One year after France gave the green light to energy companies to extract natural gas through the controversial practice of “fracking”, the government was forced to backtrack after public outcry.
GDF Suez will use a new deal worth three billion dollars to supply electricity to Chilean company Emel from 2012 to 2026 to reinforce its position in Latin America, where the French utility group has been present since the nineties.
French energy companies Total and GDF Suez will respectively take 17 percent and 8 percent of the Kazakh gas field project Khvalynskoye. The deal is supposed to be signed during an official visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Kazakhstan.
The European Commission has fined France's GDF Suez and Germany's E.ON 553 million euros each for agreeing to stay out of each other's markets, in breach of EU rules.
GDF Suez 
