The campaign to place California secession on the ballot next election year entered uncertain waters as news broke that its mastermind lives and works in a city in the center of Russia. 

“I immigrated to California, and I consider myself to be a Californian,” Louis Marinelli told The California Report from his Yekaterinburg apartment, KQED reported. “I wanted to handle some personal issues in my family, regarding immigration. My wife is from Russia. I’m here handling various personal issues. But at the same time, we have some political goals we can achieve while I’m here.” 

From founding to funding

Marinelli’s deep Russian ties, past and present, attracted attention as he took his current stay in the country as an opportunity to start work on a so-called “embassy of California” in Moscow. That undertaking, as Bloomberg noted, has the aid of “a vehemently anti-American group supported by the Kremlin” — the Anti-Globalist Movement of Russia — which Marinelli said supports California’s right to self-determination. “Talking to the Russian tabloid Life, Alexander Ionov, the president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, said that the embassy would serve as a hub to boost tourism and foster cultural and economic exchanges between the Golden State and Russia,” Heat Street reported. 

“We may disagree on several issues, but if we have common ground on one issue, why shouldn’t we have a dialogue?” Marinelli asked Bloomberg. But he has already begun to hit against the limits of that rhetoric. 

“Marinelli’s Russian connection has created a schism, if not quite the Great Schism, in the breakaway movement with members of the California National Party, a group that is formally affiliated with Yes California but has publicly disavowed Marinelli as a Russian marionette. Silicon Valley investor and Hyperloop co-founder Shervin Pishevar briefly became another standard-bearer of ‘Calexit,’ as it come to be known, threatening Marinelli’s virtual monopoly on the cause, but backed off, saying he didn’t really support secession.”

The Trump factor

But crisis management was not the only reason Yes California accelerated its timetable to land their initiative on the California ballot in 2018. (According to the prospective measure’s language, voting yes “would trigger a special election the following March in which residents would decide if ‘California should become a free, sovereign and independent country,'” as the San Jose Mercury News observed.) Donald Trump’s election provoked a degree of dismay among some California Democrats intense enough to suggest a secessionist movement could take advantage while passions remained relatively hot.

“It wasn’t until Trump’s victory last month that mainstream U.S. outlets — including the Sacramento Bee, the L.A. Times and NPR — covered the group more seriously,” KQED noted. “The story got new legs because several influential tech figures took to Twitter to voice their desire for California to leave the union after Trump’s election. Among them was Shervin Pishevar, an investor and co-founder of Hyperloop One, a startup promoting a futuristic new transportation technology.”

Although no elected officials have promoted the breakaway effort, tempers have flared around the idea that a Trump presidency would try to stymie state Democrats, seen by many party members nationwide as a progressive vanguard on social and environmental issues. 

In a recent San Francisco speech before the American Geophysical Union, for instance, Gov. Jerry Brown vowed to press ahead with the state’s current climate policy regardless of what happens in Washington. “If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite,” he said, according to the IBTimes. “We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers and we’re ready to fight.” 

Rough going

Despite the flurry of attention, from Russia, Marinelli’s personal political reach in California was likely to remain limited. To date, his track record has been spotty. He “filed a handful of statewide ballot measures related to secession in 2015 and none qualified for the November ballot,” the Sacramento Bee recalled. “He also waged an unsuccessful campaign to represent state Assembly District 80, but didn’t advance beyond the June primary.”

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, one of the leading companies dedicated to taking SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s revolutionary brainchild off the drawing board and into reality, went public with news of its plans to break ground this year. “Construction is set to begin in the second quarter of 2016,” Entrepreneur noted.

In an interview with CNBC, HTT COO Bibop Gresta framed the details in ambitious new terms. “We are announcing the filing of the first building permit to Kings County to the building of the first full-scale hyperloop, not a test track,” he said. “In 36 months we will have the first passenger in the first full-scale hyperloop.”

Ben Cooke, a spokesman for the company, supplied some additional details separately. HTT, he indicated, “hopes to do geological surveys and map out the track in the next six months, then start building. The plan is to use a hyperloop to whisk residents around a proposed development called Quay Valley, south of Kettleman City. Preliminary estimates based on construction bids are that the hyperloop’s cost will be between $100 million and $170 million,” noted Southern California Public Radio.

Rival locations

Gresta made clear, however, that Californians won’t be able to cue up for travel up and down the state quite so soon, CNBC reported, noting that the completed track HTT plans to build won’t stretch between cities. “Gresta said that a full-scale city to city hyperloop could be a reality within five years, but said it will most likely not be in the U.S.,” the network added.

