Midnight Sabotage with Transylvania's Anti-Fracking ActivistsNovember 26, 2013by Jim WickensThey even make this pun in Romania.

Do you think they're about to have sex? one of the activists whispers. I'm in Transylvania, in central Romania, crouched in the bushes with a bunch of hardcore anti-frackers in balaclavas, spying on a car that's crept to a halt close to where we are hiding. No, it must be the COPSyou can see the light from the mobile phone, another one says. Time to move on.

It has been more than an hour since the group started trashing equipment owned by the gas exploration company Prospectiuni, playing a game of cat and mouse with the security teams and police vehicles that are now sweeping the hilltops looking for us. Another light tears around the bend on the road, and the shout goes through the team to hide. I throw myself down in the cool, damp grass of a Transylvanian meadow. It's going to be a long night.

A village gathers to complain about fracking.

In recent weeks, the sleepy Saxon communities and protected forests of Sibiu County in Transylvania have become the battleground of a new war, one that has pitted gas exploration companies, the Romanian government, and international INVESTMENTfirms against a small band of environmental activists. The activists, who have come here from across Romania, are working side-by-side with local farmers to resist the gas and oil exploration they claim is taking place illegally on their land.

The Romanian gas company Romgaz has had a long-stated desire to explore the low-lying hills of Transylvania, but it's only this month that it has started exploration in earnest. Thirty-four-ton seismic testing trucksused by drilling companies to create artificial earthquakes in order to see what's under the groudsoon growled along the muddy tracks to the villages accompanied by cohorts of security guards and busloads of workers.

Today the villages and fields are laced with strips of ribbon, which stretch like spaghetti across the ancient landscape of beech forests, beehives, and the harvested stubs of cornfields. The ribbons INDICATE where the companies plan to lay their cables and plant the explosives for the seismic fracking tests. Locals told me that they awoke to find ribbons being laid across their land, with some even attached to their garden fences.

All the seismic tests are taking place inside Romanias largest EU Natura 2000 site, which is strange, given that the stated aim of the Natura 2000 program is "to assure the long-term survival of Europe's most valuable and threatened species and habitats." These remote communities now resemble a territory occupied by a hostile army. When I arrive in one village, I watch as a team of workers prepares a hole with dynamite a few yards from the village soccer pitch. On the high street, private security jeeps are parked up at a crossroads, black uniformed men filming and following our every move.