Spiegel: Germany Balks on Natural Gas Bonanza

The fuel of civilization is usually found in unattractive places. Geologists discovered the biggest oil and natural gas reserves in the deserts of the Middle East and beneath the permafrost of Siberia. Countries in temperate Central Europe, on the other hand, have only modest reserves. One of them lies some 5,000 meters (16,000 feet) beneath the surface in Rotenburg/Wümme, an administrative district in the northwestern German state of Lower Saxony. 

The most recent well that was drilled into the natural gas field there is called "Bötersen Z11." The site, located next to a federal highway near the port city of Bremen, occupies about a hectare (2.5 acres) of asphalt-covered land surrounded by a green wire fence. A pipe about as thick as a tree trunk is protruding from the middle of the site, but nothing is coming out of it.

There isn't enough pressure in the field the pipe is sticking out of, and ExxonMobil, which operates the well, isn't surprised. Even during the planning stages, "Bötersen Z11" was a candidate for a process that engineering geologists refer to as "induced hydraulic fracturing," or "fracking" for short.  MORE