RENEE MONTAGNE, Host: As Eleanor Beardsley reports, much of the opposition is fueled by what the French see happening in the U.S.</s>ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: Unidentified Man: Whoa. Jesus Christ.</s>ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: For those who missed the documentary, shocking excerpts like this one, showing flames coming out of a man's kitchen faucet, were rerun on the nightly news. France is said to contain large reserves of shale gas and last year the French government granted research licenses to several companies to explore them. But the government has been forced to backtrack because of a groundswell of opposition to the method, from environmentalists and the public.</s>FRANCOIS FILLON: (Foreign language spoken).</s>ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: For NPR news, I'm Eleanor Beardsley in Paris.
Lawmakers in France's lower house of parliament have voted to ban a controversial gas and oil drilling technique. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is widely used in the United States, but environmentalists say it can pollute ground water.