In an interview with a separate network, Gresta raised more eyebrows by suggesting that Russia could be among the first countries to bankroll a hyperloop that does reach from city to city. “Hyperloop Technologies is in talks with a Russian investor to finance the possible building of a new kind of transport, the company’s COO told RT at the World Economic Forum in Davos,” RT reported. “It is likely the government will also be keen on the idea, he believes.”

Speaking about HTT’s current negotiations, Gresta told RT, “We’re talking with a Russian private investor to basically have the first route in Russia, and we’re analyzing different possible solutions between different cities. You can connect Moscow and St. Petersburg in 35 minutes.”

Three ways forward

But HTT, which isn’t alone in the race to develop the hyperloop, made waves at Davos while another company rolled out development news of its own. According to SpaceX itself, Aecom, a global infrastructure firm, will construct “a one-mile track at SpaceX headquarters near Los Angeles International Airport,” as SCPR reported. “If all goes well, by summer’s end, the track will host prototype capsules that emerge from a design competition this weekend at Texas A&M University. The prototype pods would be half the size of the system that Musk envisioned and would not carry people.”

Michael Burke, Aecom chairman and CEO, released a statement portraying the company’s foray into hyperloop construction as a natural next step. Aecom, he said, “has designed and built some of the world’s most impressive transportation systems, so we appreciate how the development of a functioning Hyperloop with SpaceX can dramatically expand the ways people move across cities, countries and continents.”

A third firm has already forged ahead with a similar test track across the California border in North Las Vegas, “Hyperloop Technologies Inc. says that track will be used to develop ways to propel capsules,” SCPR observed. “The company plans to build a second, full-scale loop to test a prototype, spokeswoman Meredith Kendall said.”

Video 1: Scott Walker on right-to-work and Obama criticism.

Video 2: Scott Walker on Iran, Russia and Keystone XL.

Video 3: Scott Walker on medical marijuana, same-sex marriage.

Video 4: Scott Walker advances immigration plan.

Video 5: Scott Walker on winning the millennial vote.

Video 6: 2016 Showdown: Scott Walker vs. Jeb Bush.

By Chris Reed

The 13th chapter of fracking watch will be the last installment for a while until some more nations around the world take up the issue of whether hydraulic fracturing is a bad or good thing. For this installment — instead of focusing on a government that has figured out fracking is just another heavy industry — I will focus on a First World nation with a strong green movement that seemed to be in the same stalled situation as California. Until last week, that is.

It’s Great Britain. Like California, Britain has a history as an oil producer. Like California, it has ardent environmentalists who depict fracking as a new and evil technology, not an old technology that has gotten radically better because of information technology breakthroughs that make it far more efficient. But after a heated debate in Parliament and the media, the realization that fracking only become a green evil when it killed the “peak oil” assessment of world energy needs seems to have sunken in. In California, we still have lame media coverage that never acknowledges that the Obama administration sees fracking as just another heavy industry, not the devil. In Great Britain, reality is being acknowledged.

Fracking sanity chapter No. 13: Great Britain

This is from a May 3 story on CNN’s website:

“LONDON — Britain’s government lifted its ban on a controversial mining process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, Thursday, allowing companies to continue their exploration of shale gas reserves.

“Energy Secretary Edward Davey said the decision was subject to new controls to limit the risks of seismic activity.

“A halt was called to fracking last year after two small earthquakes in Lancashire, northwestern England, where Cuadrilla Resources was exploring for shale gas.

“The process involves pumping millions of gallons of water and chemicals into shale formations deep beneath the Earth’s surface, causing the fracturing of the rock and the release of natural gas.”

The CNN report says that Britain’s greens seem more worried about fracking causing earthquakes that tainting drinking water. (For the record, the U.S. EPA thinks that’s a crock.)

“The new controls imposed by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change include a requirement to carry out a seismic survey before work starts.

“Firms involved must also draw up a plan showing how the seismic risks will be limited, and monitor seismic activity before, during and after the exploration.”

A ‘turning point’ for Britain’s energy future

But in the end, common sense appears to have prevailed.

“Cuadrilla Resources said Thursday’s decision to allow fracking to resume marked a significant step for Britain’s future onshore gas industry.

“‘Today’s news is a turning point for the country’s energy future. Shale gas has the potential to create jobs, generate tax revenues, reduce our reliance on imported gas, and improve our balance of payments,’ chief executive Francis Egan said in a statement.

“In an interview with CNN, Egan insisted that fracking could be done ‘safely and sensibly’ in Britain and that there are huge reserves to be exploited.

