Fracking coverage: Still more flagrant, fragrant lies

Jan. 9, 2013

By Chris Reed

California’s potential for an enormous natural gas/oil boom if hydraulic fracturing — “fracking” — is allowed to free up our vast natural gas and oil reserves means we should pay close attention to the dishonest war against the process.

The recent leak of a New York state report in which environmental regulators found no major issues with “fracking” is another confirmation of what I wrote for CalWatchdog last month: Fracking has long been common and uncontroversial, and green activists only chose to hate on it when it became efficient. This is a pretty juicy angle, don’t you think? It’s as cut-and-dried a display of green dishonesty as you will ever see.

But instead of anyone mentioning this, we continue to see state and national coverage treating fracking as a new, mysterious phenomenon. And we see propaganda matter-of-factly presented as plain truth. Here’s a double shot from Entertainment Weekly’s coverage of “Promised Land,” the new anti-fracking movie. First from Los Angeles-based reporter Solvej Schou, this lie:

“The movie, starring and co-written by Matt Damon and John Krasinski, has shone a spotlight on the continued controversy surrounding hydraulic fracking — a relatively new, environmentally controversial method of extracting natural gas from the ground …”

That is groan-worthy, but Entertainment Weekly’s New York-based critic Owen Gleiberman‘s review of “Promised Land” is even worse:

“The process of extracting the gas — fracking — is a chemical-drenched dirty business that leaves the land toxic …”

Even by the media’s low standards, this is pathetic. It’s time to once again quote from a Newsweek article from Oct. 30, 1978, headlined “The New Gas Bonanza” — specifically, from a long analysis piece that placed fracking at the center of one of the big energy stories of the late 1970s:

“In many parts of the Northwest, large deposits of shale laid down in the Devonian age contain quantities of gas estimated at 10 trillion to 600 trillion cubic feet. The advantage of the Devonian deposits is that their gas is close to the surface of the earth — and also to gas-starved markets. Their big disadvantage is the tight grip the dense shale holds on its gas, frustrating attempts to make it flow fast enough for economical production.

“Experiments are under way to enhance the flow through advanced hydraulic fracturing. Coarse sand, bauxite pellets or glass beads are mixed with fluid pumped into the shale under high pressure to crack the rock and wedge the cracks open to allow the gas to escape.”

That is from 34 years ago. If fracking was even vaguely as bad as Owen Gleiberman claims, America would be covered with toxic swamps from our 1 million fracked wells.

Yet the media would have us believe this history never happened. We have always been at war with Eastasia.