Gazprom funding from environmental NGOs," agrees Dominique Reynié of the Fondation pour L'innovation politique, a French research institute.

After Germany's decision to phase out nuclear energy, Gazprom celebrated "building new, modern gas-fired power plants in Germany". However, the expansion of fracking in the USA worried the Russian competition: the Americans had achieved a decisive turnaround by intensifying natural gas production by fracking in their own country - with positive consequences for the climate. The USA has been able to reduce its CO₂ emissions more than almost any other country in the past 15 years because it has replaced coal with cracked natural gas, which releases much less CO₂.

Europe also has immense shale gas resources. The EU Commission states that gas contained in shale rock using fracking "can contribute to the security of supply of the EU and its competitiveness". In the 2000s, the big energy companies in Europe were ready to develop domestic natural gas.

But the resources remained in the ground, the pressure from climate activists on companies and governments led to investors turning away, the investment bank Goldman Sachs determined. The Financial Times and recently the New York Times came to the same conclusion.

Exploration of new gas fields in Europe collapsed, including in Great Britain, which has particularly rich shale gas resources. Not only NGOs, but also scientific institutes cheered the trend. For example, the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change of the London School of Economics recently called for the end of all domestic oil and gas exploration.

The market is now "fixated on climate change and the dwindling appetite for fossil fuels," wrote financial news agency Bloomberg. Share prices of companies that said they would expand their production of gas and oil came under pressure; Apparently, investors feared damage to their image. In the Netherlands, a court ordered the energy company Shell to reduce its CO₂ emissions, which further slowed exploration efforts.

The great opposition to natural gas production in Europe made gas from Russia attractive. Europe has radically reduced its production of conventional natural gas: 15 years ago it produced more gas than Russia exported, now Russia exports three times more natural gas than Europe produces. From 2015 to 2019 alone, Russia was able to increase its natural gas imports to Europe by a third. The continent now covers around 40 percent of its needs with Russian natural gas.

The market is now "fixated on climate change and the dwindling appetite for fossil fuels," wrote financial news agency Bloomberg. Share prices of companies that said they would expand their production of gas and oil came under pressure; Apparently, investors feared damage to their image. In the Netherlands, a court ordered the energy company Shell to reduce its CO₂ emissions, which further slowed exploration efforts.

The great opposition to natural gas production in Europe made gas from Russia attractive. Europe has radically reduced its production of conventional natural gas: 15 years ago it produced more gas than Russia exported, now Russia exports three times more natural gas than Europe produces. From 2015 to 2019 alone, Russia was able to increase its natural gas imports to Europe by a third. The continent now covers around 40 percent of its needs with Russian natural gas.

In recent years, Germany has relied particularly consistently on Russian energy. It phased out nuclear power, but did not allow terminals for gas shipments by ship from the US, instead planning dozens of new gas-fired power plants. The intended main supplier: Russia.

When former US President Donald Trump declared in 2018 that Germany had become dependent on Russia for its energy supply, German diplomats laughed at him. At the latest, however, the Russian invasion of Ukraine revealed Germany's dependency relentlessly. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) said Germany was dependent on Russian gas. If no more gas came from Russia, there would be a risk of “damage to society as much as possible,” said Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Green Party).

In the USA, too, the new government of President Joe Biden has meanwhile made a change. On his first day in office, Biden stopped the Keystone XL pipeline, which was supposed to transport oil from Canada 3,500 kilometers to the United States, after protests by activists. After the import stop for Russian oil, the President now has to put up with the accusation of endangering the supply security of the USA.

The result of the fight against natural gas production in Europe and the USA is sobering, it has not served climate protection. Natural gas is still burned, it only comes from Russia. Nuclear power plants were shut down in favor of natural gas. The war in Ukraine also makes natural gas more expensive, so that the demand for coal increases, which causes CO₂ emissions to rise more sharply. In Germany, the green economics minister is considering letting coal-fired power plants run longer due to a lack of alternatives to Russian gas.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on the other hand, is now considering starting fracking in his country. Russia is no longer a reliable source, it is important to ensure the energy supply. The climate protection group Extinction Rebellion has announced that it will soon occupy oil refineries in Great Britain. "Fossil energies must be stopped once and for all," declared the activists. "Now is the time, this is the moment".