Overview articles:

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A brief history of fracking:
The plot against fracking:  How cheap energy was killed by Green lies and Russian propaganda.  [Scroll down]  When the shale gas revolution first came along, some environmentalists welcomed it, and rightly so.  It "creates an unprecedented opportunity to use gas as a bridge fuel to a twenty-first-century energy economy that relies on efficiency, renewable sources, and low-carbon fossil fuels such as natural gas," wrote Senator Tim Wirth, a prominent environmentalist.  And so it has proved: the country that adopted shale gas first and most — the United States — is the country that lowered its carbon dioxide emissions first and most, because gas displaced coal, a much higher-carbon fuel.  But then the vested interests got to work.  Renewable energy promoters panicked at the thought of cheap and abundant gas.  Their business model was predicated on the alleged certainty that prices would rise as fossil fuels ran out, making subsidised wind and solar power look comparatively cheap.  David Cameron's coalition government produced three projections about what might happen to gas prices: that they would rise fast, medium or slow.  In fact they fell, a possibility the government had entirely ignored.  It is hard to recall now just how sure almost everybody was in 2008 that natural gas was running out.  Its price had risen as gas fields in North America and the North Sea began to run dry.  Peak gas was coming even sooner than peak oil or peak coal.  Yet in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas, something was stirring.

Harris claims she 'made clear' her position on fracking in 2020 — transcript shows another story.  Vice President Kamala Harris doubled down in her first interview since ascending to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket that she would not ban fracking if elected, claiming she made "clear" where she stood on fracking during the 2020 election.  "No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking.  As vice president, I did not ban fracking.  As president, I will not ban fracking," Harris said.  Before Harris dropped her bid for president in 2019 and joined President Biden's ticket, she said in a CNN town hall "there's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking" on her first day in office.

Team Harris Swears Kamala Won't Kill Fracking, But Will Anyone Believe Them?  Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign has said she no longer endorses a ban on fracking, but political strategists and energy experts say the sudden policy shift will do little to move the needle with key voters in November.  Harris said in 2020 there is "no question" she would end fracking if elected president, but her campaign recently told The Hill she no longer wants to outlaw the practice after videos of her endorsing a ban resurfaced following President Joe Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 race.  The campaign can walk back Harris' old fracking position as it pleases, but it likely won't be enough to allay the concerns of crucial voting blocs — particularly more rural, blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania — that Harris may wage war on the industry or otherwise escalate Biden's climate agenda to their detriment if elected, political strategists and energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Enviromoonbat Conundrum:  Lithium From Fracking.  Great news for enviromoonbats: a new source has been found for the lithium that is required in massive quantities for the glorified golf carts they want to force us into.  Now the bad news:  it comes from fracking wastewater. [...] Fracking provides clean and cheap natural gas, but possibly due to its effectiveness, it is haram in the liberal religion.  Nuclear energy provides affordable electricity without allegedly harmful carbon emissions.  Liberals oppose it, because it too is haram.  Whether our moonbat overlords will exploit the Marcellus Shale is doubtful.

Alarm on Energy.  Fifty years ago, in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, the Arab members of OPEC initiated an oil embargo against the United States.  The boycott was retribution for America's support of Israel during its brief war against Egypt and Syria.  What was true in 1973 remains true in the wake of Hamas's brutal terror attack on Israel on October 7: America's national strength depends on the availability of cheap, abundant, reliable energy.  Our national security, and that of our allies, depends on energy security.  Energy is the economy.  We forget these realities at our extreme peril.  Fortunately, some things that were true a half-century ago are no longer so.  Over the past decade or so, the geopolitics of energy have shifted dramatically in favor of the U.S., due mainly to the shale revolution.  Instead of relying on oil imports, the U.S. has become a huge exporter of both oil and natural gas.

More fracking, please.
Natural gas supply is critically low in Texas.  Are rolling gas outages next?  As Texas electric plants slowly come back online during below-freezing temperatures across the state, natural gas has become the latest concern, as that supply is now critically low.  Atmos Energy, the gas utility in North Texas, texted customers an emergency alert on Wednesday [2/17/2021] asking them to reduce usage.

The science is settled:  Fracking makes America strong and healthy.  Despite what anti-oil and gas activists claim, hydraulic fracturing — fracking — has proven beneficial for the environment, the economy and human health.  Spurring record oil and natural gas production, the technology has helped to improve air quality, reduce emissions, create well-paying jobs and even save lives.  Record U.S. natural gas production stemming from the widespread adoption of fracking has meant an incredible decline in CO2 emissions and a substantial improvement in overall air quality.  Between 2005 and 2017, U.S.-marketed natural gas production increased by more than 54 percent.  Over this same period, natural gas' share of American electricity generation grew from about 19 percent to over 31 percent, while CO2 emissions from electricity generation fell by 28 percent.

America has quietly become the global oil superpower.  Will the courts stop that too?  Yesterday [4/10/2019], President Trump was in Houston, touting his new plan to expedite oil pipeline construction and permitting for oil and gas extraction, two vital infrastructure projects that have been hampered by liberal states and held up by activist judges.  While the media has barely covered it and many Americans take our prosperity and energy production for granted, it's worth reviewing and quantifying the magnitude of what the shale oil boom has done for this country over the past few years.

Chart of the Day shows annual US oil production from 1920 to 2018.  From the previous peak of 3.5 billion barrels in 1970, conventional oil production steadily declined and fell below 2 billion barrels during the seven-year period from 2004-2010 during a period when concerns about "peak oil," rising gas prices that nearly tripled from January 2002 to September 2005, CO2 emissions and dependence on foreign oil motivated Congress to enact the Renewable Fuel Standard in 2005 and expand it in 2007.  But then the technology-fueled Great American Shale Revolution supercharged US oil production, which doubled from about 2 billion barrels in 2011 to slightly more than 4 billion last year.  That eye-popping 2X increase in US oil production in only seven years is arguably the most remarkable energy success story in US history, maybe in world history.

The most important scientific breakthrough you probably never heard of.  If this post in Watts Up With That? is correct, an inadvertent, serendipitous scientific discovery is responsible for reshaping the modern world of geopolitics to America's advantage — and nobody noticed.  Fracking is usually credited with being the critical technology for the reshaping to which I refer: the rather sudden conversion of the United Sates from a huge net energy importer to (currently) self-sufficient, and clearly heading toward a major net energy exporter.  This is far more than a simple balance-of-trade issue, through that is very important.  It even transcends the millions of jobs and economic prosperity that has blessed the United States.  We and our allies are now almost free of the economic extortion of oil exporters, that started in 1973 with the first oil boycott, gas lines, and soaring prices.

The Parade of Impending Catastrophes.  Fracking is a technique of fracturing rock to release natural gas and oil.  The environmentalists hate it, mostly because burning natural gas and oil adds CO2, the supposed cause of global warming, to the atmosphere.  But fracking helps with the former impending catastrophe of running out of oil.  So that is another example of a new impending catastrophe fighting an old impending catastrophe.  It also works in reverse.  Running out of oil would fight global warming.

Why natural gas from Putin's Russia has to be imported to New England.  U.S. exports of natural gas have soared in recent years.  It's one of the most conspicuous examples of how the fracking boom has enhanced our energy security.  Driven by production in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale, the Lone Star State is an energy juggernaut, providing affordable energy for Texas families while helping our allies meet their demands for cleaner energy.  As a result, the U.S. Energy Information Administration recently announced that in 2017, for the first time since 1957, the U.S. exported more natural gas than it imported.  Yet, even as we become a global energy superpower, political barriers prevent us from maximizing the benefits of the shale revolution.

More Fracking, Fewer Earthquakes.  Oklahoma has a long history of seismicity, but, since 2013, the Sooner State has seen a significant increase in the number of earthquakes within its borders.  This spate of earthquakes has led to public confusion as to whether hydraulic fracturing, commonly called "fracking," is the direct cause of these earthquakes, with some state lawmakers even calling for an outright moratorium on fracking back in 2015, despite roughly 20 percent of the jobs in the state being supported by oil and natural gas development.  A new analysis of Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) data undertaken by Energy in Depth shows the amount of monthly earthquakes in the Sooner State has decreased 86 percent from its peak in June 2015.  Concurrently, there has been an 11 percent increase in oil production and 81 percent increase in the number of operation oil rigs in the state over the past calendar year.  These numbers help reinforce what the scientific literature has long shown:  Fracking is not the cause of the increases in induced seismicity.

Seven Reasons America Should Pursue Energy Dominance.  Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the innovations behind our shale revolution, have been the catalysts for America to become the world's largest producer of natural gas and petroleum since 2013. For the decade 2007-16, U.S. crude oil production rose 75% to 8.9 million barrels a day.  Over the same period, marketed production of natural gas rose 40%, to 78.7 billion cubic feet per day.  America remains a net importer of energy, but perhaps not for long.  In its January 2017 Annual Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration found that under most scenarios, the U.S. will be a net exporter of energy by 2026, the first time this has happened since 1953.

Say, Whatever Happened To 'We Can't Drill Our Way To Lower Prices'?  The Energy Information Administration projects that, next year, U.S. oil production will average almost 10 billion barrels a day, which would beat the previous record of 9.6 billion in 1970.  What's more, a quarter of this production is coming from one oil field:  the Permian Basin in West Texas.  Those "obscene" industry profits?  They've fallen as well.  ExxonMobil's (XOM) revenue in 2016 was about half what it was in 2011.  In its most recent quarter, the company earned $3.4 billion — or 78 cents share.  In the same quarter in 2011 it earned $10.7 billion, or $2.18 a share.  Oil companies for a time even had to borrow money to pay dividends.  Low oil prices have also led to a sharp drop in the taxes paid by the industry to the federal government.  In 2016, the federal government collected about $6 billion in royalties, rental costs, and other fees from oil production on federal lands.  That's down from $14 billion in 2013.  Now Shell is saying that it's bracing for low oil prices forever.

Enjoying Record Low Gas Prices?  Thank a Fracker!  As recently as 2010, American energy producers were pumping around five million barrels of crude oil a day.  Today that number is over nine million, and is expected to top 10 million next year.  From there, no one is making estimates.  That's because the fracking revolution — the horizontal drilling for miles into the oil-rich shale deposits that were always there, and the "fracking" protocol mixing sand, water, and a few lubricating chemicals that allows those shale deposits to be extracted profitably — is pushing gas prices down and could put OPEC out of business.

Even Shale's Secondary Effects Are Staggering.  Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal well drilling have given American companies access to vast new reserves of oil and gas, and have dramatically increased the production of hydrocarbons here in the United States.  Since 2010, the U.S. has added roughly 5 million barrels of oil per day, and natural gas production is up roughly 33 percent over that same time period.  The effects of this energy revolution have been felt the world over — they've brought gasoline prices down for American drivers while remaking the global oil market.  But here in the U.S., they've been an enormous boon to an industry most Americans are likely unfamiliar with:  petrochemicals.

Is U.S. Fracking Killing OPEC?  Just three and a half years ago, the price for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude peaked at $110.62 a barrel.  At the time, President Obama was pushing Americans to conserve and warning, "we can't drill our way out of the problem."  Turns out, we could.  Today, oil prices are struggling to rise above $50 a barrel, thanks in large part to vast new supplies of crude on the market from American frackers.  They've used technology to dramatically slash costs, so OPEC can no longer control the global market price.

Air Quality and Industrial Sand (Frac Sand) Mining.  Air quality is a high priority with all industrial sand mining companies and policymakers in areas near industrial sand operations. They aim to protect the public from hazardous levels of small particles of silica dust.  These particles, when present in unsafe concentrations, can cause health problems such as asthma and silicosis.  Silicosis is a serious but preventable lung ailment that can affect workers in industries with high exposure to silica dust.  Although air quality is an important concern that must be addressed, the issue is often raised by mining opponents as a way to impede the permitting of industrial sand facilities.  Mining opponents often merely assert these facilities will hurt air quality, and seemingly no amount of scientific evidence will persuade them to believe otherwise.  When not supported by scientific evidence, these allegations are problematic.

America's Path to Greatness:  Border Adjust Oil.  Shale oil is almost a uniquely USA geological phenomenon.  Total worldwide shale oil reserves are estimated to be 4.8 trillion barrels, of which 1 trillion is recoverable, with 77% is located in the USA.  For comparison, conventional worldwide oil reserves are 1.3 trillion barrels.  We could be completely energy independent by 2020 — if, and only if, markets are not manipulated by totalitarian oil producing regimes.

Take Back Al Gore's Nobel And Give It To The Fracking Industry.  U.S. output of so-called greenhouse gases continues to decline, a new report shows.  Even so, global warming activists are likely to be disappointed.  The drop has nothing to do with their pet cause, alternative energy.  That's right.  The Environmental Protection Agency's yearly greenhouse gas emissions report noted that after rising slightly in 2013 and 2014, greenhouse gas output fell in 2015 — the most recent full year for which data are available. [...] For all this progress, we can thank the fracking business, which has given U.S. industry and homes access to massive amounts of cheap, relatively clean natural gas.

Fracking Protesters Are Putin Puppets.  The much anticipated intelligence report which concluded that Russia tried to influence the recent presidential election had another startling, yet widely ignored, conclusion:  The Russian government promotes anti-fracking propaganda in the United States. [...] The science on fracking is pretty clear.  Compared to burning coal or oil, natural gas is preferable for the planet.  (Ideally, U.S. energy policy should focus on expanding nuclear power instead of fossil fuels.)  Concerns over methane or other chemical leaks can be ameliorated with better engineering practices.  Similarly, any worries over earthquakes could be addressed by injecting wastewater into the ground in places where there are no preexisting faults.  Additionally, fracking is clearly in America's national interest.

The coming Trump administration's yuuge transformational opportunity.  [Scroll down] Now here's where it gets really, really interesting from a geopolitical point of view.  The Saudi regime is headed toward a crisis.  Their receipts from oil have been cut in half, roughly, so now they are covering half of their bills, roughly.  There have been plenty of rumors flying about the Saudis pushing OPEC to restrict production to drive up prices.  But even without any new discoveries, American frackers can fairly quickly ramp up production if OPEC succeeds in raising prices, at the expense of market share.  And because American engineers and managers never stop finding a better way, fracking is getting cheaper and better as time goes by.  Now the Saudi Royal Family, who number in the thousands, have justified their appropriation of oil wealth for lives of indolence and luxury by essentially claiming to use it to spread Wahhabi Islam around the world.  And in that, they have succeeded.  Now that we don't really need their oil in America, and can start replacing their exports elsewhere with our own supplies, we can tell them to stop funding the spread of violent jihad's religious infrastructure.

The Shale Revolution Has Been a Giant Boon to Pennsylvania's Economy.  Pennsylvania, currently the second-largest producer of natural gas in the country, would have lost, according to the USCC report, $13 billion in state gross domestic product (GDP), $7.2 billion in labor income, and more than 117,000 jobs if this energy revolution never came to be.  Of the total costs, $4.5 billion in lost GDP, $2.3 billion in labor income, and 27,500 jobs would come directly from the oil and gas industry's extraction process; the remaining economic costs would be the result of substantially higher energy costs.  The study's authors also say without the "energy renaissance," a "significant portion" of Pennsylvania's "downstream" economy would be "at risk of being lost."  This includes $69.9 billion in state GDP, $39.9 billion in labor income, and over 546,000 jobs in annual employment.

Hydraulic Fracturing:  A Game-Changer for U.S. Energy and Economies.  Vast reserves of oil and natural gas have been known to exist in shale formations throughout the United States for decades, but extracting these resources was not economically viable until the advent of "smart drilling" technology — the combination of horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing techniques, and computer-assisted underground monitoring.  Fracking has transformed the way oil and natural gas are produced in the U.S.

Fracking Facts:  The Science, Economics, and Legal Realities.  Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, has been employed in the U.S. since the 1940s.  While innovation has improved the precision of the process, the essentials are the same.  Utilizing horizontal drilling, a mixture of mostly water, sand, and trace amounts of chemicals are used to create fissures in underground shale deposits allowing oil and natural gas trapped in hard rock to move toward the surface where it is collected.  Fracking, and the processes associated with it, are blamed for emissions of pollutants, earthquakes, and even groundwater contamination, though independent evidence consistently shows these allegations to be false.  The evidence supporting fracking bans begins to look slim when attention is drawn to the facts.

Ecological Double Standards.  Fracking-induced earth tremors are akin to vibrations from a dump truck on your street.  No groundwater contamination has ever been traced to hydraulic fracturing.  Methane in tap water results from water wells improperly drilled through gas-prone rock formations and was an issue long before fracking.  Air emissions are below what we find in residential neighborhoods during non-rush hours.  But anti-fossil fuel activists assiduously promote disinformation about this revolutionary technology, as part of their agenda to fundamentally transform the way we produce energy to support our livelihoods and living standards.  They want to replace affordable, reliable hydrocarbons with expensive, unreliable, subsidized, crony-corporatist, environmentally damaging wind, solar and biofuel sources.

It's Time to Stop Fighting Fracking.  The conventional wisdom was wrong.  Thanks to the shale revolution, the United States has gone from the prospect of natural gas scarcity to real abundance.  This new abundance benefits consumers and our allies and it helps cut carbon-dioxide emissions.  Despite these facts, America's most prominent Democratic politicians and environmental groups want to end the shale revolution by prohibiting hydraulic fracturing.  And they are doing so despite subsidies that favor wind and solar at the expense of natural gas.  This new-found abundance has led to major price declines.  From 2000 to 2009, the average price of natural gas in the United States was $5.82 per million Btu.  Today's price:  $2.06.  Lower-cost natural gas benefits American consumers and American manufacturing.  Last year, the Brookings Institution estimated that the shale-gas boom is saving American consumers about $48 billion per year.

The Natural Gas Boom: Questions and Complications.  America has been buoyed by an abundance of natural gas.  The bulk of its vast resources of this precious fuel is locked in shale formations under more than 20 states, unable to escape without drilling horizontal wells through the most promising layers and fracturing the rocks surrounding the bores with highly pressurized mixtures of water, chemicals, and sand.  Use of this process, decades in the making, expanded rather suddenly after 2007, and it has become widely known by the rather unappealing term "fracking."

Obama to unveil fracking rules.  The Obama administration unveiled the first major national safety restrictions for fracking on Friday [3/20/2015], touching off a swift backlash from the president's critics in Congress and the energy industry.  Two oil industry groups immediately sued to challenge the rules, calling them "a reaction to unsubstantiated concerns," while 27 Senate Republicans introduced legislation to block them from taking effect.  Meanwhile, green groups were divided on whether the long-awaited regulations go far enough.

Shale Shock: A New, Better Energy World.  We are witnessing a modern energy miracle.  For more than 30 years, US crude oil production fell from 9.6 million barrels per day in 1970 to 5 million barrels per day in 2008.  Oil production, an annual 200-billion dollar industry, was in long-term decline.  Industry experts proclaimed that we had reached "peak oil" and that world oil output would soon fall.  But beginning in 2008, US production soared, again reaching 9.6 million barrels in June of this year, recovering all of a 30-year decline in just seven short years.

Timely news and commentary:

Donald Trump's fracking revolution will leave Starmer's Britain behind.  If there was one constituency cheering Donald Trump's election victory more than most, it was America's oil and gas sector.  The president-elect's pre-election mantra of "Drill, Baby, Drill" summed up his promise to oversee a massive increase in fossil fuel production.  During one campaign speech at Madison Square Garden in October, Trump promised that the surge in oil and gas supply following his inauguration would "cut energy prices in half".  Not only did the Republican promise to terminate Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which contains $500bn (£395bn) in new spending and tax breaks for clean energy, but he also vowed to scrap offshore wind.

The blessings of superabundance.  For over 150 years oil and natural gas have bestowed upon hundreds of millions of humans the blessings of mobility, warmth, economic growth, comfort, and freedom, just to name a few.  During all that time we have increased our use of fossil fuels and can continue to do so for a long time to come.  Yet climate alarmists, rather than recognizing oil and gas as blessings, see them as curses.  After having relied on oil and gas for a century and a half our proven reserves are larger than ever.  They are, in fact, expected to continue expanding.  How is that possible?  What makes it possible is the fact that fossil fuels are abundant.  After all this time of reaping the benefits of oil and gas, new deposits continue to be found.  New reserves have recently been discovered in Guyana, Brazil, and Columbia.  They will not be the last.  The supply of fossil fuels continues to outpace the demand.  In addition, new technologies and innovations such as fracking and horizontal drilling further expand recoverable oil and gas.

Let's get to energy independence with fracking.  The shale revolution has transformed regions like North Dakota and Texas into economic powerhouses.  The industry has directly created over 2.5 million jobs as of 2021, with each job in the fracking sector generating 2.8 indirect jobs in the community.  These aren't just jobs; they're high-paying careers, with the average salary significantly above the national average, providing robust income streams for families and substantial tax revenues for local governments.  This economic infusion supports schools, infrastructure, and public services, creating a ripple effect of prosperity.  Energy security is also synonymous with national security.  By reducing our dependency on oil from politically unstable regions, fracking fortifies America's geopolitical stance.  The U.S. transition from being one of the world's largest oil importers to a net exporter has not only bolstered our national defense capabilities, it has shifted global energy dynamics, giving the U.S. a stronger hand in international negotiations and alliances.  This independence from foreign oil reduces the leverage of nations like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela over U.S. policy.

Kamala Harris Is Now Saying She'll Stifle Fracking.  Kamala was against fracking before she said she wouldn't ban it.  In 2019, she unequivocally said she would ban it.  Recently, she said she wouldn't ban it.  However, her campaign is now backing down, and she will stifle fracking.  This shows how easily she will return to her Marxist ways should she become president.  She never planned to let fracking move ahead.

Fracking and the Election:  It's Not About Pennsylvania.  Vice President Kamala Harris's changing statements on fracking have become an important issue in the current U.S. presidential election campaign.  Only five years ago, Harris pledged to ban fracking, a drilling technique that has helped make the U.S. the world's top producer of oil and natural gas.  Today, the Democratic nominee says she supports fracking, with many political analysts attributing the shift to the political importance of winning Pennsylvania's electoral votes.  Pennsylvania is a major center of U.S. natural production through fracking.  However, the issue goes well beyond Pennsylvania; it also has vast implications for the U.S. economy and energy security of the U.S. and its allies.  Moreover, fracking can also be restricted indirectly, without a formal ban.  Indeed, the Biden-Harris administration has limited fracking by indirect means, such as special taxes on natural gas production and halting new exports of liquified natural gas (LNG).  Thus, the question to Vice-President Harris should not be, will you halt fracking, but will you continue the Biden-Harris administration policies that curb natural gas production and have made production more expensive.

