“Oil is rubbish. » While oil exploitation must gradually stop in France by 2040, nearly a hundred people gathered this Saturday in Arcachon, in Gironde, to demand the cessation of a project of eight new drillings oil tankers in the region.
“+8 oil drilling for them, +3°C for all” could be read on the signs of the demonstrators gathered in front of the sub-prefecture at the call of the EELV party and the environmental organizations Greenpeace and Extinction Rébellion. This project is led by the Canadian group Vermilion Energy, holder until January 1, 2035 of a concession operated since the 1960s, in La Teste-de-Buch, near Arcachon.
An “ecological aberration”
Around fifty wells there currently produce around 1,500 barrels/day. After a month of public inquiry, the investigating commissioner recently issued a favorable opinion. The prefect of Gironde must now issue an order authorizing or refusing these eight new wells.
For Vital Baude, environmentalist municipal councilor of Arcachon, this project, “in the heart of a forest which suffered megafires” in the summer of 2022, is “an ecological aberration in a territory which is on the front line of climate change” . According to him, the construction and operation of these new wells would generate 3.7 million tonnes of CO2, “compared to the 10 tonnes emitted on average by each French person each year… we must say stop. »
“No more new oil and gas wells”
” The recommendations [scientifiques] is to no longer open any new oil and gas wells. (…) it applies internationally and it also applies in France,” defended Marie Toussaint, head of the Ecologist list in the next European elections, present at the rally. In 2017, the government passed a law providing for the gradual cessation of hydrocarbon exploitation by 2040.
At the beginning of December during a trip to Bordeaux, the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, stressed that it was not a question of “new exploitations” but “continued exploitation and drilling within the framework of a given exploitation several decades ago.” “I assume that this could go against common sense and at the same time, as long as we need oil, it is no worse for it to come from here than to have it come from the end of the world in buying it from dictatorships who then use this money sometimes to support movements that fight us,” he added.