So why aren't they fracking in France or Poland?
If European governments and their people were not so dumb, or so woke, they could develop their own shale oil and gas, become energy independent and tell Putin to f-off.
In the USA -- specifically in Texas in the early 2000s and later 6,200 feet under my butt here in southwest Pennsylvania south of Pittsburgh -- a happy combo of horizontal drilling, fracking technology, high-tech, free markets, private ownership of land and minerals and entrepreneurial courage created the shale oil and gas bonanza of the 21st century.
Extracting the oceans of (organic) oil and gas that are trapped in shale -- which is hard as granite -- is an expensive and complicated miracle, but our legal system and (mostly) free enterprise system made it possible.
The United States has the world’s largest shale oil deposits. But large and small shale deposits — which were created hundreds of millions of years ago — are loaded with oil and/or natural gas energy and underlie parts of virtually every country on Earth, including in Europe.
An article and a map.
There’s no reason Europe couldn’t use fracking to develop its own shale deposits.
But its governments and laws and people are too dumb or woke to allow the same energy boom that made the USA energy independent again to happen under their backyards.
Too bad for them. Along with cheaper oil and gas, it would free them from dependence on thugs like Putin or the feudal autocracies of OPEC.
This is a good lesson about the fracking revolution and why it has not happened in Europe.