Talking points on Kamala Harris's fracking reversal.  Myth:  Kamala Harris used to be for banning fracking, but now she supports fracking.  Truth:  Kamala Harris is still for banning fracking — because she is still for the net-zero agenda that requires banning fracking along with all other fossil fuel activities. [...] To know what to make of Harris's reversal on a fracking ban, we need to first recognize that banning fracking would have been one of the most harmful policies in US history.  It would have destroyed 60% of our oil production and 75% of our natural gas production.  Fracking is very likely the single most beneficial technological development of the last 25 years.  By extracting cheap, abundant oil and natural gas from once useless rock, it has made energy far cheaper than it would otherwise be.

Debunking Kamala's Biggest Lies That the ABC News Moderators Let Slide.  Flip-Flopping on Fracking:  "I made it that very clear in 2020: I will not ban fracking."  FACT-CHECK: False.  Although she says in 2024 she supports fracking, that wasn't always the case and Harris didn't make that clear in 2020 either.  While running in the Democratic presidential primary, she said, "There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking," when asked if she'd commit to implementing a federal ban on fracking on her first day in office.  [Tweet with video clip]

Kamala Harris Lies About Climate Radicalism, Denying Her Past Support For A Fracking Ban.  Vice President Kamala Harris lied about her radicalism on energy in Tuesday night's debate with former President Donald Trump.  When the moderators with ABC asked Harris the rare skeptical question about her policy reversals, Harris said she "made that very clear in 2020:  I will not ban fracking."  [Advertisement]  "I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States, and in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the 'Inflation Reduction' Act, which opened new leases for fracking," she said.  [Tweet]

Let's be honest: shale fracking has saved the West.  Imagine what the world would look like today if US fracking technology and America's wildcat drillers had not delivered the shale revolution.  The liberal democracies would have their backs to the wall.  All those books about the death of the West would be all too credible, including the latest best-seller in France, La Défaite de l'Occident by Emmanuel Todd, a modern outing of Oswald Spengler's dark classic in the 1920s.  This Gallic Anglo-bashing and Kremlin apologia manages to skip over the elemental geopolitical fact that America has gone from energy-import basket case in 2008 to become the world's largest producer of crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas, by a wide margin.  The US has been adding a new North Sea every three years.  Feedstock from cheap domestic gas has driven a secular revival of the US chemical industry, which you can see in the petrochemical corridor stretching across the Gulf Coast from Galveston to New Orleans.

Kamala and fracking.  Back during her first run for the presidency in 2020 — an effort that went so poorly her campaign didn't even make it to the calendar year 2020, then-senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) said in a CNN Climate Crisis Town Hall that she was in favor of banning the practice of hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as "fracking."  There was, to quote her, "no question" she was "in favor of banning fracking."  Fast forward almost five years and in her second run for the White House, now-vice president Kamala Harris has said, at least via her campaign representatives, that she is no longer in favor of banning the practice.  Why has this happened?  What changed?  How has Harris done a complete 180 on this issue?  And how can we trust that what she is now saying is true, or if it's just lip service she's paying to get her through November 5 without losing the 19 critical electoral college votes of the swing state and fracking powerhouse that is the commonwealth of Pennsylvania?

The USA is now producing more oil and gas than any nation ever has.  The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in January that US domestic production of crude oil for September 2023 set a new all-time high of 13,247,000 barrels per day.  That fact probably deserved more notice than it received given that it was the most oil any nation on earth had ever managed to produce in a single month.  Even more remarkable is the fact that US producers managed to break the record in November, and then exceed the September number again in December, the most current month for which full data is available.  It is likely November's all-time record of 13,319,000 barrels per day (bpd) has been exceeded at least once again during the first quarter of 2024, as producers find ways to wring more production out of each wellbore.

Biden's Gas Pains for America.  Afew days ago the U.S. domestic price of natural gas (known as the Henry Hub spot price) fell to a 25-year low of $1.68 per million BTU (MMBtu).  It was only 20 years ago that domestic natural gas was routinely over $6/MMBtu year-after year, with prices sometimes reaching over $14.  Back in the mid-2000s the long-term government forecasts concluded that the U.S. was going to become dependent for as much as 20 percent of its natural gas needs by the year 2020, and thus the U.S. needed to start building liquid natural gas (LNG) import terminals so we could expand our imports — from guess who?  Qatar was offering long-term supply of natural gas for $2 or less, and several American petrochemical companies dependent on gas for their product line planned major expansions in Qatar to take advantage of the abundant low-cost supply.  But then as funny thing happened: the directional drilling and fracking revolution occurred, which revolutionized domestic gas (and oil) production, and drove prices down consistently below $3 by 2015.  The fracking revolution was a long time in development, but no one in Washington knew about it, or they would surely have done something to stop it cold.  By the time the political class discovered what was happening in our domestic gas fields, it was too late prevent the gas revolution from becoming a fait accompli.

Five years later, evidence of fracking's safety is stronger than ever.  Five years ago, The Heartland Institute set out to correct some misperceptions about the hydraulic fracturing process (commonly known as "fracking") that had gained traction in the opinions of a not-insignificant number of people across the country:  It pollutes water!  And the air!  And causes cancer!  And birth defects!  And asthma!  And earthquakes!  All at once!  Of course, none of these things, as we'll show in a bit, are true, but the unscientific stories with their sensationalist headlines written and promoted by anti-fracking activists have done much damage.  According to polling, a strong plurality of people in 2023 still oppose this method of extracting oil and natural gas.  In a small (but hopefully significant) effort to combat these misperceptions, we have decided to update our 2018 paper with the studies and data that have been published in the past five years subsequent to the original paper's release.  Safe to say, the evidence is still on our side.

Why Has Biden Declared War on Natural Gas?  Natural gas is the world's wonder fuel: cheap, abundant, made in America, reliable AND clean burning.  So why are the Biden administration and environmental groups against it?  There's really no good answer. [...] No country produces more natural gas than America.  Latest reserve forecasts predict we have nearly 100 years of natural gas with existing drilling technologies, and hundreds of years of potential supply.  We're not running out.  We are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.  The two innovations that spurred the natural gas shale revolution of the last 15 years were horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.  These drilling technologies tripled our supply and output almost overnight.

How Long Before Environmentalists Start Attacking EVs?  We've seen this bait-and-switch tactic before.  Back in 2007, energy producers pumped money into environmental groups to promote natural gas.  The Sierra Club used the funds to mount a "Beyond Coal" campaign touting the benefits of gas.  Joe Romm, a climate advocate at the Center for American Progress, declared that natural gas "may be the single biggest game changer for climate action in the next two decades."  Then came the fracking revolution, and the resulting abundance of natural gas caused power plants across the country to switch to gas from coal.  Then environmentalists decided natural gas wasn't so good after all.  By 2015, they were at war with it.  Environmentalists tried to stop fracking, opposed new pipeline development, and then started pushing for bans on gas-fueled appliances.  More than 70 cities in California alone have voted to ban natural gas hookups in new homes.  New York became the first to impose a statewide ban.

Holding the right people responsible for the global energy crisis.  The cause of Europe's energy insecurity, which has rendered it impotent against Putin, is simple: When you restrict domestic fossil fuel production on the false promise of replacement by unreliable solar and wind, you become dangerously dependent on foreign production.  Europe's vulnerability to Russia was completely preventable.  Europe and its allies have all the natural gas, coal, and uranium they need to produce low-cost, reliable heat and electricity for generations to come.  But anti-fossil fuel, anti-nuclear policies have neutered Europe.  For the last 2 decades Europe has destroyed its ability to produce and import energy from fossil fuels and nuclear — on the promise that unreliable solar and wind could replace them.  But after trillions in subsidies, it's clear that they have failed.  One major cause of Europe's current energy impotence is its numerous bans on the greatest natural gas producing technology ever invented:  fracking.  Fracking has been banned by France, Bulgaria, The Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and the UK.

MPs kill UK fracking prospects in huge gift to Putin.  While a majority of MPs last night voted against Labour's motion to introduce a ban on fracking, it is now clear that no company will risk investing in the development of UK shale gas projects given that the next government is almost certain to pull the plug.  By killing the chances of exploiting Britain's massive shale gas resources, anti-fracking MPs have caused significant economic damage while ensuring that the UK's energy cost and supply crisis will get worse in coming years.  In the absence of Russian gas supplies, European countries will face an even worse energy crisis next winter after they have depleted gas they have stored for this winter, the International Energy Agency has warned.  While anti-fracking MPs don't seem to realise the severity and existential threat of the energy crisis to households and businesses they have simply deferred the inevitable.

Germany is committing national suicide.  The German government decided last week to temporarily halt the phasing-out of two nuclear power plants.  This is an attempt to secure Germany's energy supplies after Russia effectively turned off its gas exports to Germany.  But there is much more the German government could do if it was serious about shoring up its energy security.  It could, for example, overturn its 2017 ban on fracking.  As a 2016 government report shows, Germany sits on shale-gas deposits of more than two trillion cubic metres — 20 times its annual gas consumption.  Fracking could realistically cover 10 percent of Germany's gas needs per year.  Even more encouragingly, the report shows that fracking in Germany could be done without harming public health or the environment.  Fracking could therefore help to provide a long-term solution to the deepening energy crisis.  Germany is staring into the abyss thanks to the energy crisis.  German heavy industry may even have to cut back on production in order to cope with soaring energy costs.  Steel manufacturer ArcelorMittal has already announced it is to shut down blast furnaces in some of its plants.

U.K Energy Reaches Crisis Point, Britain Announces New Oil and Gas Leases and Lifts Moratorium on Fracking.  There is a particular historical irony in the timing.  On the same day King Charles III ascends the throne, previously Europe's most isolated from consequence — yet loudest voice in chasing the catastrophic climate change energy policies, the British government is forced to reverse course on years of energy regulations and restrictions.  Britain's new Prime Minister Liz Truss announced, "a new round of oil and gas licensing will come next week with more than 100 licenses issued.  A moratorium on fracking will be lifted and planning permission can be sought where there is local support," in an urgent emergency effort to lower energy costs for British citizens.

UK PM Liz Truss vows to 'deal hands on' with energy crisis, and will scrap fracking ban.  Newly installed U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss told Parliament on Wednesday that she would tackle Britain's "very serious" energy crisis while still slashing taxes, ruling out imposing a windfall levy on oil companies to pay for her plans to offset the soaring cost of heating and electricity.  Truss rebuffed opposition calls for a new windfall tax, even as she refrained from explaining how she would fund a plan meant to help the public pay energy bills skyrocketing because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the economic aftershocks of COVID-19 and Brexit.

Hayneville Shale:  Record Natural Gas Production.  The Haynesville Shale (technically Haynesville/Bossier) in northeast Texas and northwest Louisiana is the third largest natural gas play, in terms of production rate and proved reserves, in these United States.  Haynesville gas production set a record high in 2021 and will likely break that record this month. [...] Haynesville pipeline takeaway expansion has not faced the same sort of political opposition as has plagued the Marcellus Shale.  Texas has a very favorable regulatory environment, so favorable that only 33% of Texas Democrats support a ban on frac'ing.

Stop Letting Environmental Groups Funded By Russia Dictate America's Energy Policy.  President Biden began his presidency by unleashing a war on American oil and gas to satisfy the environmental left.  Many people don't know that for years, Russia has funded the anti-fracking propaganda that many environmental groups have picked up.  In 2017, congressional investigators found that a money trail linked Russia to millions of dollars funding U.S. nonprofits to work against U.S. shale gas in order to influence the U.S. energy market.  Specifically, investigators found that NRDC, Sierra Club, and Climate Action Network were all found to have received millions of dollars of funding in grants from a shady San Francisco-based company called "Sea Change" that a money trail linked back to the Russians.  Indeed, it is an open secret that Russians have funded anti-fracking and anti-natural gas propaganda in America for decades, as environmental groups funded the campaigns of Democrats and pressured them to ban fossil fuels.

COVID-19 and the Profitability of U.S. Oil.  Donald Trump had to be the most fossil-fuel friendly U.S. president of recent times.  When he became president, Trump quickly reversed Obama's energy policies; the Keystone Pipeline was approved, imports from the Middle East were cut, and the price at the pump came down.  It was claimed that America had become "energy independent" and was again a "net exporter" of oil.  In 2018, the U.S. oil business even surpassed the record petroleum production peak set in 1970.  Inasmuch as American petroleum production had been sliding downward since 1970, how did this come about?  It came about because of "unconventional oil," e.g. shale oil.  But even before the COVID-19 pandemic and the installation of a new president hostile to fossil fuel, shale oil had hit a snag:  financiers were losing patience with shale's profit performance.

Is nuclear energy green?  France and Germany lead opposing camps.  When President Emmanuel Macron announced the revival of nuclear energy in an address to the nation last month, residents of a small town in eastern France initially thought they had misheard him.  "For the first time in decades," Macron said in the televised speech, France "will relaunch the construction of nuclear reactors."  Fessenheim had just begun to come to terms with the closure of its nuclear plant last year, in what the government had said was a "first step" in a "rebalancing" of energy sources.  But while Macron remains committed to increasing investments in wind and solar energy, and to putting an end to the burning of coal, his remarks in November confirmed that France isn't giving up on nuclear technology, its primary source of energy.  France is behind only the United States in the number of its operational nuclear reactors, and it is first in the world in its reliance on nuclear energy.

Fracking could have saved us from this energy crisis.  Rising prices and dwindling supplies of natural gas have sparked fears of an energy crisis.  Energy bills are shooting upwards.  The government is even having to step in to support the production of fertiliser — and its vital byproduct, carbon dioxide — which relies on affordable gas supplies.  If only the UK had a bountiful supply of natural gas of its own.  Well, it does — but thanks to eco-warriors and spineless ministers, we're not exploiting it.  For decades, thanks to the rich gas fields of the North Sea, the UK was self-sufficient in natural gas.  But supplies have been in decline for years, down from 107.8 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2003 to just 39.6 bcm in 2019.  Now just 48 percent of UK gas comes from the UK continental shelf, according to the government.  In 2018, 72 percent of our imports came through pipelines from Norway.  Gas prices in the UK are also influenced by happenings in the wider world market, particularly the market for liquefied natural gas from Qatar and Russia.  Offshore gas supplies may have declined.  But we could increase domestic gas production markedly if we would only take advantage of our vast, onshore shale-gas deposits.

Green energy:  A bubble in unrealistic expectations?  Most Americans don't seem to realize it but the US has provided 90% of the planet's petroleum output growth over the past decade.  In other words, without America's extraordinary shale oil production boom — which raised total oil output from around 5 million barrels per day in 2008 to 13 million barrels per day in 2019 — the world long ago would have had an acute shortage.  (Excluding the Covid-wracked year of 2020, oil demand grows every year — strictly as a function of the developing world, including China, by the way.)  Unquestionably, US oil companies could substantially increase output, particularly in the Permian Basin, arguably (but not much) the most prolific oil-producing region in the world.  However, with the Fed being pressured by Congress to punish banks that lend to any fossil fuel operator, and the overall extreme hostility toward domestic energy producers, why would they?

Pennsylvania Town Saved By Fracking Fears Biden Will Kill Its Prosperity.  [Scroll down]  For decades, geologists knew Devonian black shale existed in this region, but few thought it would be a major source of natural gas, mainly because the supply was thought to be too low.  That all changed in 2003 when energy company Range Resources experimented with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — a new technique commonly called "fracking" — which flushes large volumes of high-pressure water, sand and chemicals into the ground, forcing trapped gas to escape into a well.  In 2004, the first commercially viable well was drilled, attracting multiple oil and gas producers and suppliers to the region.

Death of shale 'exaggerated': US oil patch springs to life.  U.S. shale oil production is ramping back up, with crude prices returning to pre-pandemic levels following recovery of demand, making drilling profitable again for the majority of companies.  The increased activity that surged in March follows a temporary slowdown in February due to freezing weather and comes after drillers shut in a record amount of production in 2020 because travel shutdowns during the pandemic sapped consumption of oil-based fuels.  The strong rebound shows that some oil producers are refusing to resist the temptation to drill from higher prices, despite the pandemic worsening financial problems that companies faced from taking on debt to pay for growth during the shale fracking boom of the 2010s, without providing sufficient returns.

A key to America's growth lies beneath Pennsylvania's soil.  As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, there's no magic elixir to address the myriad of economic, security, and environmental challenges out there.  However, one commonsense solution to advance America's interest in all three lies beneath Pennsylvania's soil.  For about a decade, the United States has been the world's largest natural gas producer, surpassing Russia in 2011.  In fact, Pennsylvania, which supplies one-fifth of America's natural gas needs, is in contention with Texas for MVP.  Of course, low prices have challenged energy companies and towns whose economies are centered on energy production.

Nato claims Moscow [is] funding anti-fracking groups.  [Sounds interesting, but this article is behind a paywall.]

Natural Gas About to Get Even Cleaner; What Will Fractivists Do?  Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have developed a cutting edge catalyst made up of 10 different elements — each of which on its own has the ability to reduce the combustion temperature of methane — plus oxygen.  This unique catalyst brings the combustion temperature of methane down by about half, from above 1400 degrees Kelvin down to 600 to 700 degrees Kelvin.  What it means is that natural gas can burn cleaner and emit far less carbon dioxide.  Once again science shows that fossil fuels like natural gas can be and are clean and just fine for the precious environment.

The Editor says...
Environmentalists don't care if the combustion of natural gas emits less carbon dioxide.  They still object to the use of natural gas if it produces any carbon dioxide.  The environmentalists' goals can never be achieved in the real world.

So How's Biden's First Week Going?  A Side-By-Side Look At What He Promised Versus What He's Doing.  It's been less than a week since Joe Biden's inauguration.  In that time, how has Biden's campaign rhetoric matched his actions in office? [...] During the campaign, Biden said he would not ban fracking.  Understanding this requires some set-up.  Any federal fracking ban would impact activities on federal lands, which are a minority of the overall land from which oil and natural gas are pumped.  Natural gas tends to be a by-product of oil production, and both tend to require fracking in order to extract profitable quantities of each.  The American Petroleum Institute says about 95% of U.S. production involves fracking.  The private vs. federal land issue is an important distinction.  Some will use it to argue that Biden has not "banned fracking" despite taking actions that effectively do in fact ban fracking where a president has the power to do so.  A president does not have the power to ban all fracking all over the country on private or state-owned land, not without congressional action.  But a president does have the power to ban fracking on federal lands, by issuing orders against the permitting and leasing activities that enable fracking, and in some states such as New Mexico and the western states, that's quite a bit of very productive land.

The Biden Family Green New Deal.  Some 90% of all US wells are now hydraulically fractured.  Fracked wells in shale formations open up vast supplies of oil, natural gas and petroleum liquids that previously were locked up and inaccessible.  Fracking conventional wells expands and prolongs production, leaving less energy in the ground.  Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, AOC, the Democrat Party and US environmentalists are determined to make climate change, the Green New Deal, and replacing fossil fuels with wind, solar, battery and biofuel power the centerpiece of their foreign and domestic policies.  They would ban fracking outright — or price and restrict it out of existence through a slow, painful death of a thousand regulatory cuts.  That would cost up to 19 million jobs and billions of dollars in annual royalty and tax revenues, send energy prices soaring, and end America's newfound status as the world's foremost oil and gas producer.

Biden: OK to Frack for Natural Gas — Not OK to Burn It.  The "fracking" revolution has unleashed an incredible American energy boom over the past decade.  America is now the biggest producer of oil and gas in the world, beating Saudi Arabia and Russia.  Fracking has contributed to an economic revival in areas of the country once in freefall.  Pennsylvania is now second only to Texas in natural gas production, and Ohio is now fifth.  This has reduced air pollution by displacing coal.  Joe Biden wants a counter-revolution, but he does not want you to know about it.

Just a reminder, Biden really did say he'd ban fracking.  Oh, and "get rid of fossil fuels.".  Don't worry fellow Scrantonites, just put down that wrench and pick up a keyboard!  You'll find that coding and fracking aren't all that different.  You'll still work with your hands, only instead of being outside in the sunshine using heavy machinery and wishing for more hours, you'll be inside in a dimly lit cubicle using a computer and wishing for the sweet embrace of death.  Here's a supercut of Biden being very moderate regarding energy and climate change that you might want to keep handy as well.  [Video clip]

Trump Delivers on His Promise, Posts Video of Biden Criticizing Fracking: 'Here You Go,' Joe.  President Donald Trump delivered on his promise to post a video of Joe Biden expressing his negative views on fracking, highlighting the montage shortly after the second and final presidential debate concluded on Thursday night [10/22/2020].  "Here you go @JoeBiden!" Trump tweeted alongside a video featuring both Biden and his running mate criticizing fracking and expressing their hopes to eliminate fossil fuel.  The tweet is also featured on Trump's campaign website.

Joe Biden Can't Remember Vowing to Ban Fracking.  We've Got the Video.  President Trump called out Joe Biden for his support of banning fracking during Thursday night's debate, noting that during the primaries Joe repeatedly said he wanted to ban fracking.  The president pointed out that after he won the nomination, Biden went to Pennsylvania, a battleground state that relies on fracking and natural gas for its economy, and changed his position.  Joe Biden, true to form, denied it. [...] Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris, similarly denied Joe Biden wants to ban fracking when she debated Vice President Pence.  "Joe Biden will not ban fracking.  That is a fact," she claimed.  Well, here's the video showing that they're both liars:  [Video clip]

Keywords: Backpedaling, flip-flop, 180.
Biden pressed over debate comment that he would 'transition from the oil industry'.  After the final debate on Thursday night, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was pressed by reporters on his comments about fossil fuels, following his remarks that he plans to "transition from the oil industry."  "Eventually we're going to have to [get rid of] oil, but we're not getting rid of fossil fuels.  We're getting rid of the subsidies for fossil fuels, but we're not getting rid of fossil fuels for a long time," Biden said in response to a CNN reporter.  "It will not be gone for ... probably 2050."  The post-debate exchange came as Biden briefly spoke with the press as he walked to his plane.  Biden has been consistent through the campaign on his plans to set the United States on a path to zero-emissions by 2050 while not banning fracking in the immediate future.

The Editor says...
What's that?  "Biden briefly spoke with the press as he walked to his plane."  What does the airplane use for fuel?

Fact check: Biden falsely claims he never opposed fracking.  Facts First:  It's false that Biden never said he opposed fracking.  In two Democratic primary debates, Biden made confusing remarks over fracking that his campaign had to clarify.  In 2019, Biden said "we would make sure it's eliminated" when asked about the future of coal and fracking; in 2020 he said he opposed "new fracking." Biden's written plan, conversely, never included a full ban on fracking or even on new fracking.  Rather, it proposes "banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters" — not ending all new fracking anywhere or ending all existing fracking on public lands and waters.

PA Rally:  Donald Trump Plays Highlight Reel of Joe Biden Criticizing Fracking.  President Donald Trump debuted a new feature at his campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on Tuesday [10/20/2020].  "Take a look at this clip.  We had it made up, and I think you'll like it.  First time I've ever done it," Trump said.The president played a highlight video of Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, criticizing fossil fuels and talking about ending fracking during the Democrat primary.

