Gazprom is not able to stop shale gas eploration in Romania, Poland and Lithuania

The world's most corrupt energy company Gazprom, in an alliance with various environmental campaigners (most probably financed by Gazprom), tries to stop the shale gas revolution reaching Europe, but that will not stop Chevron from intensifying its efforts in Romania, Poland and Lithuania:

Environmental campaigners, in an unlikely alliance of interests with Russian gas-export monopoly OAO Gazprom, have also held up investment in the shale industry. Chevron had its license revoked in Bulgaria last year after hundreds protested in Sofia over concerns fracking would pollute water and land.

A report in the corporate Gazprom Magazine said prospects for shale are undermined by lower reserves estimates, green protests and the harm to profits of low gas prices. “Europeans have no real alternative to cooperation with Russia,” it concluded.

That possibility hasn’t stopped Chevron. On top of three wells in Poland, the second-biggest U.S. oil company plans an exploration well in Romania, has begun work in Lithuania and been awarded a 1.6 million-acre license in Ukraine.

“While the shale gas revolution may not be on the same scale as what we have seen in the U.S., we are still confident of the opportunities,” MacDonald said by e-mail. “Unlike the U.S., in central Europe there’s little pre-existing geological data. The exploration activities we are currently undertaking will be important in assessing the resource potential.” Chevron is pledging to explore for as long as five years, he said.

That commitment is winning support from some governments.

“Romania, Poland and Lithuania are in favor of shale gas as these countries see the natural gas problem as more than just an issue of getting cheaper energy,” Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta said on July 18. “It’s important for us to have cheaper energy, especially because of its impact on the economy and the population, but more so to stop relying on imports from Russia, from Gazprom.”

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The end of the failed euro project is getting closer day by day

The final failure of the political euro project is getting closer day by day. And it is not only the eurozone countries that are being hurt:

A eurozone recession could almost halve Chinese growth this year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The IMF forecasts China's economy will grow by 8.2% this year - but warns that a recession in the eurozone could cut this to 4.2%.

It said Beijing should get ready to inject billions of dollars into the economy to fend off any downturn.

China's economy grew by 9.2% in 2011, but growth was slowed by Beijing to avoid over-expansion.

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Austerity programmes are worsening the situation in several EU member countries:

Romania's prime minister quit on Monday after a series of at-times violent nationwide protests against budget cuts and declining living standards, as deepening political turmoil fueled by Europe's prolonged economic crisis spreads across the Continent.

Thousand of Romanians have taken to the wintry streets of Bucharest and other cities in recent weeks to vent their anger at the center-right administration of Emil Boc, who has implemented tough austerity measures in an effort to shore up state finances.

Neighboring Slovakia, also hit by Europe's downturn, was shaken on Friday by the largest protests since the end of communism there in 1989, as people demonstrated against alleged government corruption against a backdrop of cuts to health care, transportation and other state services.

Such upheavals are increasingly calling into question the longer-term political viability of the kind of austerity programs prescribed by the European Union and International Monetary Fund for Europe's struggling and indebted nations.

In Greece, whose debt problems have dragged on the entire euro zone, politicians on Monday struggled to reach agreement on a set of painful steps required for the country to avoid default with a second, large international bailout package.

But the leader of the most powerful - and succesful - eurozone country, Germany, still keeps on repeating her mantra: "There is no crisis of the Euro itself, there is a debt crisis."

Frau Merkel - and her assistant M. Sarkozy and almost all other minor EU leaders - refuse to recognise that there would NOT be a euro/debt crisis of the kind we are now experiencing without the euro. But sooner or later they - or at least their successors - have will have to. And that will be the end of a failed political project.