Fires still burn after shale gas protests in New Brunswick | Al Jazeera America

20.10.13

Fires still burn after shale gas protests in New Brunswick | Al Jazeera America: Canada's national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, charged into the area early Thursday, hoping to break up a weekslong protest where demonstrators blocked the roads, denying SWN Resources Canada, a Texas-based shale gas company, the chance to retrieve its testing equipment from a storage compound.

Of the people arrested, nine are expected to spend the weekend in jail. Police used pepper-spray and rubber bullets to enforce the court-ordered injunction, according to protesters, while officers seized a number of weapons, including guns, explosive devices and knives.

The conflict, whose dramatic images spread quickly through social media, has heightened tensions between New Brunswick's First Nations and the provincial government, and thrust the debate over the environmental impact of shale gas exploration back into the spotlight.