World Water Day is accompanied by the word "fracking", the gas extraction technique that revolutionized the US energy market. But sooner or later the decline would come: several rock formations rich in "shale gas" are depleted. At the same time, the advance of prospecting for the gas potential locked up in any part of the world testifies that this panacea was a mirage. Many of the projects are abandoned.

However, can this effect of rise and decline be extrapolated to Europe and especially to Spain? Neither the geology, nor the distribution of the territory, nor our interaction in agriculture, livestock or the misunderstood cultural tourism of the second country on the planet with more Biosphere Reserves and World Heritage Sites (UNESCO), are comparable. In its latest report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) states that fracking "could become clean", that says it all.

The best known problem is the exorbitant consumption of water and its contamination. In Spain some 15 million people are supplied from aquifers. The IEA suggests that the method should be banned in such places. No common sense business , government or citizen, would allow it, as the IEA indicates.

As time goes by the minimum profitable price rises in the US, the fields are abandoned. The best extraction areas have not recovered since 2012. The promise of job creation work fades, they were taken away from renewable energies, energy efficiency.

Another hazard is seismicity induced by the pressure of injected wastewater. This seismicity produced by human activity is already a documented field of programs of study which is taken seriously in the USA. Unfortunately not in Spain. The Netherlands, Poland or Great Britain are already suffering from it. The water from hydraulic fracturing is contaminated and its purification is costly; the most economical way is to force an abduction by means of subway injection under the aquifers. In this way the water presses the fractures in the crust, triggering seismicity. We must reckon with the influence of remote earthquakes on the faults thus weakened. The Columbia study indicates that strong earthquakes on the other side of the planet can trigger earthquakes near injection wells.

The most well-known problem of fracking is the exorbitant consumption of water and its contamination.

Hydraulic fracturing opens new doors to Spain's deficient energy balance sheet

Oklahoma holds the seismic record (5.7) of human origin due to these practices, Colorado or Texas know them. In Europe, in addition to the Polish and UK earthquakes, the Netherlands, after thousands of complaints, has allocated hundreds of millions of euros to repair the damage caused by the Groningen earthquakes.

The IEA believes that a 7% increase in investment would be sufficient for a safer process. But the worst thing is to continue to avoid providing funds from research to understand this fragile interface, between the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, where we live. We have taken possession of it, but we do not know it and even less can we control it. The power of water remains a mystery.

Hydraulic fracturing opens new doors to Spain's deficient energy balance, but it should not penalize other sectors. Earth sciences are increasingly seen as disciplines practiced by qualified scientists to provide us with raw materials or energy and efficient weapons with which to resist the onslaught of Nature in the face of our aggressive actions. The human environment and Nature must not be destroyed. Fracking, as the IEA points out, could become clean, a feasibility that we must discuss without prejudice.