The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind the Gas Boom
It’s not only toxic – it’s driven by a right-wing billionaire who profits more from flipping land than drilling for gas.
Fracking, it turns out, is about producing cheap energy the same way the mortgage crisis was about helping realize the dreams of middle-class homeowners. For Chesapeake, the primary profit in fracking comes not from selling the gas itself, but from buying and flipping the land that contains the gas.
About Sharon Wilson
Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.
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Appreciated this article. As an energy student at Tulane, I follow these stories. I believe in free markets and I understand the scalability issue behind shifting our energy resources (ref. Robert Bryce’s ‘Power Hungry’ wherein he puts forth the argument for an eventual shift to nuclear energy using nat gas as a bridge fuel). There will always be winners and losers and informed and largely uninformed. In the end, it comes down to awareness building then supply and demand. This is a data point but if this article’s conclusion of an inflated nat gas market is ahead, the public will have to choose the next best alternative sooner – nuclear power.
Pete: I travel to Tulane on a fairly regular basis-I’d like to meet u with you some time to get your take on some of this stuff.
@Pete Solie: Saying that there will always be winners and losers sure sounds like a blaming the victim mentality. I’m certain that Aubrey McClendon could not agree more. With the “no regulation” mentality of our state (Texas), the idea of a push for more nuclear power plants doesn’t sound all that safe and exciting,either. They’ve fracked very near the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant in Glen Rose, TX. Or didn’t you know?
Seemed like a well written article. Lots of truth in there.
It’s a great article. I picked up the magazine this morning at the airpport. Aubrey is arrogant as ever. I like how the writer points out the conflict of ‘energy independence’ with not only CHK’s selling off large parcels of land at a huge profit to the Chinese, but also getting into bed with them and exporting LNG to China. Nice.
The Rolling Stone article and your inability to check facts are both appalling. The Rolling Stone article has been rightfully criticized for being a hack piece on an otherwise great American industry.
Educate yourselves, people.
http://www.energyindepth.org/a-rolling-stone-gathers-no-facts/
Wow! You seem a little testy there, Mike. You wouldn’t happen to work for CHK, would you?
If you are talking to me when you say, “Your inability to check facts…” I was not a part of the Rolling Stone article so fact checking it is not my job. I merely provided a link.
While we are talking about facts, someone from CHK told those poor people in Arlington that the flowback vapors are “just steam from water.” Is that an appalling statement made from lack of facts or just an appalling lie?
I will be posting about CHK’s response with a little bit of tape from the Houston PR conference.
Yet, you provided the link on a website devoted to smearing the entire industry.
No, I do not work for CHK. I simply prefer not to demonize an entire industry based on misinformation. You help to spread falsehoods and presumably have no remorse for the negative effects on the enormous benefits the production of natural gas provides both you and I.
Even the New York Post has written about the hack job Mr Goodell of Rolling Stone wrote:
http://m.nypost.com/p/blogs/capitol/another_shale_gas_slander_7jw4g3bT4DxgveUnISmkzK
I do appreciate you’re leaving my post on your site in the interest of information sharing. I do not wish to insult you or your readers. I apologize if I came off that way, for what it’s worth.
Fracking is a misunderstood process I happen to know a little about. I do work in the industry, and I understand some complications occur during the process. However, the Rolling Stone article is typical of extreme “fractivists” who have no interest in being intellectually honest.
I am open for a real discussion on the issue and would be fully prepared to learn from you if you are willing to reciprocate.
I will read on the vapor issue in Arlington.
Mike
What an interesting perspective you have. I’m especially entertained by your “no remorse” comment.
You do understand that when people are suffering from the operations of your company, I’m the one they call. In all my years of doing this, I have never seen anyone in your industry show any remorse no matter how egregious the crime. I have only seen that you are masters of denial.
I’m holding my breath waiting for Mike to finish reading about the venting flowback in Arlington. We are sick of this!
“Rightfully criticized as a hack job…”? By whom? Chesapeake?
The only negative comments I have seen are by EID but they are an industry mouthpiece who are employed to defend companies like Chesapeake.
Energy Policy Forum has a great point by point rebuttal of Chesapeake’s response which needs to be read. Looks to me like fact checking is a problem at Chesapeake not Rolling Stone.
http://energypolicyforum.com/
Mike ‘ole buddy–you are nothing but a “tool” of the O&G industry. That industry is accustomed to getting their way when ever they want to. They are a very ruthless bunch, when some ordinary citizens oppose their doings.
Ah yes. We’re all evil. Millions of imps employed by a devil, is that right?
Meanwhile, we imps contribute more to the well being of the American public than fractivists like yourself can comprehend. I work in an industry that amounts to its own national economic stimulus. According to the Federal Reserve, natural gas prices, which are at a 10 year low, could save U.S. consumers $20 billion on home energy bills in 2012. Total savings to the U.S. economy from low natural gas prices compared to Europe and Asia, will likely exceed $250 billion in 2012. That’s more than a $600 million stimulus daily.
There have been millions of natural gas wells drilled in the U.S. alone, and only a few cases of potential contamination due to fracking have been made public. Most of those have been debunked and proven that levels of methane were no different pre and post fracking. In other words, base lines of methane went unchanged after fracking was complete. Statistically, you are more likely to die in a plane crash, be struck by lightening, dealt a royal flush, or be hit by a meteorite than be effected in any way by the fracking process. If fracking were a manufacturing process, it’d be the most efficient manufacturing process the world has ever seen.
Thanks to evil billionaires you so love to hate, the American people enjoy the cheapest electricity and natural gas prices in the industrialized world. A company like CHK has invested $30 billion in the past three years to find clean, abundant and affordable natural gas.
So, keep demonizing all of us who work everyday to keep your energy costs low and who provide a clean, natural, cheap alternative to petroleum and petroleum by-products. This is a war you will not win. Of course, you already know that.
Being the moderator, you have my email address. Feel free to shoot me an email if you’d like more education on the good we all do. I know you aren’t interested in that sort of thing seeing as how it seems you are nothing more than the NG industry version of an ambulance chaser.
Your good buddy,
Mike
I won’t be emailing you. I like to be transparent so I prefer to keep all my conversations about natural gas in the open.
As the UT “study” points out, fracking is not the worst thing about fracking. There are so many impacts besides fracking–the whole process is dirty!
Nothing, not one thing you have written above is anything new. It’s all been said by industry over and over. Frankly, I wish you would make up some new bull.
It’s impossible for you guys to “get it” that most Americans do not think it is okay to take large sections of our country and create huge sacrifice zones. So what if you generate money? You are harming people in the process!!!
Most Americans understand that it is immoral to profit from another person’s misery!
Keep on. More and more people join the opposition everyday.
Atta way Mikie–now you come up with the “good cop” routine! PsyOps in action.
There is a disconnect. We cry out about environmental atrocities and they always respond with economics.
We say: Look at the water contamination!
They say: Look at the jobs!
We say: We are choking on the bad air!
They say: We donated to the United Way!
and on it goes.
If we pressure our lege enough, they will fund solar and wind. Then the conversation will change.
Mike,
You have spoken a great deal about education, so let’s examine that. You claim that the NG industry has worked very hard to provide an energy source that is cheap. Am I to understand that you truly believe that this industry has put its own interests aside and driven prices to 10 year lows, put NG companies on the brink of bankruptcy, jeopardized the jobs of thousands of people employed by the NG industry all out of the goodness of their hearts in order to give the American people cheap electricity? Now who is naive here?