15 Crazy Things Joe Biden Said at the ABC Town Hall.  Aside from many factually-challenged statements, Biden said a number of truly outlandish things. [...] [For example,] Hire workers in fracking industry to cap wells "and get a good salary doing it."  Biden: "[T]here are well over 100,000 wells that are left uncapped in the region.  We could hire 128,000 of these people who are working in the industry to cap these wells and get a good salary doing it now.  (Less than one well each.  What do they do when they're done?)

Pennsylvania Voters [are] Not Thrilled With Biden/Harris Lies, Fracking Flip-Flop.  Throughout the presidential campaign, culminating in Wednesday's vice presidential debate, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have consistently flip-flopped and have been caught lying about their positions on fracking.  But Pennsylvania, which is one of the toughest battleground states this election cycle, is a state where energy issues are very important, which obviously includes the issues of fracking and natural gas.  An anti-fracking stance cannot possible play well there, and that does not bode well for the Biden-Harris ticket, with both having said in the past that they would ban the practice.

The Biden-Harris Fracking Plan, Explained.  Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris twice claimed Wednesday [10/7/2020]that Joe Biden would not ban fracking if he took office, but both Harris and Biden repeatedly said they would support a ban or phase it out during the Democratic primary.  Harris said there was "no question" she favored banning fracking during her failed presidential run.  Biden now says he is only for preventing new fracking leases on federal lands, but he said at a primary debate there would be no room for it in his administration, said at another debate there would be "no new fracking," told a climate activist he would "love to" get rid of it though it would take time, and also said he would "phase out" the practice and get rid of fossil fuels.

Joe Biden in July 2019: I'll 'Make Sure' Fracking Is 'Eliminated,' Now, 'I Will Not Ban Fracking'.  The question as to whether a President Joe Biden would or would not ban fracking has two answers:  He would "make sure" that hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" to produce oil and natural gas is "eliminated" while saying he would not ban the technique. [...] In an interview last weekend with a local show, This Week in Pennsylvania, Biden said he never has vowed to end fracking. [...] But Biden's campaign website reveals what oil and gas advocates are warning would happen if the former vice president becomes president.

A vote for Joe Biden is still a vote for radicalism, not normalcy.  After last month's strange virtual party conventions, the question on everyone's minds is, who came out ahead?  The polling has been mixed, but the candidates' reactions make it obvious.  You can tell just by looking at what Joe Biden has been doing in the time since.  First, he has loudly distanced himself from his earlier, repeated promises to end fracking, which he made both in debates and in conversations with Democratic primary voters.  This evinces a fear that his anti-fracking stance — and note that opposition to "new fracking" necessarily entails opposition to all fracking — will cost him Pennsylvania and other states enjoying the benefits of the energy revolution.

Harris Flip-Flops:  Never Mind My "False Choice" Claim Last Year, Let's Not Ban Fracking After All.  Alternate headline:  Candidate checks electoral map, discovers why Pennsylvania's called the Keystone State.  At least Kamala Harris didn't try to pretend that this was her position all along, as Joe Biden has for the last few weeks, but that doesn't make this flip-flop much less crass.  CNN's Dana Bash sets this up as comfortably as possible for Harris, who now calls a fracking ban a "false choice" — even though Harris demanded one while campaigning last year.

Frack-Checking Joe Biden.  Joe Biden has made it clear that he was for fracking before he was against it. [...] Joe Biden's emergence from his basement bunker soon went off the rails when in Western Pennsylvania he claimed he never said he would ban fracking.  Where does he think his environmental czar, AOC, stands, and what does he think the policy compact he signed with socialist Bernie Sanders says?  What does he think the Green New Deal is all about?  And certainly Kamala Harris, whom Biden picked to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, is as anti-fracking as they come. [...] As PJ Media's Matt Margolis notes in a video montage, Biden has repeatedly pledged to ban fracking and end the use of fossil fuels, even if it costs millions of American jobs.  Personnel is policy, the saying goes, and his reliance on Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Kamala Harris for guidance on energy policy shows exactly where he stands.

Fact Check:  Joe Biden Claims 'I Am Not Banning Fracking'.  CLAIM: Joe Biden claimed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania:  "I am not banning fracking."  VERDICT: MOSTLY FALSE.  Biden has promised to ban fracking — repeatedly — as has his running mate.

Trump attacks Harris on fracking:  Can it swing Pa. and Ohio?  Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's vice presidential choice of Sen. Kamala Harris — who has vowed to take the fossil fuel industry to court over climate change and grounded her own run for the presidency on environmental justice — put energy squarely at the center of the presidential election yesterday [8/11/2020].  Harris, one of the first senators to back the sweeping Green New Deal, quickly found her energy record under assault from President Trump, who criticized the California Democrat from the lectern at the White House.  "She is against fracking; she is against petroleum products," said Trump, who last week warned a crowd in Ohio that the "radical left-wing movement" wants to "ban fracking, which will demolish your state." [...] Harris told a CNN town hall in September 2019 that there was "no question" that she favored banning fracking, "starting with what we can do on day one around public lands."

Biden said he wants to ban fracking.  On multiple occasions, Joe Biden has showcased his anti-American energy independence, anti-fossil fuel, and anti-fracking agenda.  Earlier this year, Joe Biden said, "no more, no new fracking" in my administration.

Will U.S. Shale Ever Return To Its Boom Days?  U.S. shale drillers are bringing back shut in production three months after the onset of the current downturn.  But steep decline rates will increasingly take hold, dragging down overall U.S. output later this year.  With oil prices approaching $40 per barrel, many drillers are covering immediate operational costs.  Rystad Energy estimates that "a bit more than 300,000 bpd" of shut in U.S. oil production has come back online.  A total of 1.15 million barrels per day (mb/d) was shut in in April and May, and that output will "return swiftly over July and August," JBC Energy wrote in a note.

Biden Lies to Pennsylvania About His Fracking Ban.  Joe Biden is on the record stating there will be "no new fracking" if he is elected.  Biden also said "we are going to get rid of fossil fuels."  Biden also said if he gets to the White House he will make sure there is "no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, Period."  But Biden covered up those statements and lied when questioned by a Pennsylvania news station on Monday [4/20/2020].

Biden's fracking ban will derail environmental and economic gains.  In the midst of an international pandemic, and on a debate stage eerily surrounded by empty seats, Joe Biden couldn't resist revealing his true feelings about America's energy future.  For the second time during the Democratic debate series, Biden recently told the television audience that if he's elected president he will move to ban fracking.  With an economy staggered by the virus outbreak, most Americans are looking for ways to strengthen our economy, keep people in good-paying jobs, and bolster national security.

Biden would make America dependent on foreign oil again.  Fifteen years ago, the United States was importing most of its oil — 12.5 million barrels per day, or nearly twice total domestic oil production at the time.  Also 15 years ago, the U.S. was emitting about 20% more in greenhouse gases than it does today.  Most Americans are glad that the U.S. has reduced emissions so much while simultaneously achieving energy independence — and it's all due to fracking.  Unfortunately, both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders want to turn the clock back to the days of higher emissions and greater dependency on foreign oil.  That is the certain practical result of the policies that both men outlined in their Sunday debate.

Fracking has reduced carbon emissions.  In 2018, Gov. Roy Cooper signed an executive order on climate change that, among other things, established a goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in North Carolina by 40% below 2005 levels by the year 2025.  It was a weird pledge.  Cooper took office in 2017, not 2005.  Nor has the governor been successful in enacting any substantial change in public policy that could plausibly affect greenhouse-gas emissions to any significant degree.  Still, it is quite possible that North Carolina will meet the target Cooper set.  If we do, the main cause will be the fracking revolution in natural-gas production.

Fake News Is Fracking Endemic In Environmentalism.  Fake news is everywhere today; enabled, magnified and spread by social media.  It's particularly prevalent in environmental talk and the fracking debate.

Trump Wins on Fracking.  The United States, with fracking and without the Paris Climate Accord, is leading the world in economic growth with wages that are rising fastest among lower incomes, soaring household median incomes, fatter pensions and 401-K retirement funds thanks to a Dow nearing 30,000, and record unemployment, especially among minorities, record labor force participation as millennials get off their parent's basement couch and others that couldn't find work under Obama's environmental and regulatory straitjacket find jobs.  Those who have jobs have no fear in looking for better ones, as we have more jobs than skilled applicants to fill them.  The 2020 Democrats would take all this away from us, including the record-setting emissions reductions.  One gigaton is a lot of stuff and a number equivalent to the gigadollars Bernie et all would spend on climate change and free stuff.  Paying for anything without the economic growth and energy independence led by fracking, which Democrats would ban entirely, is impossible.  All that would be left is economic desolation.

Proposals To Ban Fracking Could Hurt Democrats In Key States.  Climate change is a top issue in the Democratic presidential primaries and some candidates have taken relatively aggressive policy stands, including vows to ban hydraulic fracturing.  But some Democrats worry that could push moderate voters in key swing states to reelect President Trump next November.  Fracking is a controversial drilling technology that, along with horizontal drilling, has created a major oil and gas boom.  President Trump often brags about this on the campaign trail, though the boom started well before he became president.  While the president largely dismisses the effects of climate change, Democrats have made addressing the issue a key element of their energy and environment platforms.

Sanders, Bloomberg, and Warren are Fracking Idiots.  Vermont's Socialist and presidential wannabe, Sen. Bernie Sanders, in a bill introduced last week that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) helped craft would ban fracking nationwide by 2025, a death sentence if passed for the American economy.  Like fellow political lemmings Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg, Sanders has swallowed the lies the greenies have fed him about fracking, as shown in a statement he released supporting his legislation shortly before the disastrous Iowa caucuses: [...] Not only is none of this nonsense true, it is actually the reverse of what is true.  The American technology of fracking has helped the United States lead the world in curtailing carbon dioxide emissions and therefore is a leading contributor to climate stability and to the quality of the air we breathe.  We are in more danger from the carbon dioxide released during one of Bernie's speeches as he crisscrosses the electoral map in private jets.

Disingenuous use of statistics:
Yale Says Fracking Causes Sexually-Transmitted Infections.  Here's the premise:  The rates of two sexually transmitted infections, gonorrhea, and chlamydia, were found to be 10% and 15%, respectively, higher in Texas counties where fracking took place compared to other counties where fracking wasn't being done.  Is there anything to this?

Our oil expansion keeps us safe from Iranian meddling.  Right now, the country with the world's biggest oil reserves — Venezuela — is putting out a fraction of its traditional production, as a corrupt and inept socialist government has lost the ability even to keep the golden goose going.  Meanwhile, Iraq is in turmoil, Iran is crazy and Saudi Arabia has been looking shaky.  Despite all this, oil and gas prices are holding steady, and while what's going on in the Middle East constitutes a diplomatic crisis, it's nothing like the sort of earthshaking trouble it would have been a decade or two ago.  Why is that?  Because frackers have turned the United States from a nation deeply dependent on imported oil to a net exporter and the world's single largest producer of oil and gas.

Triggering A Recession Tops The Dems' Presidential Agendas.  The 2020 Democratic presidential field is in near unanimous agreement that fracking has to be banned or at least regulated to death over time.  It plays well to the party's base, especially its green fringe.  It's also an endorsement of recession.  Joe Biden, currently atop the Democratic primary polls, recently said he would "love to" ban fracking "right now," and would also "love to make sure we can't use any oil or gas, period," reports Common Dreams, a website that caters to leftist and socialist devotees.  But the decelerated Delawarean's plan is to "transition away from" fracking rather than killing it all at once.  So put him in the "slow death" category among Democrat candidates.  Meanwhile, in the summary execution category we find Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and former Indianapolis Mayor Pete Buttigieg.  Warren even said that on the day she is inaugurated, "I will ban fracking — everywhere."

The Fracking Decade.  In 2008, the U.S. produced an average of just 5 million barrels of oil per day — the nadir of domestic energy production since the exploitation of fossil fuels began in the late 19th century.  By 2009, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude was approaching $150 per barrel.  The U.S., therefore, was obliged to spend over $1 billion per day on oil imports from foreign countries, few of which could be considered models of good governance. [...] At the end of 2018, the U.S. produced nearly 18 million barrels of petroleum products (crude oil, natural gas, and refinery products) per day.  For the first time in 40 years, the U.S. had outpaced Saudi Arabia's output, and estimates showed that it also surpassed Russian oil production.  By 2022, the United States is forecast to become a net energy exporter for the first time in nearly 70 years.

10 Things Climate Alarmists Don't Want You to Be Thankful For.  [#4] Fracking:  Hydraulic Fracturing has revolutionized American oil production, leading the U.S. to become a net exporter of oil for the first time in decades in 2018.  According to some estimates, fracking saved Americans $1.1 trillion over the last decade.

Study Says Fracking is Saving Families $2,500 Annually, Significantly Lowering Greenhouse Gas Emissions.  A report released in October 2019 by the White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) estimates increased oil and natural gas production from hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") saves American families $203 billion annually on gasoline and electricity bills.  This breaks down to $2,500 in savings per family per year.

Climate Stalinism.  Imagine what will happen if a President Elizabeth Warren bans fracking in places like Texas, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania; in Texas alone, by some estimates, 1 million jobs would be lost.  Overall, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, a full ban would cost 14 million jobs — far more than the 8 million lost in the Great Recession.  And the environment itself would be somewhat of a loser in this game — natural gas has done more to reduce emissions than all the greens' efforts.

Marcellus Fracking Means Farewell to Dems in 2020.  As President Trump's speech at the Shale Insight Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Wednesday noted, Joe Biden's mythical claim that Trump inherited a booming economy from President Obama falls flat in the face of the reality that this is Trump's economy, fueled by deregulation, tax cuts, cutting of EPA shackles, and a booming energy industry allowed to use the latest technology to free a seemingly endless supply of oil and natural gas from the earth under our feet.  The conference was staged by some very appreciative energy groups such as the Marcellus Shale Coalition, the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, and the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association.  This energy abundance has put downward pressure on energy costs for consumers and industry and made us energy independent and immune from Middle East instability, quite possibly preventing a global oil recession or major war with the likes of a belligerent and aggressive Iran.

Proving a Negative.  Remember a few years ago during the Obama administration when oil/gas pricing was high?  The popular line among the Democrats — obsessed as they were about not offending their Green voting bloc — was, "We can't drill our way out of this [high oil pricing]."  Just like subsequent events in other areas have proven them wrong about so many things ("The stock market will tank if Trump is elected!"), the Democrats were wrong about this too.  Dead wrong.  As fracking and other drilling/extraction technologies (such as horizontal drilling and the capability to rejuvenate old wells previously thought to be "unproductive") have improved, the oil output of the United States has increased to its highest level in 50 years.  In fact, U.S oil production is more than double what it was as recently as just ten years ago, before the fracking revolution.

Democrats Want To Make America Energy Dependent Again.  In January 2019, Liberty Nation reported that the US had become a net energy exporter for the first time in more than 70 years.  Despite promise after promise from Republican and Democratic administrations, the US finally kicked its foreign energy addiction and became self-reliant, as well as a global energy king.  How did this happen?  The shale-oil revolution, courtesy of fracking.  Over the last 12 months, natural gas prices have crashed 30%. This might not be a positive trend for futures traders and producers, but households are seeing their energy bills drop by as much as $300 per year.  With natural gas prices anticipated to hover in the $2 per million British thermal units (btu) range for many years to come, consumers in both the US and abroad can expect lower energy bills.  So, what about the environment?  Experts say that the long-term impact is unclear, but for now, fracking has led to fewer carbon emissions and a decline in air pollution.

Democrats' Campaign Promise:  We'll Destroy America's Energy Sector, And Economy.  Eight of the remaining Democratic presidential candidates say they want to ban fracking.  Eleven others would limit the process or "regulate it better," says the Washington Post.  Could these politicians possibly be that ignorant of how ruinous their prohibition lust would be in the real world?  First, let's get it straight why the political left hates hydraulic fracturing.  It's not because it's an environmental threat.  They know it's clean process and has been both an ecological and economic boom, in no small part due to the increased production of natural gas, a cleaner alternative to coal for producing electricity.  No, the left loathes fracking because it is so efficient in taking fossil fuel out of the ground.

US Fracking Will Continue Its Forward March.  The Abqaiq attack in Saudi Arabia by Iran, or one of its proxies, is the largest oil and petrochemical disruption in over fifty years.  Over 5.7 mb/d was lost, and estimates are that it will take months or weeks to return to full production.  The interruption highlights Saudi Aramco's vulnerabilities and how energy infrastructure can be shut down via military forces or environmental demonstrations like what recently occurred in Houston, Texas.  The world needs U.S. fracking to continue unabated.  No other country has the stability and proven reserves like the U.S.  Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia want higher oil prices to balance their budgets.  However, the U.S. shale revolution that has upended global oil supplies and geopolitics is the deterrent to energy attacks.  American fracking has changed the world, and the U.S.-led liberal order in place for over seventy-five years, for the better.

Fracking Ban Proposed By 2020 Dems Would Kill Millions of Jobs.  A proposed fracking ban put forward by leading Democratic presidential candidates would have a devastating impact on U.S. jobs, energy independence, and even national security, according to several studies.  Reports from the American Petroleum Institute, Independent Petroleum Association of America, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce painted a stark picture of the economic fallout from ending fracking, a process which has transformed the United States into the top oil and natural gas producer in the world.

The crackers and frackers could hold the keys to 2020.  [Scroll down]  Trump's magic came in rural and post-industrial counties such as Luzerne and Erie, but most importantly in the populous counties around Pittsburgh, where shale is king and fracking is seen as the second coming of the steel industry.  They may look like ordinary construction cranes to someone unfamiliar with the history of this region.  But if you're from here, they look like something different.  Building the ethane cracker plant, each of these cranes looks like a new colossus rising from the ashes of yesterday's despair.  Building the plant has brought in 6,000 good-paying jobs, with more to come.  Ultimately, there will be 600 permanent jobs at the plant, with industry analysts predicting triple that amount in supporting industries.  Jobs postings are everywhere touting opportunities, no matter the skill level — high school education, trade school certificate, chemists, engineers, IT, labor.  If you reliably turn up for work, there is likely a career for you in the oil and gas industry.

Fracking saves low-income Americans' lives.  Fracking helped save the lives of roughly 11,000 Americans each winter from 2005 to 2010, according to a recent National Bureau of Economic Research paper.  How?  By driving down energy prices and helping them affordably heat their homes.  Demographers have long observed that low-income people die at higher rates during the winter months.  This "excess winter mortality" has a simple, heartbreaking cause — people keep their dwellings uncomfortably cold to reduce their heating bills.  Constant exposure to chilly temperatures makes it more likely that people will contract and succumb to respiratory and heart disease.

Frack Ban Has Zero to Do with Water Quality.  The Delaware River Basin Commission is now totally corrupted.  A majority of members, including Pennsylvania's Governor Tom Wolf and two others, have decided to throw any pretense of fracking ban legality to the wind to pander to the Delaware Povertykeeper and friends.  The DRBC is, of coiurse, considering a fracking ban under Article 5 of its compact as Plan B in the event they lose the lawsuit brought by the Wayne Land and Mineral Group.  They know the law is against them on the WLMG case.  Their argument for the Plan B frack ban is even weaker.  The agency just showed us, though, they don't really care whether they win or lose.

The End of the Oil Age Keeps Getting Postponed.  Oil production in the Permian Basin dates back to the 1920s although production data from the Texas Railroad Commission only goes back to 1940 when production reached 84 million barrels annually.  The Permian Basin is one of the oldest as well as one of the largest and thickest deposits of sedimentary rocks in the country, covering the western part of Texas and eastern portion of New Mexico.  Annual production grew to about 550 million barrels in 1957 and then began a decline that took about a decade to get back to the 1957 level.  It continued to increase and didn't peak until about 1975 when it hit 750 million barrels.  The 70s were a time of price and wage controls and a belief that domestic oil production was on the verge of exhaustion.  By 1998, oil production had fallen to less than 400 million barrels annually.  Today, as a result of horizontal drilling and "fracking", production has reached almost 4 million barrels a day meaning that it exceeds its 1975 production peak in a little more than 6 months.  Not only has technology unlocked a tremendous amount of output, it has also helped to lower the break-even cost per barrel from $60 to $33.

The trillions of dollars wasted on global warming hysteria, properly deployed, could have improved and saved many lives.  Energy costs are much higher in Britain, due to radical green opposition to the fracking of gassy shales.  The anti-oil-pipeline campaign has cost ~$120 billion dollars in lost oil revenues and destroyed ~200,000 jobs in Alberta and across Canada.  This is an enormous financial and job loss for Canada.  The funds wasted on baseless global warming hysteria, anti-fossil-fuel fanaticism and destructive green energy schemes, properly deployed, could have saved or improved the lives of many millions of people.

"Green" Energy Policies Hurt the Environment, Another Case Study.  Britain has a fracking industry — or could have one, anyway, if it weren't for the Greens' political clout.  It finally became too much for Natascha Engel, Britain's "fracking czar," who quit with a blistering letter of resignation: [...] The United States is the only country to reduce significantly its CO2 emissions; we did it by substituting natural gas for coal in power generation.  But Britain's Greens won't let that country develop its considerable natural gas reserves.

In This Oil Boom Town, Even a Barber Can Make $180,000.  Driven by shale drilling, a gusher of crude production has transformed the Permian Basin into America's hottest oilfield, turning what was a remote stretch of towns spread among mesquite trees and scrubland into an industrial zone, seemingly overnight.  A home under construction on the outskirts of Odessa, Texas.  Oil and gas workers earning top dollar have scooped up much of the available housing in the area.  Fortunes are being made in this fracking-related gold rush, and money and workers are flooding in.

New York State and Renewables.  Exploiting shale hydrocarbons involves drilling and fracking.  Naturally, there is some disruption, but the disruption is minor compared to the value of the wealth unleashed.  The crackpot greens magnify and exaggerate every potential problem.  They even mislead, as in the movie Gasland, where a man lights his water faucet on fire.  The implication was that fracking caused natural gas to mix with the water supply.  But the area chosen already had natural gas in the water long before fracking was involved. [...] The geopolitical benefits of fracking are huge.  In ten years, the United States' energy balance of trade went from a large deficit to nearly even as U.S. oil and natural gas production increased dramatically.  World energy prices have declined in the face of increasing U.S. energy production.  Our dependence on imports from far-flung oil-producing countries has declined dramatically.  The refining and petrochemical industry, centered in Texas, is booming.

Fracking Miracle:  The Latest American Exceptionalism.  Last week, the U.S. achieved the status of net oil and refined fuel exporter for the first time since 1973.  For the week ending November 30, the U.S. exported 9 million barrels of oil, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum fuels, versus an aggregate 8.8 million barrels imported.  To provide context and illustrate the magnitude of that achievement, recall that oil imports reached a record of 13 million barrels per day in 2005, when nobody saw the fracking revolution just around the corner.  In fact, the U.S. now stands not just as a net oil exporter, but also as the world's top producer of oil and natural gas.

