July 1, 2013

By Chris Reed

The Sacramento Bee has joined the reporting staff of The Los Angeles Times and the Ventura County Star’s Timm Herdt in the Fracking Disinformation Hall of Shame. Bee reporter Tom Knudson has a lengthy, often alarmist look at hydraulic fracturing, its long history in California and the possibility that it could trigger a huge economic boom in Golden State.

But while dwelling on fracking’s purported dangers, what Knudson’s article never does is mention the Obama administration’s extensively documented position on fracking: namely, that it is just another heavy industry that can be made safe with good regulations. Instead, Knudson offers up this sort of passing observation as fact: “fracking’s risks to groundwater remain unknown.”

All the president’s men (and women) disagree

Hey, Tom! I know you’re a Pulitzer Prize winner and all, and that therefore you shouldn’t be subject to questioning or editing, but when writing about fracking, aren’t these facts relevant?

— The president’s first energy secretary, Steven Chu, said: “We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.”

— The MIT physicist Obama chose to succeed Chu, Ernest Moniz, described the risks to water posed by fracking as “challenging but manageable.”

— The president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, told a House committee that she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

— Sally Jewell, the president’s secretary of the interior, at a May 17 news conference announcing the release of fracking rules for public and Indian land, declared the following: “I know there are those who say fracking is dangerous and should be curtailed, full stop. That ignores the reality that it has been done for decades and has the potential for developing significant domestic resources and strengthening our economy and will be done for decades to come.”

Or just for fun, Tom, maybe you could quote the president himself. The photo atop this post of a recent Huffington Post story shows how he feels.

Maybe Tom Knudson got in the green tank for career reasons

The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times both covered Interior Secretary Jewell’s May 17 news conference. The contrast in their coverage is pretty amazing.

“The L.A. Times’ account put in the ‘fracking is safe and has been around forever’ context by quoting an oil industry trade association spokesperson. The NYT quoted THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR!

“Quite a gigantic difference. But than the LAT’s Neela Banerjee and Wes Venteicher and their editors can’t have Times’ readers knowing the Obama administration likes fracking, can they? It doesn’t fit the West L.A.-Marin County-NRDC narrative.”

Maybe that explains the Sac Bee’s Tom Knudson not mentioning the Obama administration’s view on fracking. He’s angling for a job at the L.A. Times.

Sheesh. If any member of the California journalism corps can offer a logical explanation as to why the environmental and political reporters who cover fracking never mention the position of the greenest presidential administration in history, I will be happy to pass it along.

But that won’t happen, because it is impossible to come up with such an explanation.

Paging Dan Walters, paging Dan Walters

The best explanations are the simplest one: 1) All these political and enviro reporters are in the green tank. They’d rather not get blowback from the people they cover, so they don’t mention an angle so powerful it makes the fracking-is-dangerous crowd look like fools. 2) They’re green activists pretending to be impartial journalists.

On fracking, I look forward to Dan Walters eventually fulfilling his periodic role of pointing out the stupidity of the media party line, like he has this year on budget happy talk and like he did back in late 2006 when reporters actually bought the idea that Arnold Schwarzenegger had figured out to make Sacramento functional.

Dan probably won’t name/shame Knudson, but I’ll settle for any improvement on the Sierra Club fracking propaganda we’ve been seeing masquerade as news and “analysis.”

By Chris Reed

The new Los Angeles Times poll showing sharp skepticism among Californians about hydraulic fracturing — the newly improved oil-gas drilling process that has triggered a brown energy revolution — should trigger fierce pride among Times reporters Neela Banerjee, Evan Halper, Julie Cart, Wes Venteicher, Bettina Boxall, Shan Li, Michael J. Mishak, Kathleen Hennessey, Amy Kaufman, Kenneth Turan, Nicole Sperling, Ronald D. White, Tiffany Hsu, Ruben Vives and Michael Hiltzik.

A Nexis hunt shows that over the past year, each of these L.A. Times’ reporters has written about fracking WITHOUT EVER MENTIONING THAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DISMISSES ENVIRONMENTAL CRITICISM OF THE PROCESS.

Why do I uppercase this? Because it is literally incredible that journalists for an important, powerful newspaper think that the position of the greenest president in the history of the nation is irrelevant to one of the most pitched public policy debates in the nation.

Energy and interior secretaries, EPA chief, task force all call it safe

To recycle some of what I’ve written before:

— A task force commissioned by the Obama administration’s Energy Department concluded in a 23-page report issued in November 2011 that fracking was just another heavy industry, one with significant but manageable pollution concerns.

— The president’s first energy secretary, UC Berkeley’s Steven Chu, said: “We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.”

— Chu’s replacement, MIT physicist Ernest Moniz, said the risk that fracking posed to water supplies was “challenging but manageable.”

