NAVARRA is already the third community to declare itself free of fracking after Cantabria and La Rioja. The fracking boom is North American, it is true that it has revolutionized the energy market in the USA, but neither the geology of Spain, nor the distribution of the territory, nor our way of interacting with it, of living with it, of developing agriculture, livestock or tourism, is comparable.

In addition, the discussion in the USA is open, the silence regarding this technique on the part of our authorities is an accomplice of the obscurantism and confusion that accompany this technique; we must speak out and debate, the International Energy Agency (IEA) states that fracking, extraction of shale gas, by hydraulic fracturing, could become clean, that says it all about what we must move forward with respect to this technique. As we saw in the European Parliament's discussion of November 2012, stricter codes will be needed to force producers to adopt safe technologies. In the case of Spain, the legislation is still too complex and permissive.

The risk is comparable to that of a car driving at 250 per hour on the freeway; nothing may happen and you may reach your destination sooner, but if it does...

The most well-known problem associated with hydraulic fracturing is water consumption and contamination. It takes about 20 million liters at high pressure per well to create the fractures in the rock that will release the natural gas. How to dispose of the contaminated water used in the process is another concern. Hydraulic fracturing could also contaminate drinking water supplies and increase air pollution. Concerns about increasing greenhouse gas emissions due to the inevitable methane releases could be critical.

According to the IEA, in most cases the problem is not contamination of aquifers. Hydraulic fracturing usually takes place hundreds of meters below them and it is easy to stop the fractures from propagating. High pressures are needed to break the rock. If you stop applying pressure, the fracturing stops. Even so, there are some hydraulic fracturing operations that are relatively close to drinking water levels, and the IEA suggests that it would make sense to ban the method in such places. The Ribera de Navarra would fall squarely within this group.

Still, significant levels of methane, the main component of natural gas, have been found in drinking water reservoirs located near some hydraulic fracturing sites. Environmental advocates suggest that this process, which creates fractures in the shale, could open a pathway for natural gas and other chemicals to reach aquifers and mix with drinking water. The IEA says water contamination is more likely to be caused by extractors building inadequate wells to conduct natural gas.

Another major hazard associated with fracking is related to induced seismicity. This subject of seismicity produced by human activity forms a vast field of programs of study well documented for decades in geological sciences and is taken very seriously in countries like the USA. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Spain.

Although even in expert circles it may seem like science fiction, artificial earthquakes have been a reality for decades. Especially in the last few decades. It has long been considered, and increasingly understood, that earthquakes can be induced by the accumulation of water in reservoirs, changes in climatic conditions, mining..., but above all by the injection of fluids into subway formations.

Water used and extracted for fracking is contaminated by chemicals and must be disposed of in a manner that avoids contamination of freshwater sources. It cannot be refund into rivers or lakes. The most economical is to force a geologic rapture by injecting it subway beneath aquifers that supply drinking water. This water then lubricates the faults and increases their fluid pressure, and even if they are inactive, it triggers seismicity even in areas hitherto classified as non-seismic.

Today, thanks to programs of study American, German and British scientists, we also know that remote earthquakes can also influence these faults, which have been weakened by human activities, especially water injection disposal at a certain depth. A new study by Columbia University scientists published in July in Science indicates that strong earthquakes on the other side of the planet can trigger minor tremors near injection wells in the middle of an area not prone to seismicity.

It is now explained that large magnitude earthquakes such as those in Chile in February 2010 (8.8 Mw), Sumatra in 2012 (8.6 Mw) or Japan in 2011 (9.1 Mw) were responsible for other earthquakes triggered in areas as far away as Oklahoma, with its now recognized man-made seismic record of magnitude 5.7 due to these practices, also in Colorado or Texas, but all with a common factor: they are areas subjected to high stress caused by injections of contaminated water from oil activity or fracking.

The 2012 IEA study concludes that the hydraulic fracturing process, like many other industry practices involving hazardous chemicals, can be relatively safe if properly legislated. The IEA estimates that the measures needed to make the process safer would increase the cost of an average well by 7 percent.

In Navarra we still do not know if we have finished a seismic episode related to extreme fluid pressure changes under our feet. Let us hope that with time governments will recognize that anthropogenic damage can become a reality; and worse if we continue to avoid contributing funds from research that we should dedicate to the understanding of this fragile interface, between the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, in which we live. We have taken possession of it, we have turned it into a natural or industrial heritage, but we hardly know it, we do not know how it reacts, and even less how we can control it.