Fracking Revolution Helped Texas Residents and Businesses Save $60 Billion Over [a] Decade.  The massive increase in domestic shale development, led by hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), has caused natural gas prices to plummet in Texas, according to a recent report from the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA).  Consequently, Lone Star State residents and businesses saved almost $60 billion from 2006 to 2016.  The fracking revolution in Texas has led to $7.2 billion in savings over that period for residential consumers.  This is significant because more than four million Texans live in poverty, and the average Texas resident at or below the poverty line spends around a third of his or her take home pay on energy costs.  Additionally, commercial and industrial consumers saved $52 billion.

Colorado's Dem Gov Searches For Ways To Nix A Potential Fracking Ban.  Democratic Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is considering a special legislative session to limit what he considers the dire effects of a possible hydraulic fracking ban in a state heavily reliant on energy production.  Coloradans are preparing to vote on Nov. 6 on an initiative prohibiting oil and gas drilling within 2,500 feet — nearly a half-mile — from buildings, which is up from a current limit of 500 feet.  Experts worry a yes vote could result in the destruction of the state's fracking industry.  Fracking is a major part of the Colorado economy, Hickenlooper told reporters Friday [11/2/2018].  Any measures designed to effectively end natural gas extraction will obliterate the state's economy, he said.

5 States Could Wreck Their Economies In Futile Fight Against 'Climate Change'.  Over in Colorado, voters will have the chance to severely limit the ability of oil and gas companies to extract energy in the state using the state-of-the-art drilling technology known as fracking.  Initiative 97 would ban oil and gas wells within 2,500 feet of homes, businesses and protected lands.  That would effectively ban drilling in about 85% of the state.  This is a particularly ludicrous effort since fracking is responsible for a significant decrease in CO2 emissions over the past decade.  The fracking revolution opened vast supplies of natural gas to drillers, which sharply lowered natural gas prices.  That, in turn, made natural gas (which emits less CO2) more competitive than coal (which emits more). As utilities switched, CO2 emissions dropped.  Banning or limiting fracking will make such gains more difficult.

Fracking ban cripples New York as Pennsylvania thrives.  New York's Southern Tier and Pennsylvania's Northern Tier were once so similar that they were dubbed the "Twin Tiers."  But over the past decade, these neighboring regions have started to look more and more like distant cousins.  While the Southern Tier's decades-long economic decline has continued, the Northern Tier is thriving — and the difference between the regions' respective paths couldn't be clearer.  In the Southern Tier — which has been denied the opportunity to develop its potentially vast Marcellus Shale reserves by a statewide ban on fracking formally implemented by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2015 — the landscape is dotted with abandoned factories, farms in disrepair, and empty storefronts.  Just across the border, where shale development has been allowed, fracking has made Pennsylvania the country's second-largest natural gas producer, and farms and businesses are thriving.

Missing the red for all the green.  Although Germany's entire defense budget is $42 billion, it is as Donald Trump provocatively observed, only twice as much — approximately $21 billion — as it pays to Russia in gas purchases.  The facts are stark.  "About 35% of Germany's gas is imported from Russia, and fracking is banned at least until 2021.  A former Chancellor of Germany sits on the Gazprom board."  At a time when Putin is the international bad guy it's disturbingly hard to deny that much of his bankroll originates in Europe.  Merkel is certainly intellectually aware of the facts.  In light of her country's energy dependency on Russia she warned that "all of Germany's energy policies must be reconsidered."  But Merkel is captive to Germany's politics, bound by its "Energiewende policy involving phasing out nuclear power by 2023 and increasing its reliance on solar and wind power."  Although fracking may provide a a [sic] technical escape from dependence on Russia it is a political impossibility.

Fracking [is] Not Adversely Affecting Air Quality in Colorado.  An air quality assessment released in March 2018 by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) finds a new oil and natural gas development near Battlement Mesa in Garfield County is a "low risk" for "long-term harmful health effects due to [volatile organic compound] exposure."  Air Resource Specialists collected air samples between October and December 2017 on behalf of Garfield County Public Health to measure the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) both upwind and downwind of the Battlement Mesa wellpad.

A New Low in the Media's War on Fracking.  Rolling Stone just dropped a bombshell — or so it claims in its article, "'The Harms of Fracking': New Report Details Increased Risks of Asthma, Birth Defects and Cancer."  Highlighting what it deems an "authoritative study," Rolling Stone concludes that fracking is "contaminating the air and water — and imperiling the health of millions of Americans."  Dig into the details, though, and it becomes clear that the study is not scientific.  There remains no proof that fracking is dangerous to the general population.

The Connection Between Russia and 2 Green Groups Fighting Fracking in US.  New Yorkers who are missing out on the natural gas revolution could be victims of Russian spy operations that fund popular environmental groups, current and former U.S. government officials and experts on Russia worry.  Natural gas development of the celebrated Marcellus Shale deposits has spurred jobs and other economic growth in neighboring Pennsylvania.  But not in New York, which nearly 10 years ago banned the process of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, to produce natural gas.  Two environmental advocacy groups that successfully lobbied against fracking in New York each received more than $10 million in grants from a foundation in California that got financial support from a Bermuda company congressional investigators linked to the Russians, public documents show.

The Study You Won't Be Hearing About:  No Impact On Groundwater From Fracking.  Protests by environmentalists against hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) have been going on for years now, along with the Hollywood efforts of serial fabulists such as Josh Fox.  One of the biggest concerns surrounding the process is the possibility of contamination of groundwater.  While a previous study in Pennsylvania by the state Department of Environmental Protection revealed zero instances of this happening (except for surface spills during transport of hydraulic fluids), critics discounted the study and the protests continued.  Now a different study conducted in Ohio on the Utica shale play has been completed and published.  They were looking for evidence of natural gas methane (CH4) in the drinking water near fracking sites which might be traced back to the drilling process.

This collusion should worry all.  In light of current investigations of interference in the U.S. political process, it turns out that Russia has, in fact, been meddling for years — not only in the electoral system, but also in the legislative process, and in our internal cultural debates over a wide range of policy issues.  According to congressional investigators, a primary focus of their influence-buying has focused on the environmental movement.  The committees discovered that Russia has covertly funded opposition to U.S. domestic energy production by funding the environmental opposition.  That includes underwriting organizations that work to ban fracking, and even efforts to push ballot initiatives at the state and local level.

Environmental group may have to register as foreign agents.  U.S. environmental activists who are working to halt the production and use of fossil fuels could be required to register as foreign agents if Congress gets serious about enforcing an existing law.  There was some potential movement in that direction last October when Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced legislation that would put some teeth into the Foreign Agents Registration Act.  The law, which was first passed in 1938, calls for individuals and organizations to provide full disclosure when they are working to advance the public policy interests of a foreign government.

The Russian Collusion Story the Media Ignores.  Last week, a congressional committee released a jarring and persuasive report on Russian meddling in American politics.  Despite a media feeding frenzy over anything tangentially connected to questions of Russian interference, this report went largely unnoticed.  The U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee's "Russia's Social Media Meddling in U.S. Energy Markets" details Russian funding of U.S. environmental groups, which used resources to protest the process of fracking and the existence of the Keystone pipeline.  Russia, the world's largest oil producer, figures to watch the U.S. surpass it within five years.  Killing fracking and the pipeline stand as two ways for Russia to avert this fate.  Rep. Lamar Smith, the chairman of the committee, describes the "mechanics of Russia's scheme to use nonprofit entities to influence U.S. public policy and public opinion" with regard to oil and gas and the fracking process.

Russian trolls sought to inflame debate over climate change, fracking and Dakota pipeline.  Russian trolls used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to inflame U.S. political debate over energy policy and climate change, a finding that underscores how the Russian campaign of social media manipulation went beyond the 2016 presidential election, congressional investigators reported Thursday [3/1/2018].  The new report from the House Science, Space and Technology Committee includes previously unreleased social media posts that Russians created on such contentious political issues as the Dakota Access pipeline, government efforts to curb global warming and hydraulic fracturing, a gas mining technique often called "fracking."

Key Republicans call for probe to see if Russia funded anti-fracking groups.  Two key House Republicans have called on the Trump administration to investigate whether Russia is trying to undermine the U.S. energy industry by funding environmental activism as part of a "propaganda war against fossil fuels."  Russia's goal is to "suppress the widespread adoption of fracking in Europe and the U.S.," according to a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin from House Science, Space and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith and energy subcommittee chairman Randy Weber.

How Environmentalists Keep Heating Bills High.  [T]he shale gas revolution lowered the price of natural gas by about two-thirds (from $10 to $3 per million cubic feet). This, in turn, has meant big savings in electricity and home heating costs from where they were a decade ago.  We calculated the benefits to poor households from these lower prices and estimated that shale gas results in $10 billion in consumer savings each year.  The annual budget for the LIHEAP program is about $3 billion.  So shale gas is saving poor families three times what LIHEAP does.  Yet the left-wing politicians who say how shameful it is to cut energy assistance are the ones who want America to stop producing shale gas by banning fracking and other modern drilling technologies that make natural gas so cheap.

Environmentalists Freak Out Over Trump's Repeal Of Rule Which Never Went Into Effect.  The green energy, "keep it in the ground" folks are off to a bad start in 2018.  It turns out that another one of Barack Obama's signature "achievements" in energy regulation, the one which would heavily regulate fracking on federal lands, is going away.  Given what a dirty word "fracking" has become in liberal circles, this is causing all manner of outrage on the left.  There's only one catch here... the rule in question never even went into effect for even a single day.

Obama Fracking Rule to be Overturned by BLM in January.  A federal appeals court refused on Wednesday [12/27/2017] to reconsider its decision to overturn an Obama administration rule on fracking, holding that the issue was moot:  The Trump administration is planning to throw out the rule altogether in January.  The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said that the Obama administration's rule "unnecessarily burdens industry compliance costs and information requirements that are duplicative of regulatory programs of many states and some tribes.  As a result, we are proposing to rescind, in its entirety, the [Obama administration's] 2015 final rule."  The original decision in 2016 ruled that the Obama administration was guilty of federal overreach, that the BLM was never given the authority assumed under that administration to regulate fracking.  In January the oil- and gas-development industry will not have to worry about this regulatory roadblock.  Instead, it will have to worry about how to handle the new oil and gas production flowing out of America's amazing energy resources.

Anarchists Bragged in April about Sabotaging Railroad Tracks to Block Fracking.  ISIS shouldn't be the only terrorist group under suspicion for the Amtrak derailment in Washington this morning. [...] The anarchist group "It's Going Down" last April bragged online about sabotaging railroad tracks in the Pacific Northwest to block fracking equipment from getting to its destination.  The group has since deleted the post, possibly in reaction to today's Amtrak disaster.

More Fracking, Fewer Earthquakes.  A new analysis of Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) data undertaken by Energy in Depth shows the amount of monthly earthquakes in the Sooner State has decreased 86 percent from its peak in June 2015.  Concurrently, there has been an 11 percent increase in oil production and 81 percent increase in the number of operation oil rigs in the state over the past calendar year.  These numbers help reinforce what the scientific literature has long shown:  Fracking is not the cause of the increases in induced seismicity.

8 Really Bad Laws That Went Into Effect Today.  [#5] Fracking ban in Maryland:  After a two year moratorium, Maryland this year passed a complete ban on fracking, which goes into effect today.  The law is not based on sound science but on rank fearmongering.  A 2015 study from Yale found that fracking does not contaminate drinking water, a popular bugaboo for fracking opponents.  The Obama Environmental Protection Agency also found fracking had a negligible effect on drinking water.  Other lies about fracking have also helped to motivate opposition to fracking — fracking does not make it possible to light your drinking water on fire.  Fracking fluid can't seep into groundwater and poison your tap, Fracking doesn't increase air pollution.  It doesn't cause cancer.  And the natural gas freed by fracking is decidedly better than coal.

Lawmakers Cite Evidence Russia 'Colludes' With US Green Groups to Block Fracking.  Forget about allegations of Russian interference in U.S. presidential elections for a moment, or even "collusion" between Russian officials and Trump campaign operatives.  The real action is in the European and U.S. energy markets, according to a letter from two Texas congressmen to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that details what they call "a covert anti-fracking campaign" with "little or no paper trail."  The Daily Signal obtained a copy of the June 29 letter to Mnuchin from Reps.  Lamar Smith and Randy Weber, both Republicans who chair energy-related House panels.

Pitting Wind and Solar Against Nuclear Power.  US electricity consumption has been essentially flat since the financial crisis of 2008-9, thanks to a weak economy and aggressive investment in energy efficiency.  More generation serving the same demand means lower prices for all producers, and fewer annual hours of operation for the least competitive of them.  At the same time abundant, low-priced natural gas from soaring shale production has made gas-fired turbines both a direct competitor in the 24/7 "baseload" segment that coal and nuclear power formerly dominated, and the go-to backup source for integrating more renewables onto the grid.

Duke University Study:  Fracking Isn't Contaminating Ground Water.  We have another study from Duke University that shows groundwater isn't being polluted by fracking, despite the cries from the environmentalists that the process, which is used to tap into natural gas resources.  It's been the crux of their narrative against this sector of the economy that's rapidly growing throughout the country.

More Fracking Lies from the EPA.  [Scroll down]  Most oil and gas wells are fracked in some way.  It is a common well completion procedure.  The process has been in common use for over 60 years.  The EPA "Science Advisory Board" has employed the Gasland canard:  ["][F]racking could impact drinking water throughout the drilling process.["]  Fracking is a well completion operation.  Frack jobs are performed in the well completion procedure.  This is the only phase of the "drilling process" in which frack jobs are performed.  As such, it cannot "impact drinking water throughout the drilling process."  In the Gasland canard, "the drilling process" includes everything from wellsite preparation, to drilling, to completion, to production, to wastewater disposal, to plugging & abandonment, to wellsite reclamation... And then any pollution in the entire process is attributed to fracking.

Tapped out: science shuts down an anti-fracking myth about drinking water.  For years, anti-fracking activists have cited Pavillion's plight over and over again as proof that hydraulic fracturing must be banned.  Josh Fox, director of the anti-fracking movie Gasland, has probably done more than anyone to spread this assertion.  Fox even got himself arrested at a 2012 congressional hearing on the Pavillion case.  I got to watch that happen:  I was a witness at the hearing for the oil and gas industry[.]  It was all a myth.  Not even President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) believed it was true.  In fact, the so-called contamination in Pavillion — announced to the world in 2011 — was almost certainly caused by the EPA itself.

Hillary's In League With Groups To Destroy Energy Independence.  This week, Politico reported that Hillary Clinton is aligned with the same groups who are pushing to end the use of coal and shale energy in the United States.  These policies will be destructive to states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado and severely impact energy rates and jobs across the country.

Despite claims to the contrary, science says fracking not causing increased earthquakes.  People in seven states, from South Dakota to Texas, were awakened Saturday morning, September 3, by Oklahoma's most powerful earthquake in recorded history.  The 5.8 tremor was centered near Pawnee, OK.  Several buildings sustained minor damage and there were no serious injuries.  That we know.  What we don't know is what caused the quake — but that didn't stop the alarmist headlines from quickly blaming it on "fracking."

Science Advisory Board to EPA: Show Your Work.  Anti-fracking activists who have been eagerly awaiting the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Science Advisory Board (SAB) findings on hydraulic fracturing must feel like those kids who rush downstairs to open their presents on Christmas morning, only to find out Santa gave them socks.  Instead of determining hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking, to be dangerous, as the activists hoped, SAB essentially confirmed the conclusions of EPA's draft study, which found no evidence hydraulic fracturing has had widespread or systemic impacts on groundwater resources but wants EPA to show more data to back up these claims.

Colorado Supreme Court Bars City Fracking Bans.  The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed decisions by lower state courts to overturn two cities' fracking bans, ruling on May 2 against Fort Collins' five-year fracking moratorium and a voter-supported ban on hydraulic fracturing in Longmont.  Colorado's high court called the laws "invalid and unenforceable" and determined state law preempts local ordinances on issues related to fracking and oil and gas production.  Fracking — the widely used practice of injecting a high-pressure mix of water, sand, and chemicals underground to break open formations and recover oil and gas — currently accounts for two-thirds of all natural gas production in the United States, according to the Energy Information Agency.  Fort Collins passed its moratorium on fracking in 2013.  Longmont's ban was enacted in 2012.

Chart of the Day II.  Thanks in large part to the substitution of abundant, cheap shale gas for coal as an energy source to generate the nation's electricity, CO2 emissions from the US electric power sector fell to a 29-year low during the January to April period — 522 million metric tons.  The last time CO2 emissions were that low ("green") during the four-month period between January and April was in the year 1987.  Who ever imagined we'd be "going green" thanks to fracking?

U.S. Natural Gas Exports Begin.  In a development few could have foreseen as recently as a decade ago, the United States recently exported its first shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG).  A tanker bound for Brazil departed Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass LNG export facility in late February.  Cheniere originally intended the Sabine Pass facility to receive imported LNG.  The U.S. natural gas boom, resulting from hydraulic fracturing, prompted Cheniere to "reverse-engineer" the Louisiana terminal for the export of LNG.  Cheniere is the first U.S. company to receive a federal permit to export LNG.  "Ten years ago, the experts thought the United States needed to import natural gas," said Dan Simmons, vice president of the Institute for Energy Research.  "Now, we are a natural gas exporter.  "It is difficult to understate [sic] the impact of the hydraulic fracturing revolution on the global natural gas market," Simmons said.  "The biggest problem for producers is not too little natural gas in the United States, but too much, leading to super low prices."

US Oil Reserves Now Top Saudi Arabia.  The world of energy, which is to say the course of the world economy, has been turned upside down with the fracking revolution.  Less glamorous than information technology, perhaps, but the extraction of the formerly inaccessible reserves embedded in shale is having a profound effect on the world's political economy, and in particular on the United States' preeminence, strategically and economically.  Nothing could better symbolize the change than the revelation that the United States is now calculated to have more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.

Frack Sand Stocks Saw a 2nd Straight Month of Large Gains in June .  [M]uch of the gains have to do with oil prices remaining in the range of $45 to $50 a barrel for the month.  While this isn't a great price for producers, it's enough that some are starting to think about doing a little work to bring on a few new wells.  Considering the large number of wells that have been drilled but not yet completed -- wells that will need frack sand -- there is a large backlog of work that these sand producers will need to fill.  The question is how quickly the market will want to bring these wells on line.

Anti-fracking movement reeling as 'scare tactics' fail to resonate.  The latest setback was delivered by U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl of the District of Wyoming, who ruled late Tuesday [6/21/2016] that the Interior Department exceeded its authority with its 2015 rule governing hydraulic fracturing, a widely used extraction technique used to separate oil and natural gas from rock.  States have been the primary regulators.  The process has revolutionized world energy production patterns but has faced determined resistance from environmental groups arguing that fracking is either unproven or unsafe.

Obama administration's fracking rules struck down by federal judge.  In the latest rebuke of the Obama administration's expansive view of executive power, a federal judge has struck down the Interior Department's effort to regulate fracking for oil and natural gas.  Judge Scott Skavdahl of the District Court of Wyoming already had put a hold on the regulations last year, and in a decision released late Tuesday, he ruled that Congress did not give Interior the power to regulate hydraulic fracturing, indeed it had expressly withheld that power with some narrow exceptions.

Study: Water Quality Unaffected by Fracking.  Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) recently concluded a three-year study that found no side effects of hydraulic fracturing on water quality and no evidence the fracking process is causing methane to leak into wells in the observed area.  The study examined 191 water samples taken from 23 wells from 2012 to 2015 in five Ohio counties:  Belmont, Carroll, Columbiana, Harrison, and Stark.  "The good news is that our study did not document that fracking was directly linked to water contamination," said Amy Townsend-Small, according to a report by the Ohio Times Reporter.  "Some of our highest observed methane concentrations were not near a fracking well at all," said Townsend-Small.  The UC study's results were consistent with the findings of a comprehensive survey of academic literature on fracking conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  The EPA survey, released in June 2015, found little evidence of water pollution resulting from fracking.

In Some Corners Of The American Oil Patch, $50 A Barrel Really Is The New $100.  The frackers have found that America has more oil than ever thought possible, and they'll need fewer rigs to get it out.

Colorado's Tenacious Anti-Fracking Movement Explores "Last-Ditch Options".  The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in early May that state rules promoting oil and gas development trump local attempts to restrict or ban drilling near homes and schools.  As such, residents who live near proposed drilling sites "said they see few options" for stopping new projects, the [Denver] Post reported.  But tenacious Coloradans — who came out en masse earlier this month for Break Free protests against fossil fuels — aren't giving up the fight.

Local Anchor:  Clinton Presidency 'Should Freak People Out,' Will Hurt North Dakota Economy By Targeting Fracking.  The host of a local North Dakota news show told viewers Friday [5/20/2016] that the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency "should freak people out" because she will badly damage the state's economy by going after fracking, which will hurt the oil and gas industry and cost jobs.  Chris Berg, the anchor of 6:30 Point of View, a show on CBS affiliate KXJB Valley News Live, discussed North Dakota's economic struggles as Clinton's husband, Bill, was in Fargo, North Dakota for a campaign rally.  Berg explained that the North Dakota Office of Management and Budget released a revenue report on Friday saying that the state missed its budget forecast even after a revised one was issued earlier this year.

Don't Let The Nuts Keep America's National Treasure Buried.  Thanks to the technological miracle of "fracking," America now has the proven reserves to be the world's number one producer of oil, number one producer of natural gas, and number one producer of coal.  Imagine what that would be like for America's own economy to include the world leading industries of all three of these crucial sources of energy.  America would then be the Saudi Arabia of oil, the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, and the Saudi Arabia of coal, all within just one economy.  That would mean hundreds of thousands of good paying, blue collar jobs in those three industries alone.

Research university hides results of fracking study which fails to prove it's dangerous.  What happens when a university research department is tasked with conducting a study of the harmful effects of fracking on ground water and other environmental concerns?  Well, that depends on who provides their research money and what the results turn out to be.  In the case of the University of Cincinnati, a lot of their funding comes from groups which have a vested interest in proving how harmful fracking is so it's hardly a surprise that they lost interest in the study when it failed to produce any evidence of ground water contamination near commercial fracking sites.

Pennsylvania voters torn over calls for a fracking ban.  A debate over fracking emerged between Sanders and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton over the last month, with Sanders calling for a nationwide ban and Clinton pushing a middle-of-the road approach that would allow it with caveats — a stance that has been criticized by more progressive democrats.  The outcome of the presidential and senate primaries in a state that now the second biggest natural gas producer in America after Texas may reveal how residents of heavily drilled areas feel about an industry suffering from a decline in oil and gas prices.

New York fracking ban leaves state divided as primary looms.  For seven years, fracking roiled New York.  Back in the summer of 2007, when the gas industry started knocking on doors in Delaware County, a faultline ran right through the home of Mark Dunau and Lisa Wujnovich.  In 2014, the state announced a ban, but that faultline still runs through local and national politics, and even through the Democratic presidential primary.  Activists fear Hillary Clinton's pragmatic approach is too soft on fracking, and support her rival Bernie Sanders' call for a national ban.  Clinton supporters, meanwhile, have begun to worry that opposition to fracking would weaken her in a general election.

