The black gold of Alsace

The activity near the Rhine on the German border does not amount to an oil boom. The region provides 1 percent of French oil production, which is just under 2 percent of European output. Nonetheless, 13 wells are pumping, two exploration permits have recently been granted and more are being reviewed by the French administration.

Oil production in Alsace started in the 18th century and peaked in the 1920s, when more than 650 wells and four refineries supplied 5 percent of French oil needs and provided work for 3,000 people around Merkwiller-Pechelbronn, 50 km north of Strasbourg.

Reminders of that period, including these bottled samples of oil by-products, are on display at the French Oil Museum.

"For us, Alsace was a sleeping beauty," said Stephane Touche, whose company Millennium Geo-Venture holds the two recent exploration permits and has applied for five more and whose cutting samples are pictured.

Among its advantages, the region's oil reserves are already completely mapped and are very close to the surface. Oil leaks have long provided a favourite mud-bath playground for wild boars in the Alsatian forest.

The French authorities have not made oil exploration any easier in recent years however. France banned hydraulic fracking in 2011, and fears about shale gas among environmentalists and the public have made even conventional oil drilling suspect.

Last year, a request by U.S. firm Hess Corp to explore for shale oil and gas in the Paris basin, France's main production area, was rejected by the government despite assurances it would not use fracking.