“The company believes there is about 200 trillion cubic feet of gas under the ground just within its license area in Lancashire. To put that figure into context, the United Kingdom uses about 3 trillion cubic feet of gas a year, Egan said.”

So after an intense two-year debate, reason has won out in Britain. If only we could hope for such a logical process in California.

Fracking and climate change: What the reflexive critics ignore

And if only we could see California greens note that the fracking revolution’s success in accessing natural gas reserves is a tremendously positive development on the climate-change front. Some fossil fuels are way, way better than others.

Fred Pearce, a columnist for the lefty Guardian of London, goes where California’s rigid, hidebound greens won’t in an essay headlined “Fracking: the monster we greens must embrace.” His key point:

“The thing is, fossil fuels differ. Coal is uniquely nasty. But burning natural gas produces only half as much carbon dioxide as burning coal. So shale gas could be part of the solution to climate change, rather than part of the problem.

“Take the US. From a standing start a decade ago, it now gets more than a quarter of its natural gas from shale. Production is so cheap there that shale gas is replacing coal in power stations; and as a result its carbon dioxide emissions are the lowest since 1992. Low energy prices are even encouraging the manufacturing of some goods to return from China, where they were mostly made using coal-fired energy. What’s not to like?”

Have you ever heard anything remotely as pragmatic from a California green?

Nope. They belong to a religion that encourages people to feel morally superior to those who disagree with them on anything — and to see fossil fuels as evil no matter what. They aren’t part of a movement with a sophisticated worldview. If they were, a lot more would sound like Fred Pearce.

Fracking watch: Previous posts

No. 1: Germany

No. 2: China

No. 3: Russia

No. 4: Saudi Arabia

No. 5: Brazil

No. 6: Canada

No. 7: Argentina

No. 8: Mexico

No. 9: South Africa

No. 10: Poland

No. 11: Algeria

No. 12: Indonesia

By Chris Reed

Nations that are energy giants without being particularly affluent are the least likely places for environmental alarmism to drive public policy. They’re used to aggressively developing natural resources, and they don’t have the large cadres of affluent urban elites for whom environmentalism is a secular religion where faith trumps facts.

That definition very much fits Indonesia, the far-flung archipelago of islands in the southwest Pacific and the northeast Indian oceans. What most people know about Indonesia is limited to recalling that the president lived there as a child and what they remember about the 1965 Sukarno coup attempt from watching “The Year of Living Dangerously.” But besides being the fourth most populous country in the world (251 million people), Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of coal by weight, the third-biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas and the eighth-biggest exporter of natural gas.

Fracking sanity chapter No. 12: Indonesia

And so, of course, Indonesia and the international energy exploration firms it often partners with are moving aggressively into hydraulic fracturing, eager to join the fracking revolution. Huge shale reserves have been found on both Borneo (shown at right in a map from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists) and Sumatra, Indonesia’s two largest islands.

This is from an April 6 article on The Energy Collective website:

“A study by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, estimated that Indonesia has geologically attractive shale gas resources in the Barito and Kutei basins of Kalimantan [shown above] … .

“Edy Hermantoro, an upstream oil and gas director at the energy and mineral resources ministry of Indonesia said ‘Bandung Technology University estimates that Indonesia holds 1,000 tcf [trillion cubic feet] of shale gas reserves’.”

Trillions and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas

This is from a May 1 story on Upstream, an online trade publication of the oil and gas industry:

“Australia-listed NuEnergy Gas has started hydraulic fracturing operations at its Muara Enim production sharing contract in Indonesia, in a step to advance first gas sales by the end of this year.

“The company said on Wednesday that a fracking programme using radial jetting techniques had begun in five new untested coalbeds covering about 29 metres of gross pay.

“The programme is aiming to improve the production potential of the Suban coal seams, provide information for resource auditors to calculate reserves, and confirm the water and gas production characteristics across the full spread of coals underlying the PSC in Sumatra, Indonesia. …

“NuEnergy’s exploration programme is progressively proving and de-risking the South Sumatra CBM (coalbed methane) resource which is estimated by the Indonesian Government to be in excess of 180 Tcf (trillion cubic feet),’ [said NuEnergy chief executive Chris Newport].”

The straightforward, mature Indonesian approach — study and confirm resources; evaluate opportunities and risks; establish relationships with firms with fracking expertise; start small but think big — boy, could we use that in California.

Instead, an Assembly committee rushes to pass legislation that bans fracking based largely on the lie that it pollutes groundwater. Hydraulic fracturing occurs thousands of feet below the groundwater table. That is one of many reasons that the Obama administration has concluded it’s just another heavy industry that needs strong regulation, not the devil.