5 Factual Errors In The NAACP's $5 Billion Demand For 'Climate Justice'.  [#4] Fracking causes earthquakes.  "Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as 'fracking', does not appear to be linked to the increased rate of magnitude 3 and larger earthquakes," according to to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) website.  There has never been a single injury resulting from earthquakes potentially induced by fracking or fracking related processes.  Magnitude 3 or weaker earthquakes are so weak they can only be felt by people on the highest floors of buildings.  The USGS findings concur with a National Research Council assessment which states:  "The process of hydraulic fracturing a well as presently implemented for shale gas recovery does not pose a high risk for inducing felt seismic events."  Fracking earthquake myths from environmentalists are so widespread that the USGS actually maintains a "Myths and Misconceptions" section of its website to debunk them.

How Fracking Reduces Greenhouse Gases.  As a nation, the United States reduced its carbon emissions by 2 percent from last year.  Over the past 14 years our carbon emissions are down more than 10 percent. [...] Even more stunning:  we've reduced our carbon emissions more than virtually any other nation in the world, including most of Europe.  How can this be?  We never ratified the Kyoto Treaty.  We never adopted a cap and trade system, or a carbon tax as so many of the sanctimonious Europeans have done.  The answer isn't that the EPA has regulated CO2 out of the economy.  The EPA surely has started to strangle our domestic industries like coal and our electric utilities with strict emission standards.  But that's not the big story here.  The primary reason carbon emissions are falling is because of hydraulic fracturing — or fracking.

Colorado Supreme Court strikes down local fracking bans.  The Colorado Supreme Court dealt a devastating setback Monday [5/2/2016] to the state's environmental movement by throwing out local bans on hydraulic fracturing.  The courtruled that the outright ban approved in Longmont and five-year moratorium passed in Fort Collins conflict with state law authorizing and regulating hydraulic fracturing, an extraction process used by the oil and gas industry.

Public university admits to burying study finding no damage to water quality from fracking because funders 'disappointed'.  A three-year study undertaken by the state-funded University of Cincinnati will not be released to the public, because it found no damage at all.  This direct contradiction of the goals of many environmentalist groups had to be suppressed. [...] As Russell Cook, a citizen-journalist, has detailed, the global warming fraudsters inevitably revert to the charge that scientists who question their theory are in the pocket of the "fossil fuel industry," a charge based on no substance at all and is actually 180 degrees different from reality.  With billions of dollars annually spent of "global warming research" that hands to governments enormous power to tax and regulate all economic activity (that depends on energy), the gravy train is on the warmist side.

Bernie Sanders wants to kill fracking boom.  If Bernie Sanders becomes president, America's fracking boom will be in danger.  This week the Democratic presidential candidate called for a national ban on fracking, the controversial drilling technology that has not only led to a massive boom in oil and natural gas, created thousands of new jobs but also been linked to water contamination and even earthquakes.  "If we are serious about combating climate change, we need to put an end to fracking, not only in New York and Vermont, but all over this country," Sanders said during a speech in Binghamton, New York this week.

Texas State Rep. Phil King Fights for Fracking and Against Federal Overreach.  Oil and gas deposits don't stop at city limits.  One of our largest natural-gas-producing counties has by itself over 30 municipalities.  A patchwork of inconsistent municipal regulations would undermine Texas' preeminent role in regulating oil and gas development.  Furthermore, few cities, if any, have the in-house expertise [needed] to regulate drilling and production.  That is not to say cities don't have a role.  Our legislation affirmed a municipality's authority to regulate aboveground activity, including fire and emergency response, traffic, lights, noise, and reasonable setbacks.  Bottom line:  Texas must have consistent statewide regulations so natural resources can be developed safely, while protecting the environment, and also in a way that balances legitimate municipal interests with a property owner's right to develop his or her estate.

Gas pipeline opponents hope to influence NY presidential primary.  Fracktivists, as anti-hydrofracking activists are called, hope to play a role in New York's presidential primary.  They are asking Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, as well as Republican candidates, to take a stand against the Constitution Pipeline and other natural gas pipelines, that if approved could criss-cross the state.  More than 200 fracktivists held a rally Tuesday [4/5/2016] to oppose natural gas pipelines in New York, and to call on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to ban them.

An Ungrateful Nation Turns Its Back On Fracking.  A Gallup poll taken in early March shows that 51% of Americans say they oppose fracking "as a means of increasing production of natural gas and oil in the U.S."  That's up from 40% just one year ago.  Even more surprising, the drop in overall support is largely the result of a shift among Republicans.  While 66% supported fracking last year, a bare majority (55%) do now.  Support was steady among independents (35% vs. 34%) and Democrats (26% vs 25%).  Gallup speculates that lower gas prices and a decline in the share of Americans worried about energy shortages are behind the decline.  This makes absolutely no sense.

Clinton, Sanders Plan To Stop Fracking Would Boost CO2, Liberals Admit.  What is an environmentalist to do these days?  You can support windmills, so long as they don't disrupt ridgelines, where the wind happens to blow.  You have to approve of solar power, except when a solar power plant might disrupt efforts to restore migration routes for 100 sheep in the Mohave Desert.  And you once were supposed to support natural gas as a "bridge fuel" between coal and something else, until you weren't.  Now the requirement appears to be that you must oppose fracking at all costs, even though it will likely mean increasing emissions of greenhouse gases.  That's the conundrum Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders now find themselves in.

Hillary Was for Fracking Before She Was Against It.  [Scroll down]  In 2014 Clinton also stated with regard to fracking that "expanding production is creating tens of thousands of new jobs," and "lower costs are helping give the United Stated a big competitive advantage."  While Hillary may no longer admit this about fracking, her past statements of support are completely accurate.  According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), fracking has led to reductions in imported energy, down from 60 percent of what the U.S. used in 2004 to 38 percent in 2013.  For 2012 alone, this led to a $284 billion increase in U.S. GDP, 2.1 million jobs created, and increased the income of every American household by roughly $1,200.  Hillary Clinton's criticism of fracking at the recent Democratic debate is a blatant attempt by her campaign to gain power by appealing to the misinformed prejudices and emotions of the extreme left.

Norquist: Hillary's Attack on Guns and Fracking Will Cost Her the Election.  Norquist was referring to Clinton's comment in Sunday's Democrat debate where she said, "So by the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place." [...] While Clinton has always been terrible on the gun issue, her anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment statement in Sunday's debate was broad and sweeping:  "I think we have to try everything that works to try to limit the numbers of people and the kinds of people who are given access to firearms."

The End of Saudi Arabia?  The present worldwide depression — let's call it what it is, not a recession — is partly the direct result of Saudi manipulations.  Fracking, particularly in the United States, was on the verge of making the USA independent of oil imports.  Europe, Latin America, Oceania, and China were all starting to frack.  As technology got cheaper, Saudi Arabia knew that, left unchecked, one day the world would break free of Muslim oil extortion, and their cash cow would be kaput.  The KSA, which produces little else, would be back to selling sand, and the Quranically approved as healthful camel urine — but since dromedaries are not unique to the peninsula, even that market would be lost to them.  The Saudis have been at this oil price manipulation game for over 40 years.

Obama Brags About Low Energy Prices, Then Proposes To Raise Them.  We did, in fact, "drill our way" to lower gas prices.  Thanks to fracking, oil companies are now able to produce vast amounts of previously unrecoverable oil.  In the past seven years, domestic oil production shot up a stunning 77%, according to the Energy Information Administration, making the U.S. the biggest oil producer in the world.  That's why gas prices are low today.  And why oil imports have dropped so sharply.  And none of it had anything to do with Obama, who tried to hamper oil production whenever he could — blocking Keystone, restrictions on federal lands, EPA attempts to hinder fracking.

EPA science advisers want changes to landmark fracking report.  A landmark study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that concluded fracking causes no widespread harm to drinking water is coming under fire from the agency's own science advisers.  The EPA's preliminary findings released in June were seen as vindication of the method used to unlock oil and gas from dense underground rock.  A repudiation of the results could reignite the debate over the need for more regulation.

Dead wrong on oil.  It would be hard to find anyone in all of America who has been more wrong on the American energy story than Barack Obama.  Oil prices have fallen from $105 a barrel in the summer of 2014 to hovering at $35 a barrel today.  That's a two-thirds reduction in the price and the biggest factor is shale oil brought to you by fracking.  In many areas of the country gas is now less than $2 a gallon and it could fall further in the weeks ahead.  The falling price means, of course, an expanded supply.  But now listen to President Obama, who has lectured the nation on energy as if he were one of the top experts for the last eight years.  In a 2008 Speech in Lansing, Michigan, presidential candidate Obama was all doom and gloom about oil, advising:  "We cannot sustain a future powered by a fuel that is rapidly disappearing."

Obama seeks to overturn court's block of fracking rules.  The Obama administration is seeking to reverse a Wyoming district court's injunction blocking the first regulations imposed on oil and gas producers that use fracking.  Justice Department lawyers filed with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver Thursday evening in an attempt to lift the Wyoming court's September ruling.  The injunction has kept the Interior Department from enforcing its regulations while the court reviews the merits of state and industry lawsuits opposing the regulations.

Environmental Impacts of Industrial Silica Sand (Frac Sand) Mining.  The rate of silica sand mining in the United States has increased in recent years, due in large part to the tremendous growth in hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas using horizontal drilling techniques.  Some environmental activist groups and community organizers contend silica sand mining presents significant threats to human health and the environment.  Scientific evidence strongly refutes such claims.  Silica sand mining has minimal environmental impact, involves virtually no public health risk, and is an important part of domestic energy production that has substantial economic benefits.

Study of Premature Births Fails to Show Fracking Connection.  Serious methodological errors render unreliable the findings of a recent study titled "Unconventional Natural Gas Development and Birth Outcome in Pennsylvania, USA," which suggested pregnant mothers living near hydraulic fracturing sites could be at a higher risk of giving birth to premature babies.  The study, which was published in the journal Epidemiology, was conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins-Bloomberg School of Public Health.  It relies exclusively on retrospective data analysis of pregnancy and birth statistics of just under 11,000 pregnant women in hydraulic fracturing-rich areas of Pennsylvania between 2009 and 2013.  The data were used to find statistical associations between the distance a pregnant mother lived from a fracking site and whether or not she gave birth prematurely.

Shaking out the lies surrounding earthquakes and hydraulic fracturing.  MSNBC's Rachel Maddow gleefully teased the earthquakes in Oklahoma as "the story that might keep you up at night."  On her October 16 show, she stated that Oklahoma's earthquakes are:  "The terrible and unintended consequence of the way we get oil and gas out of the ground. ...from fracking operations."  Yet, when her guest, Jeremy Boak, Oklahoma Geological Survey Director, corrected her, "it's not actually frackwater," she didn't change her tune.  Despite the fact that the science doesn't support the thesis, opponents of oil-and-gas extraction, like Maddow, have long claimed that the process of hydraulic fracturing is the cause of the earthquakes.  Earthworks calls them "frackquakes" because the quakes, the organization says, are "fracking triggered earthquakes."  The anti-crowd doesn't want to hear otherwise.

Can 'waterless fracking' in New York sidestep Cuomo's ban?  The administration of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has shown no signs of backing off the statewide prohibition on hydraulic fracturing the Democrat announced at the end of last year.  But a collection of landowners in one of the most economically depressed areas in the Empire State hopes the Cuomo administration will give it the OK to drill without using conventional "fracking" techniques, in the hopes of reaching some of the vast natural gas deposits in the Marcellus Shale formation.

Federal judge blocks new Obama administration rules on fracking.  A judge on Wednesday [9/30/2015] blocked new nationwide regulations for oil and gas drilling on federal lands from taking effect while a lawsuit moves ahead, pointing to a law that prohibits the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating hydraulic fracturing.

Oklahoma Bars City Fracking Bans.  Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) has signed a bill preventing Oklahoma cities and counties from banning hydraulic fracturing, also called "fracking," within their boundaries.  The bill specifically prohibits cities and towns from banning operations such as drilling, fracking, water disposal, recovery operations, and pipeline infrastructure.  The law, which takes effect 90 days after the May 29 signing, allows municipalities and counties to enact "reasonable" regulations concerning road use, traffic, noise, and odors incidental to oil and gas operation.  It also allows cities to set fencing requirements around oil and gas drilling sites and establish setback requirements for how closely wells can be sited near homes or businesses.

NY Fracking Ban Is Literally Impoverishing Rural Towns.  New York's ban on hydraulic fracturing is great news for environmentalists, but horrible news for those living upstate who are seeing their economic opportunities fade as the state government closes the door on drilling.  A recent report by the state comptroller found that while New York added 538,000 jobs between 2009 and 2014, virtually all of these jobs were concentrated in New York City. The Southern Tier, on the other hand, has been suffering.  This is the region where most natural gas operations would be occurring had it been allowed by the state government.  It didn't, and now people are losing jobs and hope.

Liberate American oil.  Forty years ago America was in a panic.  The world was running out of oil.  Cars lined up around the block at every gasoline station in town.  President Nixon took a commercial flight to California, riding (first class) with the semi-ordinary folk, and leaving Air Force One in the hangar.  Congress enacted a law prohibiting selling American oil abroad.  Cheap oil was gone for good and America was resigned to kowtowing to the shieks of Arabia forever.  The man who turned all that around is Harold Hamm, the chairman of Continental Resources, who made "fracking" a household word, and turned North Dakota into the Saudi Arabia (without the Arabs) of the new world, and is largely responsible for moving the United States close to the long-sought goal of "energy independence."

Fracking, with care, brings big benefits.  Fracking — the practice of cracking open underground oil and gas formations with water, sand and chemicals — has rescued U.S. energy production from a dangerous decline.  Any debate about banning it should take a hard look at what that would cost the nation and at facts that aren't always part of the discussion.  Those facts are spelled out in a recent report from the Environmental Protection Agency on fracking and groundwater.  One of the harshest charges against fracking, often leveled with apocalyptic intensity by its foes, is that it indiscriminately contaminates vital drinking water supplies.  The EPA's timely report essentially said that's overblown.  The study identified many ways fracking could cause damage, but found little evidence that it had.

Federal judge blocks Obama from implementing draconian fracking rules.  A federal judge agreed Tuesday [6/23/2015] to postpone the Obama administration's tough new hydraulic fracturing restrictions just hours before they were scheduled to take effect.  U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl in Casper, Wyoming, gave both sides another week to submit arguments and citations before making a final decision on the request for a stay, which is expected July 22.

Fracking: You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet!.  It was only a couple of months ago that articles were being written about the demise of fracking, mainly by those skeptical of or even opposed to fracking — or written by people on the payroll of enemies of America's energy renaissance.  We were told that fracking was polluting water supplies — nay, setting tap water on fire! — and, anyway, that fracking was doomed because Saudi Arabia was ramping up production, forcing the price of oil to plummet, and driving American fracking companies out of business.  But recent news has been devastating for the anti-fracking posse.

Who were those "science advisors" behind the NY fracking ban?  Last week we talked about the bombshell EPA report which said that fracking didn't have any demonstrated, systemic effect on ground water quality.  (Well, it was a "bombshell" unless you work at the NY Times, which didn't find that it merited much of a mention.)  One of the places most affected by this information should be New York State, where Governor Andrew Cuomo relied on "expert scientific advice" to ban the practice indefinitely.

EPA Buries Its Own Good News About Fracking.  Want to see a perfect example of spin as a Washington art form?  Read the results of the federal government's most in-depth investigation ever of fracking.  As Institute for Energy Research president Thomas Pyle pointed out, "It only took four years and 1,000 pages, but the EPA finally confirmed what we already knew — hydraulic fracturing is safe, and states have been effectively regulating the process."  Americans love good news, but President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency couldn't treat it as such.  The report's "Major Findings" didn't celebrate that your well water is safe.

EPA: Remember all that horrible stuff we said about fracking? Yeah... never mind.  The Environmental Protection Agency has finished a draft copy of a long awaited study on fracking and its impact (or lack thereof) on drinking water.  The folks in the green energy community who have been pushing for bans on the practice for years now are up in arms already because the results were precisely what they didn't want to hear.  The alarmist have been pedaling bogus science for quite a while now.

Fracking Study Undercuts Environmentalists' Calls for Regulation.  It was always a longshot that the Obama administration or Congress would crack down on the golden goose of hydraulic fracturing.  The chances shrunk further Thursday with the release of a landmark U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study that found the drilling method had no widespread impact on drinking water.

EPA Fracking Study: Drilling Wins.  Finally, the Environmental Protection Agency has admitted what the oil and natural gas industry has been saying for more than 60 years:  "Hydraulic fracturing activities have not led to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water sources."  EPA's five-year-long study, requested by Congress, examined more than 950 pieces of information, including published papers and technical reports.  While finding "potential vulnerabilities, some of which are not unique to hydraulic fracturing," the report basically pronounces fracking safe.

EPA finds fracking poses no direct threat to drinking water.  Fracking does not pose a direct threat to drinking water supplies, the Obama administration said Thursday [6/4/2015] in a major study that represents a serious blow to environmentalists and other vocal opponents of U.S. oil and gas production.  The landmark Environmental Protection Agency report, nearly five years in the making, found that the drilling technique had no "widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water."  The conclusion casts doubt on the wisdom of President Obama's latest regulations for governing fracking on public lands and undermines the claims of environmentalists, many Democrats, some liberal media outlets and others who have led the charge against fracking.

EPA Study of Fracking Finds 'No Widespread, Systemic' Pollution.  Hydraulic fracturing has contaminated some drinking water sources but the damage is not widespread, according to a landmark U.S. study of water pollution risks that has supporters of the drilling method declaring victory and foes saying it revealed reason for concern.  The draft analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency, released Thursday [6/4/2015] after three years of study, looked at possible ways fracking could contaminate drinking water, from spills of fracking fluids to wastewater disposal.

NY fracking ban poised to take effect, critics say state giving up thousands of jobs.  The push to ban fracking — the process of injecting a combination of water, sand and chemicals into rock deposits underground to release natural gas — is the culmination of nearly seven years of advocacy spanning two governors and three environmental conservation commissioners.  Though New York has had a fracking moratorium for years, current Gov. Andrew Cuomo rejected efforts to lift it and, instead, changed it to an all-out ban in December.  But critics charge Cuomo's decision risks up to 54,000 fracking-related New York jobs — jobs that don't exist now since fracking is not allowed, but could have been generated with the approval of various projects in the future.

Saudi Arabia continues to turn screws on U.S. Shale.  Saudvi Arabia continues to ratchet up production, taking market share away from U.S. shale producers.  According to OPEC's latest monthly oil report, Saudi Arabia boosted its oil output to 10.31 million barrels per day in April, a slight increase over the previous month's total of 10.29 million barrels.  That was enough for the de facto OPEC leader to claim its highest oil production level in more than three decades.

The Editor says...
The headline is a reversal of the truth:  Fracking is putting pressure on OPEC to produce more oil and reduce the price for quick sale.

Texas Legislature Bans Municipal Fracking Bans.  The Texas Legislature has responded to a voter referendum to ban fracking in Denton, Texas, by approving the "Denton Fracking Bill," which would impose a ban on municipal fracking bans.  It effectively squashes the vote in Denton against fracking.  Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) is expected to sign the legislation. [...] Anti-frackers have blamed the process for causing earthquakes and numerous other environmental, health and safety problems.  Industry proponents say fracking is what has made U.S.-based companies strong players in the world's energy markets.

The Editor says...
For those of you in other parts of the country, Denton is an enclave of left-wing tax-and-spend big-government liberalism.  Very similar to Austin, but without the scenery or the traffic.

Legislators Vote To Prohibit City Fracking Bans In Texas.  Last fall, Denton became the first Texas city to do what many thought impossible in the Lone Star state:  It banned fracking.  The ban might not last long, though.  The Texas legislature has passed a bill that prohibits cities from establishing fracking bans.  Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to sign it.  Fracking opponents are naturally upset.  Meanwhile, the media are playing the news as a victory for the oil and gas industry.  It's incomplete, however, to report that Big Oil is the sole beneficiary.  Fracking's benefits spread wide and run deep.

Links Between Fracking and Air Quality Questioned.  A widely cited study purporting to show oil and gas operations using hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, cause serious air-quality issues suffers from "significant flaws," a new report has found.  Environmental Health in October 2014 published "Air Concentrations of Volatile Compounds Near Oil and Gas Production:  A Community-based Exploratory Study," by Gregg P. Macey of the Center for Health, Science, and Public Policy at the Brooklyn Law School.  The study garnered substantial media attention.

Critics blast new Obama regs for fracking on federal lands.  A new regulation announced Friday [3/20/2015] by the Obama administration — requiring fracking companies who drill on federal lands to disclose what chemicals they use in the controversial process — was blasted as "yet another attack on American jobs" by GOP lawmakers, who said the mandate could slow the U.S. energy boom.  The Bureau of Land Management rule, which would take effect in June, also updates requirements for well construction and disposal of water and other fluids used in hydraulic fracturing, a drilling method that has spurred jobs and economic growth in natural gas and oil production.  It would not apply to privately owned lands, but roughly 10 percent of the U.S. energy sector's work takes place on land leased from the federal government.

Interior's new fracking rules get swift GOP backlash.  The Obama administration unveiled the first major national safety restrictions for fracking on Friday, touching off a swift backlash from the president's critics in Congress and the energy industry.  Two oil industry groups immediately sued to challenge the rules, calling them "a reaction to unsubstantiated concerns," while 27 Senate Republicans introduced legislation to block them from taking effect.  Meanwhile, green groups were divided on whether the long-awaited regulations go far enough.

Because it produces energy and encourages capitalism...
Obama cracks down on fracking.  The Obama administration is setting new standards for the controversial hydraulic fracturing process, the first major federal effort to crack down on the practice that has largely been behind the nation's oil and natural gas boom.  The fracking standards only apply to drilling on leased federal land and land owned by American Indian tribes, which account for less than a quarter of the country's oil production and 17 percent of its gas.  The vast majority of fracking happens off federal land, regulators said.

Upstate New York towns consider seceding to Pennsylvania.  Plenty of people leave New York state but in a job-hungry stretch of upstate, folks talk about staying put and seceding to Pennsylvania.  Local officials stung by a recent decision to ban natural gas fracking have raised the idea of redrawing the Keystone State's border.

Five Ways Liberals Ignore Science.  Hydraulic fracturing is as safe as any other means of extracting fossil fuels.  It creates hundreds of thousands of jobs.  It provides cheaper energy for millions of Americans.  It has less of an environmental impact than other processes.  It means less dependency on foreign oil.  It helped the economy work its way out of a recession.  So 62 percent of Republicans support science and 59 percent of Democrats oppose it.  Even though numerous scientific studies — one funded by the National Science Foundation that debunked the purported link between groundwater pollution and fracking — have assured us that there's nothing to fear.

