Large Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Well
If didn't take the oil and gas companies long to find a way to profit by the Ukraine crisis. It was also easy for them to find a willing water carrier in their pocket full of paid for US republicans. Two bills have been introduced:
HR-6 in the house and
S-2083 in the senate both by republicans. The so called purpose of the bills is to send US natural gas overseas to make Europe independent of Russian oil and gas.
Naomi Klein writing at The Guardian equates this move to the Shock Doctrine or disaster capitalism on steroids:
For this ploy to work, it's important not to look too closely at details. Like the fact that much of the gas probably won't make it to Europe – because what the bills allow is for gas to be sold on the world market to any country belonging to the World Trade Organization.
Or the fact that for years the industry has been selling the message that Americans must accept the risks to their land, water and air that come with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in order to help their country achieve "energy independence". And now, suddenly and slyly, the goal has been switched to "energy security", which apparently means selling a temporary glut of fracked gas on the world market, thereby creating energy dependencies abroad.
And most of all, it's important not to notice that building the infrastructure necessary to export gas on this scale would take many years in permitting and construction – a single LNG terminal can carry a $7bn price tag, must be fed by a massive, interlocking web of pipelines and compressor stations, and requires its own power plant just to generate energy sufficient to liquefy the gas through super-cooling. By the time these massive industrial projects are up and running, Germany and Russia may well be fast friends. But by then few will remember that the crisis in Crimea was the excuse seized upon by the gas industry to make its longstanding export dreams come true, regardless of the consequences to the communities getting fracked or to the planet getting cooked.
Let's expose these bills for what they really are: a pay back to the fossil fuel industries that are destroying our planet. Their approval would lock in and increase already deadly carbon emissions and pollution.
Tell the EPA to investigate Fracking water contamination