About eight hundred kilometers to the north of the Greek standoff, the farming village of Pungesti, Romania, was gearing up for a showdown against Chevron and its plans to launch the country’s first shale gas exploration well.9 In the fall of 2013, farmers built a protest camp in a field, carted in supplies that could hold them for weeks, dug a latrine, and vowed to prevent Chevron from drilling. As in Greece, the response from the state was shockingly militarized, especially in such a pastoral environment. An army of riot police with shields and batons charged through the farm fields
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