This lack of clear thinking is why I’ve undertaken my tour of fracking around the planet for CalWatchdog. My point: If California doesn’t exploit its huge energy reserves, that won’t stop the rest of the world from joining the brown energy revolution, leaving the Golden State at a huge competitive disadvantage and killing manufacturing as a noticeable source of jobs. The whining from greens in California and Europe can grow so loud that if deafens people, but it’s not going to derail the appeal of fracking in the places where people are geologically and economically literate and sensible.

It’s not just the Halliburton in-house newsletter that is speculating fossil fuels will be around forever because of fracking and other unconventional developments. It’s extremely respected journalists like The Atlantic’s Charles C. Mann.

Fracking watch: Previous posts

No. 1: Germany

No. 2: China

No. 3: Russia

No. 4: Saudi Arabia

No. 5: Brazil

No. 6: Canada

No. 7: Argentina

No. 8: Mexico

No. 9: South Africa

No. 10: Poland

No. 11: Algeria

By Chris Reed

Hydraulic fracturing — the use of underground water cannons to blast open access to energy reserves — has been around since the 1940s in the United States and Canada and for nearly as long in Russia. In no country anywhere in the world did enviros depict fracking as hell on Earth until the past few years, when hyrdraulic fracturing got much more efficient and suddenly began a threat to greens’ all-out push for costly renewable energy.

Last week, alas, the geniuses in the Legislature took initial steps to block fracking in California when AB 1301 and two other anti-fracking bills passed the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. Green-sycophant lawmakers simply don’t care that the Obama administration sees fracking as just another heavy industry that is dirty but can be made OK with strong regulation.

This pandering and the media’s pathetic acceptance of the NRDC narratives about fracking are why I have blogging each morning since April 27 about the nations around the world that embrace fracking and thus common sense. Duh — cheap energy is good. Duh — having as low energy costs as your economic rivals is good. Duh duh duh.

So far I’ve covered Germany, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa.and Poland. Now it’s Algeria’s turn. What’s my point? As I have written here before, it’s that 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.

Fracking sanity chapter No. 11: Algeria

The fracking debate in Algeria reflects the debate in so many countries. The greens complain, the experts weigh in, and then fracking is embraced. Driving the debate to an odd degree: U.S. government estimates of shale reserves, which are considered honest and unbiased by local politics. This is from a January report in The Economist (trn stands for trillion):

“North Africa is known for its conventional gas production, but attention is now beginning to turn to unconventional resources, especially shale gas. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania and Western Sahara hold 557trn cu ft of technically recoverable shale-gas resources. Libya and Algeria top the pile, with 290trn cu ft and 231trn cu ft each, although Algeria’s energy minister, Youcef Yousfi, has put his country’s reserves as high as 1,000trn cu ft. This seems optimistic, but is an accurate indicator of the level of enthusiasm for shale gas in Algeria.

“Among aspiring North African exploiters of shale gas, Algeria has come furthest …. negotiations with ExxonMobil are in progress, while agreements have been struck with Royal Dutch Shell, Italy’s Eni and Canada’s Talisman. Eni has drilled a first test well in south-west Algeria, although the results are not yet public. Meanwhile, in Libya Talisman has held talks and the Polish Oil and Gas Company (PGNiG) says it is keen to explore for unconventional resources in the Sirte Basin. In Tunisia, which has an estimated 18trn cu ft of shale gas, Shell is discussing a potential exploration and production contract. Any gas produced would be sold in the domestic market, though no memorandum of understanding has yet been signed.”

‘No alternative’ but to develop shale gas

This is from a November report in Agence France-Presse:

“Algeria, the world’s fourth-largest gas exporter, has decided to develop its shale gas potential as well … . Officials say the country’s shale gas reserves are 17 trillion cubic metres, or around four times greater than its current known gas reserves.

“Algeria may be the world’s eighth-largest natural gas producer in 2011, according to the BP Statistical Review of Energy, but domestic consumption is surging. Official forecasts say that, from 2019, local demand will eat up all the country’s production.

“At present, 50 years after it gained independence, the country remains almost totally dependent on hydrocarbons, which account for 90% of its exports.

“So as long as it fails to diversify its export base, it has no alternative than to develop shale gas, an unconventional fossil fuel, to secure its energy future, experts say.

“A new hydrocarbons bill, to be introduced in parliament in the coming weeks, encourages the exploration of unconventional gas and oil resources.”

Cheap energy? Bah, humbug

This is the new world we live in. But is it the world that California lawmakers and green cultists live in? Nope. So unless Gov. Jerry Brown finally lives up to his self-hype as the smartest man in the Golden State, look for manufacturing jobs to disappear — and that’s just for starters.