Obama pushes new methane limits for gas drilling, industry says 'energy renaissance' at risk.  The Obama administration pushed new regulations Wednesday [1/14/2015] aimed at cutting methane emissions from the natural gas sector, calling the proposed rules a needed step to address global warming as industry groups warned the move would threaten "America's energy renaissance."  Relying once again on the Clean Air Act, the rules — the first of their kind — join a host of others that President Obama has ordered in an effort to slow global warming despite opposition in Congress that has only hardened since the midterm elections.

The Editor says...
So President Obama is making "an effort to slow global warming."  How wonderful.  I wonder if Mr. Obama knows that global warming stopped 18 years ago, all by itself.  Maybe he knows this, but is just using methane emissions as a way to tighten the screws on energy production, because he hates capitalism.  Or maybe he really doesn't know that there is no global warming, since it probably hasn't been mentioned on ESPN.

More "green science" on fracking falls apart under scrutiny.  Not that anyone in the anti-energy community will pay attention to this, but the debate over hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and energy extraction in general has delivered another blow to the Green Energy crew.  In fact, several of the most commonly repeated stories about the health hazards associated with the oil and gas energy have turned out to be "claims masquerading as science."

EPA Moves to Count Methane Emissions from Fracking.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a new rule that would require energy companies to report to the federal government all greenhouse gas emissions from oil well fracking operations and natural gas compressor stations and pipelines.  The EPA's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program currently requires energy companies to report only those emissions from fracking operations that involve flaring — the industry's practice of burning off excess natural gas at a well site.

Technology Is Driving the Fracking Revolution.  Although energy producers have utilized fracking since the 1940s, today's fracking revolution results from recent technological advances and new oil and natural gas discoveries.  Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, extracts oil and natural gas from shale rock by drilling thousands of feet below the earth's surface and then injecting water, sand, and trace chemicals under high pressure to create cracks in the shale formations, thus releasing oil and natural gas.  By some estimates, fracking could raise average the U.S. household income by $2,700 per year and create 1.2 million new jobs by 2020.

Cuomo Killed Lots Of Jobs By Pointlessly Banning Fracking.  New York state found that fracking would mean more than 50,000 jobs for eight economically depressed counties bordering Pennsylvania.  In banning it, Gov. Andrew Cuomo chose green over black gold. [...] Environmentalists and government have been fishing in vain for evidence of health hazards from fracking for many years, but to Cuomo no evidence equals "uncertainties," hence the ban.

Citing Health Risks, Cuomo Bans Fracking in New York State.  Andrew M. Cuomo's administration announced on Wednesday [12/17/2014] that it would ban hydraulic fracturing in New York State because of concerns over health risks, ending years of debate over a method of extracting natural gas.  Fracking, as it is known, was heavily promoted as a source of economic revival for depressed communities along New York's border with Pennsylvania, and Mr. Cuomo had once been poised to embrace it.

New York state to ban fracking over health fears.  New York state is looking to ban fracking, citing unresolved health issues and dubious economic benefits of the widely used gas-drilling technique. [...] "Mounting scientific evidence points to serious health risks from fracking operations," said Kate Sinding, deputy director of the New York programme at the Natural Resources Defense Council.  "With this announcement, the governor has listened, ... demonstrating both courage and national leadership on this critical issue."

The Editor says...
Really?  What evidence?  What illness is caused by fracking?  The writer of this article apparently forgot to ask.  This legislation is based on fear about what might happen someday, based on evidence yet to be developed.

Fracking Drives Global Oil Prices Down.  One of the perennial arguments of the anti-fracking crowd has been that the shale revolution has failed to bring down oil prices.  If the huge investment in fracking hasn't lowered prices for U.S. consumers, what's the good of fracking?  Now that argument has gone the way of all the other objections to fracking.  When OPEC failed to cut production last month, one of the main reasons was competition from swelling production in the U.S.  Reportedly, Saudi Arabia blocked production cuts (which would have raised prices) due to fear of losing market share.  It wasn't just Russia or Iran they were worried about.  The biggest new competitor on the block is the U.S.

Plunging Oil Prices Undermine U.S. Adversaries.  Global oil prices continued to plunge on Monday, aiding U.S. consumers at the pump while delivering a blow to oil-rich foreign adversaries.  Crude oil prices have now dropped below $70 a barrel, about $30 cheaper than during the last summer.  Prices have plummeted in part due to fracking — an oil and gas extraction technique that has enabled U.S. production to surge.

Hillary Praises Fracking, Stays Silent on Keystone.  At a speech to the League of Conservation Voters in midtown Manhattan Monday night, before hundreds of deep-pocketed donors, Hillary Clinton praised the environmental legacy of Teddy Roosevelt, touted the prospect of new green technologies, and had warm words for Barack Obama's aggressive efforts to combat climate change.  Absent from the former Secretary of State's speech?  Any sense of where she stood on the controversial Keystone pipeline project, or what she would do differently as president to steer the nation towards a more sustainable future.

Elections Have Consequences For Hydraulic Fracturing.  One of the most important issues this election cycle was energy development, especially as it pertains to hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking."  Because government regulation of oil and natural gas development primarily occurs at the state level, the results of several statewide elections will significantly affect hydraulic fracturing.  In some cases, the elections will result in a change of policy; in others they may bring more of the same.  Here is a snapshot of some of the likely changes coming for Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New York.

Another Day, Another Worthless Report Trying to Kill Britain's Shale Gas Industry.  "The people at the UK Energy Research Centre, they've nothing against this in principle, they're in the business of finding alternative sources of energy, so they're not people who are coming at this from a position of ingrained opposition...."  Thus Jim Naughtie on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning [11/12/2014], introducing yet another, official-sounding, produced-by-'experts' report calculated to pour cold water on the nascent UK shale gas industry by alleging that its potential benefits have been "oversold."

Lower Oil Prices Slow Fracking, but Kill Solar.  Environmentalists should be ecstatic. The Saudis are doing for them what they have tried and tried and tried to do for themselves, but could not:  Stop fracking.  But their green smiles are quickly turning into frowns as more and more enviros recognize the same lower oil prices that hurt fracking are killing their most treasured darlings:  Solar and wind power.

Frac Sand Study: Lots of Scare, Little Science.  Unfortunately, special-interest groups have published a study attempting to scare the people of Wisconsin and other parts of the Upper Midwest about mining sand used for hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as "frac sand," by presenting only one side of the story.  Instead of basing the study on the best available scientific evidence and discussing both the costs and benefits of frac sand mining, anecdotal evidence (which is unscientific and unreliable and can lead to cherry picking data) is used to focus on costs while completely ignoring benefits.  This special-interest study attempts to portray frac sand mining as an industry running amuck, operating without oversight or regulation.  It also tries to paint the industry as a threat to a clean water supply and as a possible cancer risk, but it doesn't provide even a grain of real science to support these claims.

Fracking gives US bumper crop of oil, more clout in diplomatic standoffs.  Did you know the United States has become Saudi Arabia?  Well, minus the sand and support for Wahhabi fundamentalism, but plus the oil and natural gas, much more of it than can be found in the Kingdom of the House of Saud.  OPEC, schmopec.  America is floating in black gold, and the reason is hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" — pumping water underground (far below the water table) and then drilling sideways to break up shale formations full of oil and natural gas.

The Truth about Fracking.  Fracking works like this:  You set up your giant robot and you drill a five-inch-diameter hole down several thousand feet until you hit the gas shale, and then you turn 90 degrees and you drill horizontally through some more shale, until you've got all your pipes and rig in place.  And then you hit that shale with a high-pressure blast of water and sand, creating millimeter-wide fractures through which the natural gas can escape and make you very, very rich in spite of the fact that you're spending about a million dollars a week on space-age "matrix" drill bits and squadrons of engineers and a small army of laborers, technicians, truck drivers, machinists, and a pretty-good-sized bill from Hoggfather's, the local barbecue joint that has added a couple of specialized and custom-outfitted mobile crews just for cooking two massive meals a day for the fracking hands who are far too busy to take off for lunch.

Seven Facts for Fracking Deniers.  Fact #5: Fracking has led to an increase in domestic oil and gas production and a major reduction in dependence on foreign oil.  Since 2005, U.S. oil production has increased from approximately 5 million to 8 million barrels per day.  Combined with increased fuel efficiency and a slight decline in miles driven, increased domestic oil production has cut dependence on foreign oil in half.  According to the International Energy Agency, the U.S. will become the world's largest oil producer by 2015.

Thanks to fracking:
U.S. about to pass Saudi Arabia as largest liquid petroleum producer.  The "peak oil" pundits were sure we were on the precipice of running out of oil.  Now, it seems, the sky is indeed the limit.  Which is why it makes little sense, given the state of climate science, that our President is busily engaged via the UN and other domestic agencies, in throttling back one of the most economically viable growth engines the American economy has at the moment (and for the foreseeable future).

Offshore Fracking In Gulf Of Mexico Is On The Rise As Companies Seek Out Deep-Sea Riches.  Global oil and gas firms are increasingly turning to offshore fracking to extract more fossil-fuel riches from the bottom of the ocean.  The Gulf of Mexico in particular could see fracking activity grow by more than 10 percent over this year and next, according to Baker Hughes Inc., which operates about a third of the world's offshore fracking fleet, Bloomberg News reported Thursday [8/7/2014].

Deep Water Fracking Next Frontier for Offshore Drilling.  Energy companies are taking their controversial fracking operations from the land to the sea — to deep waters off the U.S., South American and African coasts.  Cracking rocks underground to allow oil and gas to flow more freely into wells has grown into one of the most lucrative industry practices of the past century.  The technique is also widely condemned as a source of groundwater contamination.  The question now is how will that debate play out as the equipment moves out into the deep blue.  For now, caution from all sides is the operative word.

Offshore Hydraulic Fracturing.  Offshore, a form of hydraulic fracturing has been in commercial use since the early 1990's.  Similar to hydraulic fracturing that is being used to develop unconventional resources onshore (shale and tight sand), hydraulic fracturing offshore has combined two mature oil and gas technologies — hydraulic fracturing and gravel pack completions.  The result has been a significant improvement in well life and reliability, productivity, and oil and gas recovery.

Venezuela blames U.S for global oil price slump.  Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday [10/16/2014] blamed Washington for the slump in global oil prices.  Washington is "flooding" the market with cheaper shale oil to bring down prices and ultimately impact Russia and other oil-producing nations, Maduro said at a televised Cabinet meeting.

Does it take more water to frack an oil well or keep a golf course green?  The right answer, according to a recent study done for the Western Energy Alliance, found that fracking in states of the Mountain West region uses far less water than a whole host of activities, including golf courses.  Three of the six states in the study report water-usage statewide and in all three — Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming — all oil and natural gas activities, not just fracking, use less than one percent of all consumed water.  In Colorado, according to the study, the biggest water users are "Coors Brewing Company, Colorado Steel Company, Cargill, Swift Company, Kodak, mining facilities, and golf courses."

Colorado Dems Frack Backtrack is all about November.  In April 2013, the Mora County Commission voted, 2 to 1, and passed the first-in-the-nation county-wide ban on all oil-and-gas drilling.  It was spearheaded by Commission Chairman John Olivas — an environmental activist.  Since then, two lawsuits have been filed against the little county because of the anti-drilling ordinance.  Olivas didn't just lose in the Democrat primary election, he was, according to the Albuquerque Journal, "soundly beaten" by George Trujillo — 59.8% to 34.2%.  Trujillo campaigned on a repeal of the ordinance and has said he is open to a limited amount of drilling in the eastern edge of the county.  Mora County's ban on all drilling for hydro-carbons, not just fracking, was incited by an out-of-state group:  the Pennsylvania-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), which has also been active in Colorado.

A fracking problem for Dems.  Five towns in Colorado have already banned the controversial drilling method, which pumps a pressurized mix of chemicals, water, and sand, or wastewater as many call it, into the ground to extract natural gas deposits from deep below the earth's surface.  To hear Floyd Ciruli, a non-partisan Colorado pollster for nearly 40 years tell it, Democrats are in full-blown damage control over the fracking measures being pushed by its liberal, environmental wing.

Denton, Texas, rejects partial fracking ban.  The council governing a North Texas city that sits atop a large natural gas reserve rejected a bid early Wednesday [7/16/2014] that would have made it the first city in the state to ban further permitting of hydraulic fracturing in the community.

A leaked document shows just how much the EU wants a piece of America's fracking boom.  The European Union is pressing the United States to lift its longstanding ban on crude oil exports through a sweeping trade and investment deal, according to a secret document from the negotiations obtained by The Washington Post.  It's not entirely surprising.  The EU has made its desire for the right to import U.S. oil known since the U.S. started producing large amounts of it in the mid-2000s.  It signaled again at the outset of trade negotiations, and its intentions have become even more clear since.

Fracking Has 'Cut Carbon Emissions More than All the World's Wind and Solar Energy'.  Fracking has led to a greater reduction in carbon emissions than all the world's wind turbines and solar panels put together, the Council of Europe heard last week.  Speaking at a meeting of the council, which promotes co-operation between all European nations, Chris Faulkner, chief executive of Breitling Energy, explained how shale gas has led the way in reducing carbon emissions in the U.S.

Doubled Oil, Natural Gas Estimates Invite Fracking in Bakken, Three Forks.  The US Geological Survey (USGS) ignited the Williston Basin oil boom in 2008 with its assessment of over two billion barrels of recoverable oil from the Bakken field but gave made no assessment of America's Three Forks field to the south.  The USGS just announced that its 2013 survey doubled its 2008 estimates for combined shale oil and recoverable natural gas deposits in the Bakken and Three Forks areas of the Williston basin to 7.4 billion barrels of oil and 6.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.  The USGS survey results are expected to dramatically increase oil and gas investment in the region.

Science Council Debunks More Environment Scares from 2013.  In 2010 filmmaker Josh Fox released the "documentary" Gasland, igniting anti-fracking hysteria as an "environmentalist" mass movement.  The key moment in that movie, shown over and over again on screens large and small, was a homeowner in protective goggles turning on his tap water and setting it on fire with a match.  The scene resulted in the widespread mythology that the "new" technology, fracking, involved dangerous procedures leading to leakage of toxic chemically treated water at high pressure into aquifers, well water, and tap water. [...] In conclusion it should be noted the tap-water flame so famously highlighted in Gasland was confirmed to be a result of naturally occurring methane in the nearby Colorado water table, and not related to any fracking activity.

Russia in secret plot against fracking, Nato chief says.  Russia is secretly working with environmental groups campaigning against fracking in an attempt to maintain Europe's dependence on energy imports from Moscow, the secretary-general of Nato has said.  Speaking at the Chatham House foreign affairs think-tank in London, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Russia was mounting a sophisticated disinformation campaign aimed at undermining attempts to exploit alternative energy sources such as shale gas.  He said:  "I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations — environmental organisations working against shale gas — to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.  That is my interpretation."

Despite Barack H. Obama's efforts...
Report: The U.S. is about to become a "titan of unprecedented proportions" in the oil market.  [T]he United States is on track to become the world' biggest oil exporter by 2020 — and even better, that other countries with potential shale deposits are now moving more quickly than expected on adopting the hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques that have helped us get there.

Official on key EPA fracking advisory board has suspect degree.  An official on the Environmental Protection Agency's hydraulic fracturing scientific advisory board got a doctorate degree from an unaccredited, shuttered online correspondence school that congressional auditors targeted a decade ago in an investigation into diploma mills.  The advisory board member is listed as Dr. Connie Schreppel in EPA records, which highlight her doctorate from Kennedy Western University and a master's from Greenwich University.

How Fracking has Saved Obama.  Without fracking of oil and gas deposits, there would have been no economic growth in the U.S. over the past five years.  Yet the oil and gas industry has been a favorite whipping boy of the environmental zealots both inside and outside of the administration.  Without those brilliant entrepreneurs and engineers in the private sector who developed the new techniques to unlock massive amounts of oil and gas at reasonable cost, it is unlikely that President Obama would have been re-elected.

Luvvies unite against shale gas, jobs, cheap energy and economic growth.  A bunch of self-important luvvies has signed a letter calling for a moratorium on Britain's barely nascent fracking industry.  The list of contributors is like a Who's Who from Hell.

Oil and gas boom fuels population growth west of the Mississippi.  Energy production is fueling a huge population growth in the West of the U.S, with Texas home to four of the top 10 fastest growing cities — San Marcos, Cedar Park, Georgetown and Frisco.  The energy industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the U.S economy and the oil and gas-rich fields of the Great Plains and Mountain West are luring huge numbers of people to them.  San Marcos, Frisco and Cedar Park were No. 1, 2 and 4 in percentage population growth between 2012 and 2013, each growing by at least five per cent in that time span, new data from the Census Bureau shows.

Census: Texas has 3 of 5 fast-growing cities.  Three of the nation's five fastest-growing cities — and seven of the top 15 — are in the Lone Star State, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, part of a trend across the West largely fueled by an oil boom.

Report reveals billions of barrels of shale oil in southern England.  Vast areas of southern England will on Friday be identified by the Government as targets for fracking, with ministers also announcing that energy companies will be allowed to frack under homes without owners' permission.  A British Geological Survey study of the South, spanning from Wiltshire to Kent and including the South Downs National Park, will be published, mapping out the likely location of billions of barrels of shale oil.  Ministers are also preparing to publish controversial plans to change the laws of trespass to give energy companies an automatic right to frack beneath homes and private land — even if owners object.

Analysis reveals vast scale of energy reserves underneath England.  Billions of barrels of oil have been found in the ground beneath the south of England, but far fewer than had been hoped, a report out today revealed.  The official analysis by the British Geological Survey (BGS) estimates that there are 4.4 billion barrels-worth of oil — but no shale gas at all — in the ground under the Weald Basin in the south east of England.  With geologists estimating that as little as 220 million barrels of it could be recoverable, it is equivalent to just 0.5 percent of what has been pumped out of the North Sea in recent years.

Beverly Hills Bans Fracking.  Beverly Hills has banned fracking.  Which makes it "the first municipality in California to prohibit the controversial technique for extracting natural gas and oil from underground rock deposits," according to Reuters.

Shale riches helping South Texas towns help pay for upgrades.  South Texas communities seem to have come to the same conclusion:  The Eagle Ford is here and they'll be dealing with it for the long term.  Although no one anticipated the oil boom or was able to plan for it, communities have started devoting more money to long-term planning.  McMullen County Judge James Teal joked this week at the Eagle Ford Consortium's annual conference that if he had known the Eagle Ford would have been so big, he would have "probably kept my job in oil and gas."

The fracking divide: Mexico's oil frontier beckons U.S. drillers in wake of new law .  The geological marvel known to Texas oilmen as the Eagle Ford Shale Play is buried deep underground, but at night you can see its outline from space in a twinkling arc that sweeps south of San Antonio toward the Rio Grande.  The light radiates from thousands of surface-level gas flares and drilling rigs.  It is the glow of one of the most extravagant oil bonanzas in American history, the result of the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Record seismic activity in Oklahoma as series of earthquakes rocks the state.  Earthquakes rattled residents in Oklahoma on Saturday, the latest in a series that have put the state on track for record quake activity this year, which some seismologists say may be tied to oil and gas exploration.

Fracking initiatives start to fracture Colorado.  A gusher of proposed ballot initiatives on hydraulic fracturing is poised to flood the November ballot as Colorado digs in for a gritty election battle between the oil and gas industry and environmentalists.  Nothing has qualified yet, but it would be no surprise if as many as a half-dozen proposals reach the Nov. 4 ballot, setting up what could become a national proxy war on energy development akin to last year's debate on gun control.

White House takes step toward regulating fracking emissions.  The White House took steps Friday [3/28/2014] toward issuing methane emissions regulations at hydraulic fracturing sites, a move that would slash greenhouse gas emissions in hopes of meeting President Obama's climate goals but will invite backlash from industry.  The news is a victory for environmental groups, which note that methane — a short-lived, potent greenhouse gas that has a 20 times greater impact on climate change than carbon dioxide — is the largest remaining unregulated greenhouse gas, accounting for 9 percent of U.S. emissions.

Not All the Fracking News Is Good.  America is a fracking cornucopia of crude oil, independent of the rapacious OPEC cartel.  And has an inexhaustible supply of natural gas, putting us in a position to become a major exporter able to use its gas reserves as a geopolitical weapon.

The Editor says...
I didn't see any bad news in the article, except the parts that were bad news for the environmental anti-capitalists.

A Tale of Two Cities.  The U.S. metro area with the lowest unemployment rate is a shale oil boomtown.  The one with the highest unemployment rate houses the world's largest solar plant.  Energy policy experts are pointing to that dichotomy as evidence that job creation potential in the energy industry lies primarily with fossil fuels, despite the administration's insistence on creating a "clean energy economy."  According to data released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Midland, Texas, has a 2.9 percent unemployment rate, the lowest in the country. [...] In contrast to the successes of those oil and gas boomtowns, Yuma, Ariz., is facing the highest unemployment rate of any U.S. metro area at a whopping 26.1 percent.  Yuma is the site of the Agua Caliente solar plant — the largest photovoltaic solar generation facility in the world.

EPA Inspector General's Report Backs Dropping Texas Fracking Case.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General has ruled EPA acted properly when it initially imposed, then later withdrew, restrictions on fracking operations near two Texas water wells.  After defying Texas environmental officials and imposing restrictions on the fracking operations, EPA later declared there was no risk to homeowners using the water wells and dropped an enforcement action it was pursuing in federal court.

Natural Gas Fracking is Not Causing a Methane Spike.  Natural gas fracking is not causing a spike in U.S. methane emissions, the latest U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data show.  The data debunk assertions by global warming alarmists that recent declines in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions — caused largely by the increasing use of low-carbon natural gas power — are being offset by rising methane emissions from natural gas fracking.

Obama Signs Bill to Expedite Bakken Fracking.  President Barack Obama signed legislation expediting the permitting process for hydraulic fracturing on federal lands in the Bakken Shale basin in western North Dakota.  The legislation sailed through the House and Senate with only one dissenting vote.

Fracking is turning the US into a bigger oil producer than Saudi Arabia.  The expansion in volumes of oil and gas produced by hydraulic fracturing is taking experts and politicians by surprise, with profound consequences for US geopolitics, and even Europe's reliance on Russian gas.

Central European nations appeal to Congress for faster exports of US natural gas.  Central European nations are now appealing to Capitol Hill leaders to get the United States to increase its natural gas exports should Russia cut off its supply to Ukraine, amid the political turmoil in that country.

European countries to US: Give us your gas.  In light of the recent crisis instigated by Russia, lawmakers have lately been pushing the Obama administration to expedite the more than twenty outstanding applications from energy companies for permission to export more natural gas into the world market — and a handful of central European countries are decidedly for it.

