Southwestern Energy

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Southwestern Energy is an independent energy company primarily engaged in natural gas and crude oil exploration, development and production within North America. The company website states that the company is "also focused on creating and capturing additional value through our natural gas gathering and marketing businesses, which we refer to as Midstream Services."

The company's current operations are focused on development of oil and natural gas in the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas, the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, the Brown Dense in Arkansas and Louisiana and other regions in North America.

Citizen protest

New Brunswick

Protests have taken place since spring 2013 in Canada's New Brunswick, when SWN Resources of Canada (owned by Houston-based Southwestern Energy) began exploring for natural gas deposits in the region. On September 30, members of the Elsipogtog First Nation Sock began blockading Route 134 near Rexton, and on Oct. 1 they issued an eviction notice to SWN. The tribal council planned to pass a resolution preventing the government and shale gas companies from continuing their work by reclaiming all unoccupied reserve land and giving it back to First Nations. SWN Resources went to the Court of Queen's Bench and successfully sought an injunction to end the protest.

On October 17, 2013, the police moved in to forcibly remove the blockade, using rubber bullets and tear gas against the activists, who used Molotov cocktails and set five police cars on fire, according to the officers. After the arrests, a number of "sympathy protests" sprang up in other parts of New Brunswick, as well as in southern Ontario and Winnipeg. Elsipogtog First Nation Councillor Robert Levi, who was among those arrested, said protesters will try to stay at the site despite the injunction, and they want a peaceful resolution to the dispute.

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• For a full list of SourceWatch articles on fracking, click here.