There is a small town called
Guerrero in Mexico. Nobody had heard of it until a few weeks ago. Now it is an
epicentre of a war between environment, livelihoods of people, a sold out
government and multinationals. The northern territories of Mexico is fast
becoming the El Dorado due to its huge shale gas reserves.
Back in December of 2013, the Pena Nieto
government opened up auction of its oil and shale gas reserves and MNCs like
Shell and ExxonMobil rushed in to make deals with the State owned PEMEX for
drilling and extraction of these gas reserves.
The most common method to extract
the gas is fracking which is filled with dangers of fire and even earthquakes. The
process involves a mixture of water sand and chemicals pumped through the
drilling wells at high pressure. This forces the natural gas to be forced out
from the pores in the shale bed. The gas then turns to the surface via the
wells.
(image courtesy- the Guardian)
Needless to say that the danger
of contamination of ground water and soil is very high although oil companies
vehemently deny it. The biggest enemy of environment is poverty. The towns in
Mexico and the ranching villages are soon becoming deserted. The people are
blackmailed or forced to either sell their land or become unwilling partners to
the oil companies. Already stories of environmental degradation and damages are
surfacing-
The oil spill in Tierra Blanca in
Veracruz contaminated part of Hondo River, turning the water to blood red. This
is no isolated event, just another one in the timeline after the Sonora oil
spill and the 40,000 barrel San Juan oil spill. Since the northern Mexico towns
were predominantly poor, people there hardly earn 300 to 400 pesos. The offer
of one million pesos is too lucrative to them. The towns are thus bought off
and turned to these fracking well monstrosity.
Mexico has a long history of
organized crime. These northern territories come under the Zeta country- run by
organised crime cartels. Pemex, the state owned Oil Corporation has already run
into losses due to the theft of oil and gas from the pipelines by such cartels.
The government has recently seen its worst crisis when 43 students were
abducted and feared killed by such a crime organization. Although the engineers
and workers of the MNCs are protected, there is hardly any protection offered
by the weak police force to the villagers. In 2012, headless torsos of 43 men
and women were found in the northern border town of Monterrey killed by the
rival crime cartel of “El Chapo” Guzman who is recently in the news for
escaping from a Mexican prison. Many have been forced to leave their land and
move to the cities adding to the burgeoning water and land crisis there.
Unless the government becomes
strong both financially and politically, Mexico is soon going to face a “
Environmental holocaust.”
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