5 Reasons Putin Thinks He Can Outplay Obama.  [T]he Obama administration has pushed hard against the development of new energy resources in the United States.  The greatest threat to Russian economic growth is the rise of alternative forms of energy, including fracking; the environmental policy of the Obama administration has kept the Russians at the forefront of the energy market.  Christopher Dickey of the Daily Beast writes, "the fracking revolution in the United States threatens Russian dominance on several fronts."  The good news for Putin is that Obama is counter-revolutionary.

Getting to Classical Gas.  The crisis in the Ukraine, though it has abated for now, has made policymakers rediscover the power of energy production, which has a direct bearing on American strategic strength and leverage on Russia.  The more energy America produces, the stronger it is.  And the less it has to rely on pure military power. [...] Obama up until just now was slamming the brakes on fracking.  Now a comes a proposal to fight Russia with natural gas.  This unfortunately means more fracking — a political nonstarter in the Obama administration.

Ukraine Crisis Means Drill, Baby, Drill.  Russia's invasion of Crimea is a tipping point event that will further spur the American oil boom.  The European Union (EU) and United States in 2008 threatened to slap economic sanctions on Russia for invading Georgia.  But after a while the criticism faded and threats of sanctions were quietly dropped, because the EU is almost entirely reliant on Russia for energy supplies.  A similar situation is unfolding today as the EU and U.S. are again making empty threats that they will stop exports of Russian oil and gas as punishment for invading the Ukraine.  But due to the latest humiliation by the Russians, a consensus is emerging that will demand the United States and its North American partners "drill, baby, drill" for national security.

Natural gas prices climb to 5-year highs.  Natural gas prices, up more than 45% year-to-date on cold weather demand and slumping supplies, surged 11% Wednesday, hitting their highest levels since 2009.  The price on contracts for March delivery jumped to $6.22 per million British thermal units in early trading before settling at $6.15 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.  It was the highest price since late 2009.

The Editor asks...
With all the "fracking" that's taking place, why does the market have "slumping supplies?"  In my opinion, it is far more likely that demand is extremely high, due to an unusually cold winter and the shift away from coal.

Small Texas Oil Town Property Soars to $5 Billion Thanks to Fracking.  The shale oil and gas boom has skyrocketed property values in the tiny town of Cotulla, Texas, from $550 million in 2011 to a staggering $5 billion in 2013, reports Newsmax.  Cotulla's wealth explosion has also tripled tax revenues.  That means 1,300 new iPads in every students' hands, new school buses, football stadium upgrades, remodeled education office space, and no more asking parents to pony up extra cash for school supplies.

Yet Another Anti-Fracking Study Bumps Into Reality.  Anti-fracking "studies" keep getting debunked, largely because most of them are op-eds masquerading as research.  Meanwhile, fracking keeps doing the things that The Idiot King doesn't seem to be able to:  create jobs and economic growth.

Popular anti-fracking study discredited by Colorado health department.  Research claiming that hydraulic fracturing — fracking — causes increased cancer risks and birth defects have been discredited by Colorado state public health officials.  The researchers with the Colorado School of Public Health cited "minuscule" statistical differences and ignored other factors in producing a report on the negative side effects of fracking, according to a statement released by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on Thursday [1/30/2014].

Environmentalists Defend Pedophilia Advocate.  Environmentalists are rallying to the defense of an anti-fracking activist who has advocated pedophilia and incest after a Pennsylvania court barred her from entering any land owned or leased by a local oil company.  Cabot Oil and Gas won a temporary injunction this week prohibiting Vera Scroggins, director of the anti-fracking group Citizens for Clean Water, from setting foot on any portion of the 200,000 acres of land for which Cabot holds leases.

NYC Mayor Supports Moratorium on Fracking in NY — 'Too Much Danger'.  New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio weighed in on the hydraulic fracturing debate in his state during a press conference Thursday [1/23/2014] in Washington, D.C.  "The one thing I'm firm about is I don't see any place for fracking," de Blasio told reporters at the U.S. Conference of Mayors when CNSNews.com asked what his policy would be "as far as developing oil, natural gas and other traditional energy sources in the state."  "The science simply isn't reliable enough; the technology isn't reliable enough, and there's too much danger to our water supply, to our environment in general," de Blasio said.

It Shale Be Done: Green Light For Fracking.  The government is to open up thousands of square miles to drilling for shale gas reserves, potentially leading to hundreds of rigs dotting the countryside.  The process will begin on Tuesday when Michael Fallon, the energy minister, unveils a report detailing the environmental and social impact of fracking, the controversial process that frees gas by blasting rock formations with jets of water and chemicals.  The government is also considering changes to fast-track the creation of hundreds of fracking sites by changing the system for awarding licences to companies that want to drill for gas and oil.

The Progressive Agenda Crashes into Complexity.  Fracking was an oddball technique developed in the late 1940s by some Oklahoma roughnecks and dismissed by the oil industry as too expensive and too uncertain for serious application.  But throw in advances in seismology and computer guidance and a crazed attempted by government to seize control of energy resources and it suddenly stopped being a joke.

In Fracking, Sand Is the New Gold.  The race to drill for oil in the U.S. is creating another boom — in sand, a key ingredient in fracking.  Energy companies are expected to use 56.3 billion pounds of sand this year, blasting it down oil and natural gas wells to help crack rocks and allow fuel to flow out.  Sand use has increased 25% since 2011, according to the consulting firm PacWest, which expects a further 20% rise over the next two years.

Federal Agencies Threaten Fracking.  Currently, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is in the process of finalizing a rule that would impose stricter regulations for fracking on federal and Indian lands.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is also looking closely at fracking, conducting a study on the impacts of the technique on groundwater. [...] New federal fracking regulations are unnecessary (as the states have already proven themselves capable of regulating the process) and would only drive up costs, limiting the ability of states to manage their own resources.  States should be given more control over the federal lands in their states.

Fracking boom frees the US from old oil alliances.  [Scroll down]  Saudi Arabia has increased production to match, keeping prices stable, but new fields being developed in neighbouring Iraq and the rise in importance of gas have also made its role less vital.  And now all that Iranian oil may sooner rather than later end up back on the market.  Some suggest Saudi Arabia might cut its production, hiking world prices, as a retaliatory action.  But even were it to do so — and it has given no indication of it — it might itself be the worst victim.  Saudi has some slack to reduce its own income from oil and keep its budget in the black, but not so much.

Credit The Fracking Revolution For [Making] North America The World's Energy Superpower.  Mexico has passed its biggest energy reform since 1938, opening its state oil industry to foreign investment.  This now makes North America the world's oil and gas powerhouse.  Credit the fracking revolution.

Andrew Cuomo facing court battle with energy company over fracking moratorium.  When [Andrew Cuomo] was elected Governor of New York, he ran on a hazy platform when it came to several controversial issues in the state, none more so than the question of fracking.  Vowing to take an "honest look" at the situation, along with the already existing moratorium on the process, he promised that action would be taken one way or the other.  As it turned out, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Greener than 'Green'.  The trucks have driven off.  Dozens of workers have moved on.  The cranes are gone.  What remains are three acres of gravel-covered farmland, five completed wells, and a steady, low-volume whoosh.  This is the sound of natural gas being captured; counted by a "cash register" gauge that measures output and, thus, royalties; and conveyed via yellow pipes into the broader natural-gas market.  The result?  Warm bedrooms on crisp nights and hot showers on cold mornings.  Despite the shrill complaints of fracking foes, this productive but tranquil patch demonstrates how much greener fracking is than other power sources — even "green" ones.

Obamacare flopped, but at least fracking works[W]hile the biggest big-government project in a generation was stinking up the place last week, the America that works was doing considerably better.  Although "energy independence" has been an official government policy for four decades, we're on the way to achieve that more in spite of, than because of, the federal government.

Enemies of the people.  The process of developing coalbed methane in the area has been ongoing for many years now.  In 2004 a local entrepreneur with a background in coal started drilling for gas, and latterly another company had taken on the task.  Neither could make the process economic.  In 2011, however, the licence passed into the hands of Dart Energy, a coalbed methane specialist, who have found a way to extract the gas profitably. [...] But this plan reckoned without the intentions of the greens.  Despite an incident-free operations history, despite electricity having been generated without incident, despite Dart being a local business, putting money into the hands of local people, a major campaign was launched to try to prevent any further development of the site.

Disclaimer:
Unfortunately, akdart.com has no connection whatever to Dart Energy.

New Attack on Fracking.  Those opposed to fracking have used fear as a weapon:  Fear of well water being contaminated by natural gas, with pictures of "flaming" water faucets; fear of chemicals contaminating groundwater supplies; fear of earthquakes, etc.  They have now opened a new front in their war against fracking.  The new campaign targets homeowners, attempting to scare them about how noise and truck traffic related to fracking might affect their families and neighborhoods; or about how they may have been swindled out of the mineral rights under their homes.

Green California Gives Its OK To Fracking As Safe.  If any state were to ban hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as fracking, the process that releases oil and natural gas trapped in porous shale formations, one would think it would be California. [...] Yet [Gov. Jerry] Brown recently signed SB 4, which — while it imposes perhaps the strictest regulations on fracking in the U.S. — rejected environmentalists' demand to ban what has proven to be a fundamentally safe technology.  The most popular fracking moratorium bill got only 24 out of 80 possible votes in the Assembly.

Canadians Riot Against Fracking.  Dozens of anti-fracking protestors were arrested in Canada after throwing Molotov cocktails and torches into at least five police cruisers on Thursday [10/17/2013].  The demonstrators were rallying against a shale exploration project in New Brunswick, Canada, home to the Elsipogtog First Nation tribe, the National Post reported.  Many of the protestors were tribe members and New Brunswick locals.

U.S. Fracking Success Threatens Russian Economy, Strategy.  An American shale gas boom has been unleashed by the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to unlock the energy treasures in the vast porous rock formations that blanket our nation.  This, according to Thane Gustafson, a political science at Georgetown University and one of the world's foremost experts on Russian energy, undermines Moscow's economic and foreign policy goals.

Environmentalist-Funded Study Confirms Safety Of Fracking.  Whether naturally occurring or not, environmentalists claim that fracking would release huge amounts of what they consider the most potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas, far outweighing the value of producing huge quantities of clean-burning natural gas.  Now comes a study, conducted by scientists at the University of Texas and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — and co-financed by one of the highest-profile environmentalists in the country — that shows much smaller amounts of methane emissions associated with fracking, far less than environmentalists and the Environmental Protection Agency have contended.

Fracking and the Poor.  By now even the Obama Administration has recognized that the natural gas drilling boom has led to more high-wage jobs, more secure energy supplies and lower manufacturing costs.  But one of the biggest benefits from fracking and other new drilling technologies is often overlooked:  the windfall to American consumers, especially the poor.

More on Fracking and the Poor.  Last week we reported on a study showing that the U.S. oil and natural gas revolution may be the country's best antipoverty program, and the evidence keeps coming.  A new report from IHS Global Insight estimates that fracking added the equivalent of a cool $1,200 to real household disposable income on average in 2012.

Target: Natural Gas.  The oil and gas fracking boom increased household disposable income by $1,200 last year as lower energy costs flowed to consumers, according to a new study from IHS Global Insight.  So Americans may want to know that President Obama's nominee to chair the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) thinks natural gas is a "dead end."  That nominee is Ron Binz, and in March 2013 he spoke at an Edison Foundation panel on utilities and green technologies.  To fight global warming, he argued, government must adopt a "new regulatory model, because that's where it's going to start."

The new gold rush that proves the anti-fracking fanatics have got it all wrong.  North Dakotans are a conservative bunch who appreciate the solitude, the wide-open spaces and a simple way of life.  But they are sure of one thing — Watford City and the rest of western North Dakota is the land that was saved by fracking.  Only ten years ago, this region was dying on its feet — its farming industry finished, and businesses refusing to move somewhere so remote and empty.

Why Sand Is The Latest Front In The War On Fracking (Yes, Sand).  The anti-fracking crowd hasn't been successful enough manufacturing unfounded fears about groundwater pollution to cause any meaningful slowdown in shale drilling and fracking.  So they've found a new target for their antagonism — sand dust.  Fracking, of course, requires hundreds of tons of sand, enough to fill dozens of rail cars, for each well.  That sand has to come from somewhere, and in recent years even oil companies like EOG Resources have bought and built their own sand mines, many of them up in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Study Shines Light on Tremors and Fracking in South Texas' Eagle Ford Shale.  So much oil and water is being removed from South Texas' Eagle Ford Shale that the activity has probably led to a recent wave of small earthquakes, according to a study that appears in the online edition of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. [...] The new study doesn't find much evidence that the man-made fracturing is causing earthquakes all by itself.

My constituents are complaining about eco-protesters, not drilling.  This isn't a protest about pollution; it's a protest about capitalism.  If your sole concern were for the environment, you'd be delighted about shale.  Here is an energy source that doesn't emit soot (as coal does), nor jam estuaries (as tidal turbines do), nor starve Africans (as biofuels do), nor slaughter rare birds (as wind farms do).  It doesn't soak up public subsidies (as both nuclear and renewables do); on the contrary, it will generate a healthy stream of tax revenue for the Exchequer.  Oh, and it will reduce our carbon emissions, by displacing coal in electricity generators.  Why, then, are the greenies so glum?

The new Luddites are standing in the way of a shale gas revolution.  [Scroll down]  Ming China is perhaps the most tragic historical example of this.  Despite coming up with printing, gunpowder, the compass, and a host of other innovations, it wasn't China that managed to really apply those new ideas.  China might have had plenty of coal, yet no 19th-century industrial revolution took place there like it did in the West.  Why?  In China, officialdom and obstructivism kept getting in the way.  Edicts and decrees were drawn up micro managing things.  A parasitical state meant that those who produced more ended up merely supplying more to sustain the state.  China, once the world's great innovator, fell behind.

Shale gas is Rearden Metal.  One of the things [Ayn Rand] foresaw was the current nonsensical, dishonest, canting campaign against shale gas.  In Atlas Shrugged it takes the form of Rearden Metal, the miracle technology which is going to transform the US economy if only the progressives will let it.  But of course, Rand's fictional progressives don't want Reardon Metal to succeed any more than their modern, real-life equivalents want shale gas to succeed.  Why not?  For the same rag-bag of made-up, disingenuous reasons which progressives have used to justify their war on progress since time immemorial:  it's unfair, it uses up scarce resources, it might be dangerous.

The new Luddites are standing in the way of a shale gas revolution.  [Scroll down]  Tim Yeo yesterday suggested that we are better at regulating shale gas here in Britain than they are in America.  Indeed.  Which is why right now we have no shale industry to speak of.  In the US, meanwhile, where they are so "cavalier" about these things, shale gas revolution has cut energy costs dramatically, triggering a wider industrial revival.  It would be tragic if we let the looters and the moochers get in the way of shale gas technology.

Fracking Brings Employment and Economic Revival .  Signs of pride and prosperity were evident all over Williamsport and the gorgeous northern Pennsylvania countryside around it.  Friendly, happy people greeted us.  New cars, trucks, hotels, and restaurants sparkled in a clean, bustling downtown.  New roofs topped barns and houses, while late-model tractors worked the fields.  Formerly dirt roads are now paved.  Men and women again have high-paying jobs, young people are coming back instead of moving away, their salaries are supporting other businesses and jobs, and many are taking college programs in oilfield technical and business specialties, Vince Matteo told me.

Natural Gas Liquids: A Revolution Within the US Shale Boom.  While it is no longer unexpected news that the U.S. is in the middle of an unconventional oil and gas boom, thanks to fracking technology and horizontal drilling that has opened up previously unrecoverable shale oil and natural gas deposits, what is largely still unknown is that a revolution is underway within the shale boom itself.  It's the development of natural gas liquids (NGLs).

Is this the future of fracking?  From the sleepy backwater of Franklin Forks, just ten miles from the New York county line in rural Pennsylvania, blonde and photogenic Tammy [Manning] and her children have been feted by television companies and environmentalists alike:  portrayed as the 'perfect' example of how one family's lives have been blighted by a greedy energy company whose hunger for profit had put their health at serious risk.

Energy Secretary: Fracking is safe.  Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told reporters Thursday morning [8/1/2013] that the process of natural gas extraction called fracking was safe and should be used, provided it was properly regulated.  "I still have not seen any evidence of fracking per se contaminating groundwater," he said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.  Moniz's comments represented a blunt rebuke to many in the environmental community, which has increasingly turned against fracking.

Fractavists force PA landowners to abandon gas and oil leasing.  One group of landowners who wish to exploit the gas/oil reserves beneath their property are being prevented from doing so by "environmentalists" who, as always, know best what's good for other folks, and tell them so.

'Gasland' scandal ignited at EPA.  HBO viewers thought they saw Steve Lipsky, a Parker County, Texas, home-owner, holding his garden hose belching fire from his methane-contaminated water well.  The flaming water was terrifying and "Gasland Part II" blamed it on fracking done by Range Resources, a Fort Worth-based shale gas driller.  What viewers actually witnessed was Lipsky holding a hose secretly connected to a gas vent, not a water line.  This fraud came out in a lawsuit filed by Steven and Shyla Lipsky against Range for $6.5 million in the 43rd State District Court of Texas.

The Top 5 Lies About Fracking.  Gasland Part II, the sequel to director/activist Josh Fox's earlier anti-fracking docudrama Gasland, will run on HBO next Monday.  It appears to have rounded up the usual corporate villains and appealing victims of profit-hungry capitalist skullduggery, rather than telling the more substantial story:  that fracking combined with horizontal drilling has unleashed a bonanza of cheap natural gas.

Does fracking cause earthquakes?
Press Goes Crackers Over Fracking.  [Scroll down]  These tremors are small and often barely detectable.  They actually occur all the time as the result of distant quakes around the world.  But [Nicholas] van der Elst says that they have increased in recent years as the wastewater disposal sites have grown.  The study particularly singles out sites in Oklahoma where there are large wastewater repositories from oil and gas drilling.  In one case it also claims to be able to attribute a larger earthquake that occurred one-and-a-half-years later to the aftereffects of a major earthquake that occurred in Chile a year-and-a-half before.

Fracking is greener than critics claim.  "Fracking makes all water dirty," declares a poster that Yoko Ono recently exhibited at a Manhattan carpet store.  According to another:  "Pretty soon there will be no more water to drink." [...] In contrast to this hyperventilation, former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in May 2011, "I'm not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water."

California Assembly Rejects Fracking Ban.  The California State Assembly overwhelmingly rejected a bill that would have banned oil and natural gas fracking in the state. [...] The California assembly vote followed closely on the heels of a comprehensive federal study of water quality near more than 100 natural gas fracking sites in Arkansas.  As Environment & Climate News recently reported, the U.S. Geological Survey study found the extensive fracking in Arkansas has not compromised water quality near any of the fracking sites.  Lisa Jackson, who led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the first four years of the Obama administration, has repeatedly testified to Congress that EPA has never found a single instance of fracking polluting groundwater.

Fracking phobia fails yet again.  The EPA just dropped its study of fracking allegedly contaminating the water in Pavillion, Wyo.  The enviro left had rejoiced at the news a few years ago that the EPA had for the first time implicated fracking as a threat to groundwater.  Now, amid criticisms of its methodology, the EPA has backed down and won't issue a final report.

EPA Strikes Out on Anti-Fracking Campaign.  The EPA has worked mightily to demonstrate that Fracking causes water contamination, yet it has struck out again.  While it has backed away from other locations where it originally claimed damage from Fracking, it was at Pavilion, Wyoming that it tried, with great fervor, to prove that Fracking caused water contamination. [...] But once again, it couldn't.

The message of shale gas is: scrap the Climate Act.  Who could doubt that the Almighty has a sense of humour when, on the very day headlines were filled with warnings that our electricity system is now in such a parlous state that we can soon expect power cuts and electricity "rationing", we were also told that Britain is now sitting on what has been called "by far the biggest shale gas basin in the world".  There may have been some journalistic licence in how the two reports from which these claims derived were written.  Even so, the cautious predictions of the British Geological Survey confirmed that Britain has a potential shale-gas resource as significant as the oil and gas we found in the North Sea, and enough to meet all the UK's energy needs for many decades to come.

Former Reagan Energy Official Criticizes Obama Approach.  [President Ronald] Reagan paired his conservationist policies with the optimistic belief that human technological innovation would also provide solutions to the nation's energy and environmental problems.  That belief has been validated by the natural gas revolution, which experts predict will lead to energy independence for the United States by the end of the decade, he [William Perry Pendley] said.  "Reagan would not have been surprised with what's going on today with hydraulic fracturing," he said, referring to the drilling process for extracting gas from shale rock formations.

The Rise Of Saudi Texas: Shale And Farewell To OPEC.  Production data for April show how fracking has shattered not only the shale rock in formations like Texas' Eagle Ford and Permian Basin but also the myths of "peak oil" and petroleum as an energy source of the past.

Obama's Perversity.  Presidents can never control everything.  The greatest example today is the flourishing of the U.S. energy sector.  We are now a net exporter of hydrocarbon fuels, the cleanest kind: natural gas.  This has happened because the market financed exploration in shale deposits, gambled that a workable technology would be found, and, because of the high price of fuel, made competitive investments in Montana and Canada that are paying off even now. [...] In the face of fantastic success stories in clean fuel discoveries today, Obama is still pretending to see artificial scarcities.  He still has to save the earth, which is in no particular danger.

Greens don't like fracking because they don't like prosperity.  You'd think Greens would be delighted by the shale gas bounty under our feet.  Here is a plentiful energy supply which does not emit soot (as coal does), nor jam estuaries (as tidal turbines do), nor starve Africans (as biofuels do), nor slaughter rare birds (as wind farms do).  It does not require public subsidies (as both nuclear and renewables do).  On the contrary, it will generate a healthy stream of tax revenue for the Exchequer.  It will diminish our reliance on nasty regimes, from Tehran to Moscow — precisely the sorts of regimes that Greens march against.  Oh, and it will reduce our carbon emissions, by displacing coal in electricity generators.  What, then, is the problem?  Some campaigners talk of water pollution; others, a touch histrionically, of earthquakes.  If either was a remotely serious prospect, we'd know by now.

EPA Covers Up The Safety Of Fracking.  As we noted in December 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency, under pressure from environmental groups, tried to manufacture a crisis in which hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was said to have contaminated test wells in Pavillion, Wyo.  Those claims and others made in the six-decade history of the technology's use have repeatedly proved groundless.

Obama administration cuts back oil shale development.  Controversy is heating up over an administration plan to drastically reduce the amount of federal lands available for oil shale development in the American West.  The Bush administration had set aside 1.3 million acres for oil shale and tar sands development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.  The new Bureau of Land Management plan cuts that amount by two-thirds, down to 700,000 acres, a decision that has prompted industry outrage.

Try as they might...
EPA fails to link fracking to water contamination for the third time.  The Environmental Protection Agency announced that it is dropping its plans to issue a report on whether hydraulic fracturing caused groundwater contamination in Wyoming.  The agency said it will no longer have outside experts review that theory.  This marks the third time that the EPA has failed to link hydraulic fracturing — more commonly known as fracking — with groundwater contamination, a major environmentalist objection to the drilling practice.