— The president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, disputed claims that fracking, which occurs 5,000 feet below the surface, had polluted water tables which are usually less than 1,000 feet below the surface. She testified before a House committee that she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

Neela Banerjee: Serial factual omitter

The single most graphic example of the fact that there is a calculated decision made to not mention the Obama administration’s views comes from a recent article by Neela Banerjee — who has written more than any other LATer about fracking — and Wes Venteicher. Published on May 17, it dealt with Sally Jewell, Obama’s interior secretary, and her announcement of new federal fracking rules for drilling on public and Indian lands.

Banerjee and Venteicher noted the controversy over fracking and turned to an industry spokesman to offer the context that fracking has been around decades and hasn’t been the devil.

“‘States have been successfully regulating fracking for decades, including on federal lands, with no incident of contamination that would necessitate redundant federal regulation,’ said Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs for Western Energy Alliance, a Denver-based trade group.”

The New York Times covered the same press conference and, like Banerjee and Venteicher, also quoted Jewell. But while the LAT offered mushy generalities from the interior secretary, veteran NYT reporter John M. Broder believed it was somewhat more significant that she said this:

“Anticipating criticism from environmental advocates, she said: ‘I know there are those who say fracking is dangerous and should be curtailed, full stop. That ignores the reality that it has been done for decades and has the potential for developing significant domestic resources and strengthening our economy and will be done for decades to come.’”

Fracking safety: NYT cites Obama Cabinet member, LAT quotes flack

How does Banerjee sleep at night, slanting things this dramatically? When trying to steer the public toward an opinion on fracking’s safety, she quotes an oil industry flack. The New York Times quotes OBAMA’S SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR. And it’s a quote the LAT reporter could have used but chose to ignore.

I rest my case.

By Chris Reed

The debate over hydraulic fracturing — using high-powered water cannons to reach natural gas and oil reserves deep underground — is heating up in California, driven by the vast economic potential of the Monterey shale formation under vast swaths of the state.

Last month, a committee of the California Legislature passed three bills targeting “fracking.” A Nexis account shows hundreds of mentions of hydraulic fracturing in state newspapers over the past 12 months.

Given the extent of media interest and the high stakes for the state’s economy, one would think the Obama administration’s position on the safety of fracking would be central to coverage of California’s possible expanded use of the energy-exploration process. The president, after all, is broadly seen as the greenest president in history, using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and his executive powers to advance far-reaching regulations.

Just another heavy industry with ‘challenging but manageable’ pollution

It would thus seem to be highly relevant that:

— A task force commissioned by the Obama administration’s Energy Department concluded in a 23-page report issued in November 2011 that fracking was just another heavy industry, one with significant but manageable pollution concerns.

— The president’s first energy secretary, UC Berkeley’s Steven Chu, said: “We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.”

— Chu’s replacement, MIT physicist Ernest Moniz, said the risk that fracking posed to water supplies was “challenging but manageable.”

— The president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, disputed claims that fracking, which occurs 5,000 feet below the surface, had polluted water tables which are usually less than 1,000 feet below the surface. She testified before a House committee that she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

It is true that the White House has prevented fossil-fuel exploration on federal lands, which perhaps can be interpreted as opposition to fracking. But at a very basic level, the Obama administration has disagreed with the central claims of the anti-fracking campaign, which build on the idea that the process is new, unproven and hugely destructive to the environment.

Plenty of coverage — but none of it mentions Obama administration’s view

Here is a short list of recent California newspaper coverage that mentions greens’ warnings about hydraulic fracturing but never acknowledges that the Obama administration is on record as essentially dismissing greens’ claims and supporting fracking’s use:

— A May 9 column in the Ventura County Star by Timm Herdt headlined, “Drilling for a middle ground on fracking.”

— A May 2 story in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined, “Fracking in drought regions a bad recipe.”

— A May 1 column in the Sacramento Bee by Dan Morain headlined, “Calculating the profits, pitfalls of an oil tax.”

— An April 29 story in the Ventura County Star headlined, “Assembly committee passes three bills to impose fracking moratorium.”

—An April 20 story in the Ventura County Star headlined, “New leases reveal an oil land rush in Ventura County.”

— An April 13 story in the Los Angeles Times headlined, “Report urges tough rules on fracking.”

— An April 11 editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined, “Ground rules: On fracking.”

— An April 10 story in the Los Angeles Times headlined, “California Senate panel approves bill to regulate ‘fracking’.”

— An April 9 story in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined, “Foes of fracking win case — delay in drilling likely.”

This list could be far longer. I have been following the fracking issue intensely in California for a year and have never seen a newspaper story that even mentioned the Obama administration’s views in passing.

