Capturing the past, making unconventional energy future: exploring coal bed methane in France (Lorraine)
Résumé
This paper questions the relationship between the materiality of energy resources and the political issues that emerge from their commodification (Hecht, 2012 ; Mitchell, 2013). In 2011, as an answer to growing local oppositions to shale gas, a French national law forbad hydraulic fracturing. An Australian ‘junior’ company took advantage of this situation to position coal bed methane (CBM) as an ‘alternative’ to shale gas. Since 2002, it has developed a drilling concept – horizontal well with multi-branches, to get access to CBM in an old coal mining area. This local experiment influenced the French parliamentary debate about unconventional gas, contributing in moving it from a matter of un-ruled resources to a narrower technological matter. This conveyed the company the status of a front runner exploring a political ‘alternative’ pathway (without fracturing) towards unconventional gas. We analyse this so-called political ‘alternative’ with respect to the local processes of adjusting the drilling technology to the materiality of CBM in Lorraine. As a diffused energy resource, CBM has to be concentrated to find economic value. In our case study, “to concentrate” consists in capturing the past - the company put hand on one century of public mining archives to foster its drilling operations and to adjust oil technologies to the specificities of the CMB in Lorraine (moist coal). This sociotechnical inquiry allows us to explore and to discuss some of the political issues induced by the “concentration” of a diffused energy resource, especially with respect to the local heritages and knowledge. Hence, the making of “unconventional energy future” may be discussed as rooted in processes of capturing and reassembling the past for the benefit of an emerging European gas player.