California greens try, fail to pass a fracking moratorium.  When I first caught wind of the fact that Californians were getting ready to introduce a proposal to ban fracking, I suspected that they would definitely have a fighting chance of getting the thing passed — but it turns out that enough of California's legislators are at least somewhat tuned in to the economic realities of hydraulic fracturing, and enough so to thwart the often overwhelming clout of the state's many eco-lobbies.

Fracturing in California.  Few issues divide Democrats more than energy policy, as we've learned as unions and environmentalists fight over the Keystone XL pipeline.  More evidence now comes from California, where greens have lost an attempt to ban oil and gas hydraulic fracturing.  Democratic leaders brought their fracking moratorium bill to the Assembly floor last week, and their rank and file revolted.  The bill lost 37-24, with 12 Democrats joining 25 Republicans to defeat it.

Fracking: The Death Knell Of OPEC.  At Friday's [5/31/2013] Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting in Vienna, the mask of non-chalance about America's new fracking energy boom came off.  After years of dismissing U.S. energy production as insignificant and expensive, OPEC suddenly said it would "study" the growth in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, a deceptively bland response to the biggest challenge the cartel has ever faced on its monopoly.  The statement concealed the anything-but-tranquil tone of the meeting, in which members were attacking each other and warning of a split.

Energy firm says UK's shale gas resources could be huge.  One of the energy firms hoping to exploit the UK's resources of shale gas says it may be sitting on significantly more gas than previously thought.  UK firm IGas says there may be up to 170 trillion cubic feet (4,810 cubic km) of gas in the areas it is licensed to explore in northern England.

Idiot Dems in California trying to kill fracking despite massive potential for jobs and energy.  Estimates are that there's billions of barrels of oil in the Monterey Shale formation and accessing that could provide millions of jobs.  But Democrats are proposing everything from banning fracking to burdening it with heavy regulations.

Eagle Ford Surpassing Bakken Shale.  Oil production in the the Eagle Ford shale fields of South Texas is soaring and will soon pass that of the rich Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana, according to a new report.  A large number of energy companies stand to benefit.  March shale oil production in Eagle Ford, also known as Eagleford, rose 77% from a year earlier, to 529,900 barrels per day, the Texas Railroad Commission said Tuesday [5/28/2013].

California Dems push anti-fracking bills, aim to curb potential oil bonanza.  California is on the verge of a new gold rush.  Expanded hydraulic fracturing — or "fracking" — at the Monterey Shale formation is sparking estimates that 15 billion barrels of oil could be accessed, along with millions of jobs and huge contributions to the domestic energy supply.  Even the state's green-friendly Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, says "the potential is extraordinary."  But standing in the way is a flurry of anti-fracking bills.

Britain can't afford to surrender to the greens on shale gas.  Most of us have by now heard about the US shale gas revolution.  In little more than six years, shale gas has reduced America's gas prices to a third of what they are in Europe, increased huge tax revenues, rebalanced the economy, created tens of thousands of jobs, brought industry and manufacturing back to the country's heartlands, and given rise to a real prospect of American energy self-sufficiency by 2030.  Britain may well have comparable shale resources.  Indeed, the Bowman shale in Lancashire is a mile thick, whereas most US shale plays are just 300 to 500 feet thick — a strangely unpublicised piece of good news.

Illinois edges closer to endorsing gas fracking.  Lawmakers in Illinois could sign off on legalizing fracking as early as this week, but approval of the highly controversial drilling method won't come without a fight.  Opponents of fracking have launched a last-ditch effort ahead of an expected state House vote sometime this week on a bill to green-light the practice.  It's expected to pass both chambers of the legislature and Gov. Pat Quinn has indicated he'll OK the measure.  The governor is a Democrat and Democrats also dominate both houses of the state legislature.  Environmental resistance, seen in every state where fracking takes place, also is a reality in Illinois.

Obama administration supports fracking and natural gas exports.  Last Thursday [5/16/2013], the US Department of the Interior released a draft proposal that would "establish common-sense safety standards for hydraulic fracturing on public and Indian lands."  Last Friday, the US Department of Energy (DOE) approved a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal in Freeport, Texas.  Despite opposition from environmental groups, the Obama administration apparently supports the expansion of the natural gas industry and the controversial technology of hydraulic fracturing.  These events are welcome common sense from an administration that is typically deep in green ideology.

Oil Shale Development in the United States and Abroad.  Hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling have spurred economic growth in North Dakota and Texas along with other states with productive shale oil wells.  But, oil shale, a different product, has yet to be developed in the United States, while Estonia, a country near Russia and Finland, gets 90 percent of its electricity production from it.

The Associated Press tells a fear-mongering sob story about how fracking will ruin everything when it comes to Illinois.
Southern Illinois braces for oil rush as 'fracking' regulations considered by lawmakers.  After drilling intensively in many states in the last few years, the industry is now preparing to push into new territory, hoping to tap deposits long considered out of reach.

Study: Fracked gas far more climate-friendly than coal.  Natural gas produced in the northeast's booming Marcellus shale region leads to far fewer greenhouse gas emissions than coal, a competing source of electric power, according to a new study by Exxon Mobil's research arm.  "We conclude that substantial [greenhouse gas] reductions and freshwater savings may result from the replacement of coal-fired power generation with gas-fired power generation," states the study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Methane study, EPA debunk claims of water pollution, climate change from fracking.  After a 16-month investigation, state regulators Monday said that natural gas fracking, contrary to highly publicized claims, isn't to blame for high methane levels in three families' drinking water in a northern Pennsylvania town.  For fracking proponents, it was another piece of good news.  The oil and gas industry still was unwrapping the federal government's acknowledgment that fracking isn't nearly as harmful to the environment as it previously claimed.

Ready (or Not?) for a Great Coming Shale Boom.  The Cline Shale, thousands of feet underground in a roughly 10-county swath, is just one of many little-tapped shale formations in Texas and across the nation, geologists say.  That means the potential for oil and gas discoveries is theoretically huge, and the reason is technology.  The rock-breaking process known as hydraulic fracturing, coupled with the ability to drill horizontally underground, has allowed drillers to retrieve oil and gas from previously inaccessible areas.

ND oil production has increased more than 600%.  Oil production in North Dakota has increased more than 600% in the past several years, from 35.7 million barrels of oil in 2005 to 237 million barrels in 2012.  In 2005, North Dakota was the No. 8 oil-producing state in the nation, and in just seven years has moved up to become the No. 2 state for oil output in 2012, behind only No. 1 Texas.

Next Up on the Fracking Fear-Mongering List: Earthquakes!  Not even a nuclear bomb can trigger an earthquake!  With all of the activity at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s and '60s, you'd expect California to drop into the ocean.  Yet dozens of nuclear bombs did not cause any earthquakes on the San Andreas fault.  There is even documented proof of government experiments where nuclear bombs were used in an attempt to trigger earthquakes.

Industry and Environmental Groups Compromise on Illinois Fracking Bill.  Two Illinois legislators have introduced what they call a compromise bill to regulate hydraulic fracturing in the state.  Many environmental activist groups tout the measure as creating the strongest regulatory framework in the nation, but other activist groups have responded to the bill by saying fracking should not be allowed under any circumstances.

N.Y. Health Department: Fracking Can Be Done Safely.  Hydraulic fracturing is safe for human health and the environment as long as proper safeguards are in place, the New York Department of Health concluded in a much-anticipated report.  "Significant adverse effects on human health are not expected from routine HVHF," or high-volume hydraulic fracturing, the report said.  That conclusion is in an eight-page summary of research into the effect of fracking on water, soil, and quality of life that was written in early 2012 but kept under wraps until it was leaked to the New York Times in January 2013.

No Signs of Water Pollution from Arkansas Fracking, Feds Report .  An exhaustive study by the United States Geological Survey has uncovered no groundwater contamination from natural-gas drilling in the energy-rich Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas.  The United States Geological Survey (USGS) report, Shallow Groundwater Quality and Geochemistry in the Fayetteville Shale Gas-Production Area, North-Central Arkansas, 2011, analyzed water quality samples taken in Van Buren and Faulkner counties.  USGS researchers focused on chloride concentrations taken from 127 wells and methane concentrations and carbon isotope ratios from a subsample of 51 wells.

European industry flocks to U.S. to take advantage of cheaper gas.  German chemicals giant BASF, which operates the plant here, has announced plans for wide-ranging expansion in the United States, where natural gas prices have fallen to a quarter of those in Europe, largely because of American innovations in unlocking shale gas.

New panel to advise EPA on 'fracking'.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday announced the formation of an independent body to peer-review that agency's research on hydraulic fracturing, as the Obama administration weighs new regulations.  The Hydraulic Fracturing Research Advisory Panel, a group of 31 academics and experts, was created by EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) to review a congressionally ordered report looking at the potential health impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water.

"Promised Land": Anti-fracking Propaganda.  The story line in the new theatrical release Promised Land is obviously intended to leave audiences with a very dim and scary view of fracking and the companies that use this new method of drilling to tap vast amounts of oil and natural gas that otherwise would be inaccessible.  But the depiction in Promised Land is so fantastic that the intent could backfire.  Indeed, by the end of the film, moviegoers may be left annoyed and offended by the blatant attack on fracking.

U.S. shale gas will be warming British homes by 2018.  Shale gas is a controversial energy source in the United States, but the U.K. will soon benefit from the U.S.'s natural gas boom.  British company Centrica announced a deal with Cheniere Energy Partners on Monday [3/25/2013] to provide enough gas to heat almost 2 million homes starting in 2018.  The deal is the first time major exports of shale gas will be used in the U.K., according to the Guardian.  Shale gas is a controversial energy source in the U.S. because it is recovered from shale rock formations by fracking, [...]

Fracking and Frackers Continue Expanding Oil Production.  Since the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. petroleum consumption and imports have declined.  Simultaneously, domestic oil production has increased.  On Wednesday March 20, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) ran the headline "U.S. crude oil production on track to surpass imports for first time since 1995."  The expectation is that imports will sink to their lowest volumes since 1995, while crude production for the fourth quarter of 2014 will increase to levels not seen since 1988.

Frack to the Future.  The real story on fracking, say scientists, is that the risks are small and the rewards immense.  Fracking lowered the price of natural gas so much that Americans heat our homes for less, and manufacturing that once left America has returned.  For those concerned about global warming, burning gas instead of oil or coal reduces CO2 emissions.  "Skeptical Environmentalist" author Bjorn Lomborg points out that "green" Europe promised to reduce emissions, but "only managed to cut half of what you guys accidentally happened to do when you stumbled on fracking."

Gas Bonanza for Germany? Berlin Wants to Fast-Track Fracking.  Germany's governing coalition wants to quickly put an end to a virtual moratorium on the controversial shale gas extraction method of fracking in the country, SPIEGEL has learned.  Officials want to have plans finished before the federal election this autumn.

I drank fracking fluid, says Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.  Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper went to unusually great lengths to learn firsthand the strides the oil and gas industry has made to minimize environmental harm from fracking.  The first-term Democrat and former Denver mayor told a Senate committee on Tuesday [2/12/2013] that he actually drank a glass of fracking fluid produced by oilfield services giant Halliburton.  The fluid is made entirely "of ingredients sourced from the food industry," the company says, making it safe for Mr. Hickenlooper and others to imbibe.

UK Shale Gas Numbers Could Be Stratospheric.  While Europe dithers over whether the blatant economic success of the US shale gas 'miracle' will translate to these shores, the UK Government has been slightly more pro-shale active.  But, while the threat of (liberal democrat-instituted) over-regulation still casts a shadow, the pro-shale (mostly conservative) wing of government looks set for a stratospheric boost.

America's shale prosperity creates a Texas 'shale billionaire'.  In the pre-Eagle Ford Shale era (before 2010), Karnes County, Texas was one of the poorest counties in the state.  Now, the local economy is booming like never before, thanks to the oil bonanza in the nearby Eagle Ford Shale.  In November last year, $70 million in oil and gas royalties were paid to local landowners for just that month's production, and it's possible that close to $1 billion in royalties were paid in total last year to Karnes County landowners.

Just the Fracks, Ma'am.  Natural gas is a cheap, abundant American resource, and cleaner than all of its viable alternatives to boot.  It would be hard for a reasonable person not to favor natural gas as a component of our national energy mix, but then anti-frackers like Josh Fox, Yoko Ono and their ilk put little value on being reasonable people.  They are the neo-Luddites resisting a modern energy revolution, standing between the people and the prosperity promised by affordable domestic energy.

The Energy Potential of Fracking.  [Scroll down]  Consider Pennsylvania and Ohio, both of which are reaping the benefits of fracking.  In Pennsylvania, this type of gas extraction has been underway since the 1960s, with nearly 100,000 oil and gas wells fracked, and no instances of contamination of groundwater.  The same clean record is true for Ohio, where more than 70,000 oil and gas wells have been fracked since the 1960s.  All this activity helps the state economies, of course.

The Abundance of Fossil Fuels.  The use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking has unlocked vast reserves of hydrocarbons trapped in highly dense shale rock.  A Citigroup study forecasts U.S. shale oil production to rise by at least 2 million b/d by 2020.  The United States has almost a trillion recoverable barrels of shale oil.  After decades of decline, U.S. oil production is now on the rise, entiely because of shale oil production.  Shale oil could add around 3 million barrels a day to U.S. oil production by 2020.

EPA caught sabotaging fracking.  [Ed Lasky has] written numerous columns regarding President Obama's War against Inspectors General.  These are the taxpayer advocates within various government agencies who seek to ensure that fraud, waste and abuse of power is prevented.  Hence, Obama determined opposition to them that has gone to such lengths as character assassination, attempts to form a new $30 billion-dollar agency without an Inspector General, failing to replace Inspectors General when they depart.  Now comes news that again illustrates the reasons Obama has tried to gut the Inspector General program:  one is investigating possible abused or power at the EPA as part of its crusade against energy producers.

Fracking Could Ruin Everything for Leftist Activists.  The US contains well over 600 years of known reserves and that would allow the US to be a net exporter of oil.  If that happens, the "green" economy ruse that the left has sponsored, already reeling from bankruptcies and cronyism, would collapse.  It would show that there is no shortage of oil and "green" energy can not compete with fossil fuels.

Could Monterey Shale Save California?  The former Golden State is floating in debt, even as it sits on two-thirds of America's shale oil reserves locked in a formation four times the size of the one that sparked North Dakota's economic boom.

North Dakota Went Boom.  This is the Big One that North Dakota has been waiting for for more than a century.

Don't Kill The Economically Beneficial Shale-Gas Boom.  Let's not smother the shale-gas boom.  It is the crown jewel of the disappointing economic recovery.

Fracking and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  It may be several years before we fully understand and appreciate the benefits our country derives from fracking.  We already know that chemical companies are planning to invest in the United States by building new plants that will create more jobs by using low-cost natural gas.  We know that low-cost natural gas benefits those who heat their homes with natural gas.  We also know that low-cost natural gas is lowering the cost of electricity.  We also know that fracking has resulted in an increase in oil production, which is allowing the United States to forego imports from the Mideast and Venezuela, which improves our balance of payments and provides more royalty payments and fees to the federal and state governments.

Fracking's rise in U.S. inspires the world.  Fracking is going global.  The U.S. energy industry clearly still leads the way on the revolutionary drilling method that has upended global energy markets, but the rest of the world is beginning to catch up as nations seek to replicate American success in oil and natural gas development.

NYT Attacks North Dakota Oil Town as Sexist Nightmare.  As some of you may have already heard, the state of North Dakota is currently experiencing a politically incorrect and politically inconvenient economic boom in the midst of Obama's national economic program of stagnation.  Thanks to the discovery of oil and a government's willingness to get out of the way so industrious, risk-taking individuals can go after it, North Dakota is now a working, breathing, real-life repudiation of everything Obama and his media worshipers stand for.

Obama's Second Term Regulations That Will Destroy America.  EPA is working to curtail hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") that is providing access to America's huge oil and gas resources through a variety of mechanisms.  One strategy applies guidance measures which restrict use of diesel fuels in the process, stripping states of the primacy granted to them through the Safe Drinking Water Act.  This is premised upon a broadly criticized study purportedly linking fracking to water contamination.  Other back-door regulatory mechanisms include the Toxic Substances Control Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Clean Air Act, and potentially, applications of Effluent Limitations Guidelines for both shale gas extraction and coal-bed methane.  Fracking is not only under attack by EPA, but by more than a dozen other agencies as well.  Included are the Department of Energy, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Center for Disease Control, the Department of Agriculture, and even the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Oil production to grow at fastest rate ever.  Driven by the shale boom, the United States in 2014 will hit its highest daily oil production level since 1988 and will grow oil output at the highest rate ever, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted Tuesday [1/8/2013].  U.S. daily oil production, which averaged 6.4 million barrels a day in 2012, will surge 23 percent to average 7.9 million barrels a day in 2014, the administration said.

Is Conservative Despair Justified?  As I've said before, Obama and the EPA will ultimately be splatter on the windshield of [the fracking] progress.  There's energy in them thar hills and eventually we're going to get at it, whether these luddite environmental knuckleheads like it or not.  That means wealth, energy independence, jobs, power and a reboot of Dallas.  Obama may be choosing decline, but the rest of the country may well choose prosperity and growth in spite of him.

Leaked Report, Suppressed by Cuomo, Says Fracking is Safe.  Cuomo's reluctance to release a report his administration commissioned is understandable in light of a potential backlash by environmentalists.  But suppressing information favorable to the use of fracking is only harming the economy of the state which is losing out on jobs and tax revenue.

NYT Puts Story of Leaked 'Fracking Is Safe' Report Covered Up for a Year on Page A19.  One would think that a newspaper which in its view has largely made its reputation on publishing leaked government documents and revealing government secrets would have been a bit more excited about being the sole receipient of a report from the State of New York indicating that hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," is safe.  The State had already sat on the report for a year.

Wow!  Other than bird cage floors, what else are the newspapers covering up?

US Carbon Emissions in 2012 Will be Lower than in 2007 Due to Fracking.  Instapundit points to this bit of happy news culled from John Hanger, a Democrat who is running for governonr of Pennsylvania, where has been secretary of the state department of the environment and a commissioner of the public utility commission.

The Editor says...
That's all very nice, if it makes you feel any better, but it doesn't matter because carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

The Democrats' War on Science Aids Our Enemies.  [Scroll down]  Is this the only reason why a major carbon fuel producer paid off Gore in order to get a cable channel in the U.S.?  I think it's more than an effort to bring Arab political viewpoints into the U.S.  I think it's part of an ongoing effort to keep the U.S. from displacing the Middle East as the major gas producer by propagandizing against hydraulic gas fracturing — fracking.

Seismic risk of fracking has been wildly overstated.  Hydraulic fracturing to produce oil and gas has become closely associated in the public mind with the risk of triggering man-made earthquakes.  But the risk is not high and it is not confined to fracking.  There may be greater danger from geothermal energy production and pumping carbon dioxide underground as part of carbon capture and storage projects.

EPA offers hints on fracking's future.  Fracking is safe until the Obama administration finishes burying the coal industry.  Obama allows fracking to flourish because low gas prices are killing coal.  But when that mission is accomplished, watch out frackers.

Can UAE-Backed Film Shut Down U.S. Fracking Boom?  As the U.S. changes the balance of power by exporting some of its abundant natural gas resources, a Hollywood propaganda film debuts claiming the technology making it possible will poison America's small towns.

'Promised Land' fares poorly at theaters.  Fracking gets natural gas out of the ground, but it isn't bringing people into movie theaters.  Big stars and political controversy didn't translate into a significant box-office haul as "Promised Land," a new movie exploring environmental concerns about the gas-production method known more formally as "hydraulic fracturing," fared poorly in its nationwide opening.

EPA offers hints on fracking's future.  The Obama administration has pulled back the curtain on its long-awaited study of the possible correlation between water pollution and fracking, but the full results and definitive findings of its far-reaching report won't be released until 2014.  The review, the most sweeping federal survey to date, likely will have major implications for the country's natural gas and oil boom spurred by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which has transformed the U.S. fuel market and is reshaping the global energy landscape.

Let America's Gas Industry Boom.  Researchers at the Energy Department just released a comprehensive economic analysis, finding that the United States can reap massive economic benefits from allowing the export of natural gas.  Will the Obama administration go for the gold — or continue yielding to anti-export hysteria?

Lefty Luddites, green ideologues and Guardianista pillocks opposing our glorious shale gas revolution.  [Scroll down]  So we've all heard of the Bakken and Marcellus Shales — the ones which have transformed the US economy, brought natural gas prices down by two thirds, etc.  Well our own Bowland Shale, under Blackpool is up to 40 times thicker.  The depressing thing is that in a decade or so's time when the shale gas revolution has really taken off in Britain — bringing prosperity, jobs and dramatically cheaper energy — no one is going to remember the names of that rag bag of ideological greenies, wind turbine scamsters, ill-informed celebrities, enviro-loon activists and Guardianista pillocks who fought so hard to stop it happening.

Ignore The Doom Merchants, Britain Should Get Fracking.  It's green, it's cheap and it's plentiful!  So why are opponents of shale gas making such a fuss?  In their mad denunciations of fracking, the Greens and the eco-warriors betray the mindset of people who cannot bear a piece of unadulterated good news.

Yoko Sets Her Sights on Breaking Up Fracking.  Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon took out a full-page ad in the New York Times Monday [12/10/2012] to protest natural gas fracking in New York state.

Shale Gas Drilling 'Huge Boost' To UK Economy.  Drilling for shale gas could create "tens of thousands" of jobs in the UK and generate vast sums of money for the Treasury, according to a UK-based exploration company.  Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan has told the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee that the controversial process will also reduce Britain's dependency on imported gas.

Energy Economics in One Lesson.  America's shale gas boom is so promising that it has some people discombobulated — including, naturally, our politicians.  The same folks who complain about America's trade deficit now want the U.S. government to ban the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG).  This is one way to ruin what has been a very rare piece of good U.S. economic news.

Obama Is Not Improving Ohio's Economy - Fracking Is.  One of the largest deposits that's currently paying off is the Marcellus Shale, in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.  As perhaps the most prominent battleground state in the presidential election, Ohio's economic conditions will have an effect on the entire nation.  And make no mistake — the economy is improving in Ohio, NOT because of Obama.  It's due to fracking.

New technology means Britain and the U.S. could tap undreamed reserves of gas and oil.  Thirty years ago, I was Secretary of State for Energy in Margaret Thatcher's government, and one way and another I have been a close observer of the energy scene ever since.  In all that time, I have never known a technological revolution as momentous as the breakthrough that has now made it economic to extract gas from shale.

The new boom: Shale gas fueling an American industrial revival.  The shale gas revolution is firing up an old-fashioned American industrial revival, breathing life into businesses such as petrochemicals and glass, steel and toys.