The juicy angle on greens and fracking that’s never shared with public

It’s impossible to know if ideology or groupthink or a combination of both is driving this bizarre omission of basic facts from fracking coverage. But one way or the other, it’s indefensible as journalism — especially because of the juicy story that awaits telling by the mainstream media:

Hydraulic fracturing has been a common tool in oil and gas exploration since the 1970s, and has been around since the late 1940s. It was only after it became a much more efficient and refined process in the last decade and began generating vast amounts of natural gas and oil that environmentalists began to object to it.

But this increased efficiency has also made fracking cleaner and less wasteful than ever. Less water is used, more is recycled — and there’s a race on to improve recycling technology.

Isn’t that worthy of coverage? That greens didn’t object to the much dirtier version of fracking for decades but only griped when it got efficient — and much cleaner?

Of course it is.

But if this juicy, important, obvious angle ever appears in the Times, Mercury-News, Bee or Chronicle, it will likely come as a complete surprise to subscribers. California’s environmental reporters simply refuse to cover the big picture on fracking.

By Chris Reed

It’s bad enough that the media consistently depict hydraulic fracturing as new when it’s been around for 60-plus years. But what’s also amazing is that the California media covering the state government’s ongoing attempts to develop “fracking” regulations — including occasional contrarian Dan Walters — never mention the fact that the Obama administration has basically said full speed ahead. The U.S. Energy Department accepts the consensus of regulators over the past 40 years that fracking to access oil and natural gas reserves is just another heavy industry — one that’s fairly dirty but manageable.

I made this point in a U-T San Diego editorial which noted fracking’s immense potential to create an economic boom in the Golden State:

“What few seem to understand, and what the media have rarely emphasized, is that the Obama administration dismisses [environmentalists’] alarmism about fracking … .

“This is why the president’s first energy secretary, Steven Chu, said: ‘We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.’

“This is why the MIT physicist the White House recently nominated to succeed Chu, Ernest Moniz, described the risks to water posed by fracking as ‘challenging but manageable.’

“This is why the president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, told a House committee that she was ‘not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.’”

Have you seen this context in any MSM story about California’s regulation of fracking?

Nah.

The same pathetic bunch that ignored the downside of AB 32 until this year has ignored the fact that fracking has Obama’s blessing.

Pretty amazing.

By Chris Reed

As Californians begin to appreciate the immense economic potential of the state’s underground natural gas and oil reserves, the debate will sharply intensify over the safety of hydraulic fracturing — the newly refined and improved tool used to access previously unreachable reserves. Fracking, the shorthand term for the process, involves using high-powered streams of water, with a small amount of chemicals and solids or sand, to break up rock formations thousands of feet underground.

Of the states most associated with fracking — North Dakota, Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania — what has happened in the latter is of most interest to Californians. In the Keystone State, the use of fracking to tap vast natural gas reserves in an underground formation called the Marcellus Shale flourished under a liberal Democratic governor, Ed Rendell. The former Philadelphia mayor simply never gave credence to the various scare tactics used to try to block fracking and brushed off the criticism from the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial page, environmental groups and others with an ideological, quasi-religious abhorrence of fossil fuels.

If Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is to be persuaded to follow Rendell’s path, advocates of fracking need to learn from Pennsylvania and how the debate unfolded there.

Stick to the facts to counter hysterics

Advocates should argue that fracking is not perfect, but that no oil exploration is, and note that when properly regulated, it has a strong safety record. Scott Perry, who was the director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Oil and Gas Management under Rendell, liked to respond to the harshest critique with this just-the-facts statement: “There has never been any evidence of fracking ever causing direct contamination of fresh groundwater in Pennsylvania or anywhere else.”

The argument that fracking, which is typically at a depth of 5,000 feet or more, might affect water tables thousands of feet higher isn’t one that most scientists take seriously. John M. Deutch, an MIT chemistry professor who served in high posts in the Carter and Clinton administrations and has been a key adviser to the U.S. Energy Department on fracking, says careful regulation addresses environmental fears in comprehensive fashion. He adds that fracking “is by far the biggest event that I’ve seen” in 50 years of monitoring world energy developments.

What’s striking about media coverage of fracking safety questions is how it largely ignores the fact that the Obama administration rejects the alarmism of the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. In House testimony in May 2011, EPA Director Lisa Jackson said she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.” The U.S. Geological Survey dismissed the idea that fracking causes earthquakes. Most definitively, a November 2011 Energy Department study concluded that there were legitimate pollution concerns surrounding hydraulic fracturing. But the concerns involved the worries about surface air and water quality and about community effects that would come with any heavy industrial project, and were not due to the deleterious effects of fracking underground.

Efficiency gains: It’s not the chemicals, it’s the computers

In explaining why fracking is so much more effective than it used to be, advocates should stress that it is a result of computing power — not more toxic and dangerous chemicals. Drillers are now able to use extraordinarily sophisticated sensors to take the equivalent of a gigantic MRI of underground rock formations, then focus their water cannons on weak spots in the formations surrounding the shale formations with natural gas and oil reserves.

