RFI: Gasland's director tours France as anti-fracking law faces uncertain future

France passed a law banning fracking, a controversial process of extracting oil and gas out of shale rock, in 2011. But the law is being challenged in court, and activists are worried that oil companies are starting to drill conventional wells now, in anticipation of the ban being overturned.

This is something that surprised Josh Fox, the American director of Gasland, the Oscar-nominated documentary about the US fracking industry, as he toured France to promote his latest film.

"What I had heard from the president [Francois Hollande] was that he was not going to allow this in his term, so I'm confused. He has to explain this," he said last week in Jouarre, about 65 kilometres west of Paris, where the American oil company Hess has been drilling a well since August.  MORE