There are few things more important to economic competitiveness that the cost of energy. Between AB 32 and a moratorium on fracking, state elected officials could hardly do more to damage the state’s economy.

But, hey, what do they care? They’ve got jobs.

Fracking watch: Previous posts

No. 1: Germany

No. 2: China

No. 3: Russia

No. 4: Saudi Arabia

No. 5: Brazil

No. 6: Canada

No. 7: Argentina

No. 8: Mexico

No. 9: South Africa

No. 10: Poland

By Chris Reed

Last week, the state Legislature took a first step toward blocking fracking in California. An Assembly committee passed three anti-fracking measuers. The first coverage of the Assembly votes by the Ventura County Star did not note that the Obama administration’s first secretary of energy and his replacement consider fracking just another heavy industry, or that the president used fracking’s success in triggering a natural gas boom as a 2012 campaign applause line.

But what’s new? The California media using the preferred narrative of the Sierra Club on environmental issues is the norm. It wasn’t until this year, for example, that the Los Angeles Times acknowledged how risky AB 32 is for the state’s economy.

To counter this pathetic groupthink, since April 27, I’ve blogged every morning about the nations around the world that are embracing hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in oil and natural gas exploration on economic competitiveness grounds. So far I’ve covered Germany, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Canada, Argentina, Mexico and South Africa. Now it’s Poland’s turn. What’s my point? As I’ve written here before, it’s that 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.

Fracking sanity chapter No. 10: Poland

The fracking debate in Poland has taken odd twists not seen in the nine other nations I’ve written about. Here’s where it stood in fall 2011, per the London Independent:

“At an economic forum in Poland … the hottest topic … was of the potential for shale gas, a resource that has quietly altered the balance of energy provision in the United States and helped bring prices there down by a fifth in the past five years.

“Initial surveys indicate Poland has enormous reserves of shale gas. One from the US Department of Energy, suggestsPoland could have as much as 5.3 trillion cubic metres — equivalent to 300 years’ domestic consumption.

“But drilling for shale gas is controversial, especially among environmentalists. Although the technique — which involves extracting the gas by blasting the shale rock layers with high pressure sand, water and chemicals – has been known for a century, it is only in the past decade that it has become economically and technologically viable. But many fear that such “fracking” causes subsidence and contaminates ground water, and it has been banned in France, Switzerland and some US states …

“The Green movement also fears that new, and exploitable, supplies of gas could reduce prices to the point where investment in alternative energy sources, such as wind and wave power does not make economic sense.”

Backing fracking as a ‘national mission’

Wow. The London Independent makes a point that the California media pretend isn’t true or relevant. All hail the Independent. Back to its 2011 Poland coverage:

“In Poland … exploitation of shale gas is well on the way to becoming something of a national mission. Poland’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, has described shale gas as his country’s’great chance’ to turn Poland from an energy importer to a major exporter within a generation. And the subtext for Warsaw is that shale gas could not only make Poland into an exporter, but also end its age-old energy dependence on Russia.”

So how has this angle driven the politics of fracking in Poland? To this result, which may seem absurd to any American but maybe not to Poles with a sense of history, especially those aware of rumors that Russia is behind anti-fracking campaigns much as the Soviet Union was the muscle behind the nuclear freeze movement of the early 1980s. This is from an April account in priceofoil.org:

“The Polish government is proposing new [fracking] legislation which campaigners argue would ‘effectively eliminate the possibility of organised opposition.’ This is happening in a country where campaigners say they are already operating in a ‘climate of fear’.

“Under new laws being proposed, groups will only be able to participate in the legal debate over fracking if they have been in existence for over 12 months.

“According to an article in Natural Gas Europe: ‘This will mean that community groups and organisations which have only just formed” in response to the government’s new fracking plans ‘will be unable to participate in decision making processes that directly affect them.'”

Now this, of course, is awfully sketchy. But Russia does have a huge interest in maintaining the status quo — and a history of duplicity.

In California, of course, the choice about whether to pursue fracking is much more straightforward. At least in theory. One would think the Obama administration’s acceptance would be a key factor in this debate. One would think.

Fracking watch: Previous posts

No. 1: Germany

No. 2: China

No. 3: Russia

No. 4: Saudi Arabia

No. 5: Brazil

No. 6: Canada

No. 7: Argentina

No. 8: Mexico

No. 9: South Africa

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.

Fracking watch: Previous posts

No. 1: Germany

No. 2: China

No. 3: Russia

No. 4: Saudi Arabia

No. 5: Brazil

No. 6: Canada

No. 7: Argentina