Now, as in the past, by volume the chemicals and sand used are less than 1 percent of the total water used. Because of fracking’s increased efficiency, this means much less water is used than in past versions — and thus fewer chemicals.

Another claim regularly invoked by fracking critics is that the process wastes an extraordinary amount of water. But the Marcellus Shale Coalition says 90 percent of the water used is recycled, and that far more water is used in Pennsylvania on golf courses than in fracking. The recycling percentage is only going to improve as focus grows on the importance of reuse.

The ‘Goebbels’-like anti-fracking documentary

Fracking supporters can shore up their case by pointing to the intentional deception in a 2010 anti-fracking documentary, “GasLand.” The movie’s most unforgettable image is residents of a town in a heavy drilling area — Dimock, Pa. — lighting their tap water on fire, leaving the plain impression this was the result of fracking. Instead, even director Josh Fox acknowledged in an interview with McClatchy-Tribune that it resulted from local conditions unrelated to the chemicals used in fracking. Fox, however, insisted it wasn’t misleading.

Defenders of Pennsylvania’s fracking record like to bring up “GasLand” because they know it is so easily discredited. In a 2011 interview with a newspaper in Lancaster, Pa., Teddy Borawski, chief oil and gas geologist for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, relished the chance to tee off on the documentary. “Joseph Goebbels would have been proud,” he said. “He would have given him the Nazi Award. That, in my opinion, was a beautiful piece of propaganda.”

And in the war of talking points, the fact is that fracking has actually led to the single best news on the U.S. environmental front in many years. Natural gas is much cleaner than coal and oil, and fracking has increased supplies so dramatically that it now costs only a third or less of what it did in 2008 in the United States. The result: “The amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years,” as AP reported last summer.

The irony could hardly be greater. For decades, environmentalists have argued that renewable energy such as solar and wind power are the only way to reduce the release of dangerous emissions into the atmosphere. But it is plentiful new supplies of a fossil fuel, natural gas, that has been the game changer. The U.S. has reduced carbon dioxide emissions more than any other nation since 2006, according to the International Energy Association.

California could thrive if it joins the “brown energy” revolution. The  Monterey Shale formation under the Central Valley is far bigger than the Marcellus Shale formation under Pennsylvania and other northeastern states. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 15, “The overall economic benefits of opening up the Monterey Shale field could reach $1 trillion.”

Allowing fracking to work its magic will be especially difficult in a state that is home to AB 32 and that is ground zero for regulatory excesses in the name of preventing pollution. But while governor of Pennsylvania from 2003-2011, Ed Rendell overcame reflexive green objections with his just-the-facts approach. It can work in California, too.

By Chris Reed

As soon as I heard EPA chief Lisa Jackson was leaving, I took to Twitter to predict state air board chair Mary Nichols would be considered a hot candidate for the job, as she was in 2008. When the San Francisco Chronicle got around to this angle Saturday, I expected the usual cheerleading. Instead, lo and behold, it acknowledged the Hien Tran scandal that I broke after being tipped off by UCLA epidemiologist James Enstrom — and the Chronicle framed it as the worst thing to happen on her watch:

“Either way, if nominated, it’s likely we’ll hear about some of the not-so-great air board moments under her leadership. Among those is how she handled a researcher whose work supported a major diesel exhaust regulation and who was found to have lied about his scientific credentials.

“Nichols didn’t tell all of the board members about the falsification before they voted to approve a regulation based on his research. Also, he was never fired.”

I began writing about this story in December 2008. When I established that Hien Tran didn’t have the Ph.D. he claimed from UC Davis, it was the lead item on Rough & Tumble one afternoon. Afterwards, it disappeared from California’s mainstream media for a few months, even as I broke the news that the degree Tran presented the air board with was a mail-order Ph.D. from Thornhill University, a diploma mill associated with, yes, a fugitive pedophile.

Thankfully, in March 2009, Lois Henry of the Bakersfield Californian started writing great columns that did a powerful job of demolishing Tran’s rotten science. John and Ken had me on to talk about the scandal and eventually even gave James Enstrom a platform to explain how he figured out Tran’s deceit.

Finally, after a September 2009 air board meeting at which the full governing board was confronted with evidence of Tran’s fraud, did the bleep begin to hit the fan.

Finally, Mary Nichols was held to account for keeping the Tran scandal from a majority of the board even as it voted for highly controversial diesel emission rules based on his work.

Even then, it still took a month for the mainstream media to tackle the story, and when they did, Dan Walters wrote a dishonest column excusing Sacramento journalists for not taking the scandal seriously a year earlier when I broke it.

But now it could cost Nichols an EPA seat. The story of how Tran kept his job while Enstrom got fired for rocking the boat would be riveting at a Senate hearing — and the background information is plentiful on the web.

Yo, Mary: karma time!