...There are a series of externalized costs to [ConocoPhillips'] size and profits...They don't have a good safety record for their workers or the environment, with over $266 million in payouts through the courts due to environmental and safety infractions since 2000...that did not stop their corporate reps from trying to convince locals in San Martín César, northern Colombia, that they would carry out fracking 'responsibly and safely'...

On September 27, 2017, ConocoPhillips held a....type of town-hall meeting...I was present at the invite of local organization CORDATEC (the Corporation in Defense of Water, Territory and Ecosystems). The town hall meeting is a requirement for ConocoPhillips to apply for an environmental license for unconventional fossil fuel exploration...local activists...didn't want to miss out on the chance to...voice their disagreement with the project. But we were also acutely aware that just by being there we were legitimizing a supposed process of 'consultation' with the community...ConocoPhillips were completing a formality – they were not asking for feedback on locals' concerns in order to take them into account...

This empty formality seemed almost state-sanctioned. There was a representative from the national licensing agency (ANLA) present, Laura Torres......ConocoPhillips'...engineer, Andres Rojas...did his best to convince the people...that fracking is a good thing...Local activist Carlos Andres Santiago pointed out, "If fracking is so great, if it brings so many benefits...then how come in Australia five out of seven states have banned it? Why is it that a month ago in Ireland the President signed into law the banning of fracking? Why is it that Germany and France are moving towards banning fracking?"

...They may face difficult odds, but...local activists are organizing to hold a popular consultation – a constitutional mechanism in Colombia that allows municipalities to hold referenda on land use. Nine municipalities in the country have already used the mechanism to ban mining and fossil fuel extraction in their territories...Unfortunately, while popular consultations are a powerful tool...that communities are using to their advantage to stop destructive mining and fossil fuel extraction, there are legal processes currently ongoing – pushed by a mining company – which could see the popular consultations become legally toothless...

...One of the most significant milestones of San Martin's anti-fracking campaign was the large protests in 2016 to stop machinery from accessing a test site – but locals have paid a high price in the form of stigmatization, police brutality and criminalization, and even death (though it's very hard to prove the corporation could be behind the suspicious deaths of local activists)...