Fifth Panel: Hydrocarbons

Horacio Fernández, Director of the Institute for State and Participation Studies (IDEP) coordinated the fifth panel. He emphasised the importance of the discussion on non-conventional techniques of hydrocarbon production, considering that in Argentina, the meeting’s host country, 22% of gas production comes from fracking.

Felipe Gutiérrez, a member of the Southern Petroleum Observatory, from the province of Neuquén, summarised the continuities and ruptures in the energy policy of the current government led by Mauricio Macri vis-a-vis the governments of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: “Broadly speaking, Kirchnerism deepened neoliberal politics, and the references to counteracting neoliberalism within the discourse centred on the concept of national sovereignty were rather propagandistic. The purchase by the state of 51% of the shares of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales [YPF, the national oil company] did not mean a policy change. The difference is that it maintained low prices, while Macrism imposed a tariff hike seeking an abrupt transfer of resources from residential users to businesses, to keep the subsidy plans that had been launched in the year 2008.”

In addition, Gutierrez explained, “fracking is not a good business because the rentability of a well is already lost after the first year. Why would anyone get into this business? Because the profits are guaranteed by the state.”

It was then the turn of Héctor Jorge Nahuel, Werken [traditional authority] of the Mapuche Confederation of Neuquén, who referred to the social and cultural impacts of fracking and the hydrocarbon industry on the Mapuche and other indigenous communities of the region. The Vaca Muerta oil and gas field is located in Loma Campana, in Mapuche territory. “The euphoria for energy autonomy based on hydrocarbons occurs within a framework of absolute illegality and a media campaign that portrays us, the Mapuche activists, as terrorists,” he said. “The right to our land as indigenous territory is assured by international agreements embedded in the federal constitution of Argentina. However, in this context, our struggle is portrayed as something subversive. The disappearance of Santiago Maldonado [an Argentine social militant who disappeared during the repression by the National Gendarmerie to a demonstration led by Mapuche organisations on 1 August 2017] has reinstalled in the political agenda the long-standing conflict between the state and the native peoples. With the discourse of energy sovereignty, they try to silence the mobilisation of a people whose land has been invaded, broken and polluted. We believe that this conflict will escalate, because the state is not willing to respect rights that have already been recognised, opting instead for the militarisation of our territory”, he concluded.

The panel was closed by Luisa Fernanda Pedraza, from CENSAT Agua viva (Friends of the Earth Colombia), who explained how the advance of the extractivist frontier in her country was carried out in the context of war and environmental and fiscal flexibilisation for the benefit of transnational corporations. “In the framework of the peace process, local communities are discussing what we’re not supposed to challenge, which is the developmental and energy models, because the government seeks to implement a neoliberal energy policy and manipulate the communities affected by the armed conflict. That’s because oil revenues are needed to finance the peace agreement. But the anti-fracking struggle led by the Fracking-Free Colombia Alliance, which brings together more than 70 organisations, has an unprecedented element, which is the active participation of the largest trade union in the oil sector. Our struggle posits that Colombia will not achieve peace if it doesn’t achieve social justice and environmental justice,” explained Pedraza.

“There is an actor that must be taken into account in the Colombian context: neo-paramilitarism, which we believe is subordinate to the extractive model and reaffirms the imposition of the mining-energy dictatorship, not only through legal channels but also via paramilitary activities. The war for water is immediate, and therefore the mobilisation in defense of this common good is something that has allowed the convergence of the struggles of different sectors; but the popular organisations of the world, as in Colombia, are already realising that they must also unite to decide about what is underground,” said Pedraza closing her intervention.

Sixth Panel: Nuclear Energy

Rodolfo Aguiar, Secretary General of ATE Río Negro, moderated the sixth panel. He stressed the importance of the meeting as a space that enabled collective thinking about the energy mix from the perspective of the trade union movement. “During these two days of self-training, we went beyond what’s expected to be our role. We’re supposed to limit ourselves to discuss wages and conditions of employment,” Aguiar said. “I haven’t been put in jail for claiming better wages, but I was imprisoned when we went to the street to publicly say that Macri’s visit to our province was a farce to promote his Patagonia Plan [a programme aimed at economic development and the expansion of infrastructure in the six southern provinces, launched by the Argentine government in February 2017], and when we resisted Plan Castello [another programme to build infrastructure in the province of Rio Negro, to be financed with foreign financing and launched by the provincial governor in January 2017 ].” He added: “We should celebrate that we got a provincial law against the nuclear power plant that was going to be built by China, and that we managed to push back the national government of Mauricio Macri and the provincial government of Alberto Weretilneck.”

Next, Jesuana Aizcobe, a CNEA worker, pointed out that the contributions to national development made by the nuclear energy state agency in its 65 years of existence are extensive and not limited to electricity generation. She stated that “our contributions also include support to health services and agrarian production, among other sectors.” Aizcobe also argued that “Argentina is a dependent country, and in the nuclear sector the fight against dependence is expressed in the struggles led by the workers. And this government has deepened dependence, because its energy policy ignores all the impressive and autonomous technological development achieved by the country in the field of nuclear power. Today, we feel that nuclear energy is portrayed as something negative.” Aizcobe concluded by saying, “In the CNEA, we do not believe that the nuclear option should be the only one, but that our country must go to a diversified energy matrix, but that includes atomic energy because this form of energy generation has many benefits.”

Laura García Vázquez, a member of CTA-A in the province of Buenos Aires, stated the following: “We’re facing very complex problems that require complex solutions, but above all unity in action. We’ve been working hard around the issues of fracking and hydrocarbons, but the essential point in the energy policy field is sovereignty. For us Argentines, it’s very important to talk about energy sovereignty again, because in the case of the fifth nuclear plant that was intended to be installed in Rio Negro, foreign interests—in this case from China—were clearly prioritised, with a proposal of building large infrastructure packages without Argentinean participation.”

García Vázquez, who is also the editor of the media collective, Libres e Iguales [“The Free and Equal”], added: “If we take a purely environmentalist position, when we’re faced with negative impacts we will say that we don’t want them. In the case of fracking and open-pit mega-mining, the profits are amply exceeded by the environmental costs, and the worst thing is that the profit doesn’t remain in the country. Nuclear energy gets very bad press; when people think about nuclear plants, they immediately think about accidents or terror attacks, or even nuclear war. Nuclear generation has been discredited to the point of exaggeration. If we had a free and sovereign country, we’d have to evaluate the costs and benefits of each energy option. Let’s think about Bahía Blanca, which is one of the cities with the highest unemployment, despite having the Petrochemical Pole, because industrialisation doesn’t always bring jobs in the quantity and quality we required.” García Vázquez concluded her presentation by stating, “We must think of a diversified energy mix that guarantees basic rights for all Argentines, and for that, we need to find out what tools capitalism and neoliberalism are using today.”

After each round of contributions, the moderator opened the floor to questions and comments. The sixth panel attracted the greatest number and diversity of interventions, with a very heated debate on the pros and cons of nuclear energy from the perspective of democracy and energy sovereignty and the meaning of the concept of just transition.