Fracking watch: Mexico figures out what CA hasn’t

04 May, 2013 by CalWatchdog Staff

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May 4, 2013

By Chris Reed

In much of Europe and in California, greens wield such power in politics and the media that the debate over whether a nation or state should pursue hydraulic fracturing of energy reserves seems like a fight over a new and unproven process. But in the rest of the world, there’s an acceptance that times have changed. that fracking’s nothing new, and that fossil fuels are still the big dog in town. Read this New York Times article from April 24. to get a sense of the real-world view of fracking and other energy developments. It is headlined “By 2023, a Changed World in Energy” and cites the “miraculous change” in the U.S. energy outlook because of fracking.

Yet in California, the real world does not intrude. And so the Ventura County Star, which offered the first coverage of measures blocking fracking being approved by a legislative committee, never offered this minor detail: The Obama administration sees fracking as just another heavy industry. Isn’t that, yunno, news? Duh!

Fracking sanity chapter No. 8: Mexico

This media sloth and ineptitude is why that every morning for a week I’ve been blogging about the nations around the world that think it’s a good thing to have cheap energy and have embraced fracking. So far I’ve covered Germany, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Canada and Argentina. Now it’s the turn of our neighbor to the south, which has the fourth largest shale reserves in the world, according to the U.S. government.

What’s my point? The fracking/brown energy revolution is coming, regardless of what greens in the Golden State and Europe want, and that California can either join in the party or get left behind.

This is from an April 21 Inter Press Service report that lays out the determination of PEMEX, the government-owned oil giant, and Mexican leaders to get on the fracking bandwagon:

“Since 2011, PEMEX has drilled at least six wells for shale gas in the northern states of Nuevo León and Coahuila. And it is preparing for further exploration in the southeastern state of Veracruz, at a cost of 245 million dollars over the space of 18 months, in conjunction with the Mexican Petroleum Institute (IMP), a state institution. …

“In a 2011 report, ‘World Shale Gas Resources: An Initial Assessment of 14 Regions Outside the United States,’ the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) assessed 48 shale gas basins in 32 countries, including Mexico, and estimated that there were 6,622 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in the United States and the other 32 countries studied. … For Mexico, it calculated 681 TCF — the fourth largest reserves in the world. ….

“The National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), in charge of technical permits for PEMEX projects, will analyse and approve regulations for fracking this year.

“Mexico’s oil giant plans to drill 20 wells by 2016, with a total investment of over two billion dollars. It projects operating 6,500 commercial wells over the next 50 years.”

Will CA media heed green or The New York Times? Character test time

Quite the contrast. Mexico will “analyze and approve” fracking regulations this year. In California, the Legislature will just ignore fracking’s long history and what the rest of the world is doing and ban it. And the state’s media and its corrupt environmental reporters will never point out this long history or what the New York Times — THE NEW YORK TIMES — says about the brown energy revolution.

Sheesh.