"Obama’s stance on natural gas carries risks" by Christopher Rowland | Globe Staff, September 27, 2012
LONGMONT, Colo. — President Obama’s plan to boost domestic drilling for natural gas carries the promise of new jobs and provides a convenient pivot away from his lurching bid to transform America’s energy economy with wind and solar power.
As someone once said, leave me alone don't want your promises no more.
Yet in pockets of the nation, including the communities around Colorado’s pristine mountains, such a shift carries a political price. The spike in fossil fuel production in this crucial swing state has generated a backlash, as neighborhood activists and environmentalists decry the key means of producing the energy: hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, of rock deep below ground, releasing reserves of natural gas or oil.
Wait until you see why. Of course, the empire's thirst for energy must be slaked at all costs -- with certain $pecial intere$t$ to benefit as alway$.
Obama’s move also bears economic uncertainties. His promise at this month’s Democratic convention to create 600,000 natural-gas-related jobs in the next decade is running headlong into a new reality: Overproduction of natural gas has stifled new drilling, and thus hiring.
The result is the president risks alienating a component of his base, while possibly overselling the potential for new jobs.
The argument, of course, is where else they gonna go? As for me, I'm voting Nader again. Given the level of corporate control over this government, if there was ever a time for a guy to be president it's his.
In his pursuit of natural gas production, Obama is banking on an industry that has provided an economic bright spot and bolstered the possibility of greater energy self-sufficiency....
Yeah, it's all good.
Fracking generates more than employment opportunities and profits, however. It creates gushers of local controversy. The process requires huge volumes of pressurized, chemical-laden water to break apart rock. Not only does it consume scarce water resources, a particular concern in the West, but it poses a threat of contamination if the fracking water is spilled or migrates into aquifers. The industry insists such risks are nearly nonexistent.
That is a fancy way of saying your DRINKING and BATHING WATER may be TAINTED and TOXIC.
In the western part of Colorado, preservationists worry that scenic federal lands will be threatened by energy companies eager to take advantage of fracking technologies. On the east side of the Rockies, north of Denver, where there are more voters, entire suburban communities are rising against what they consider a potentially hazardous industrial activity in their backyards. The water used in fracking often contains chemicals known to cause cancer and other human health problems.
Hey, ANYTHING for a BUCK, right?
“We’re disappointed in President Obama. He led us to believe that he would look out for us in this region, and he hasn’t really delivered,’’ said Kaye Fissinger, a self-described progressive and part of a citizens group in suburban Longmont that has forced an antifracking amendment onto the local ballot in November.
You can get at the end of a very long line after the last four years.
Environmentalists have been especially dismayed that Obama’s Department of the Interior, in new fracking regulations that apply to leases on federal lands, required drillers to publicly reveal the contents of fracking fluid only after drilling operations have taken place, not before.
Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat and key western ally of the president, said in an interview that Obama’s new stance has thrust the president more firmly into the state’s longstanding debates, where Colorado’s identity as a home to scenic wilderness conflicts with its traditions of mining and economic booms.
“In some ways he has not gone far enough to satisfy the oil and gas industry, and in some ways he has alienated some of his strongest supporters,’’ said Hickenlooper. “In Colorado, it’s harder and harder to find places where you don’t encounter some level of ‘not in my backyard.’ ’’
Maybe you would like it outside your taxpayer-funded government mansion. Or maybe you would like a nuke reactor. Whatever.
Hickenlooper, a former energy industry geologist who supports fracking, has ordered state regulators to sue the City of Longmont over a set of strict drilling regulations the city adopted, saying such a move will foster a hodgepodge of local rules and chaos if other communities follow.
The governor is threatening to sue again if the community passes its ban on fracking in November.
That's the kind of abuse I'm told Republicans exercise. Just goes to show you both parties serve the $ame inter$t$.
Hickenlooper maintained that the relatively low risks of fracking are
worth the goals of energy self-sufficiency and cleaner air that will
come with greater natural gas production.
He also acknowledged that the nation needs to encourage greater
demand for natural gas, through the development of more natural-gas
burning power plants and more automobiles that run on the
cleaner-burning fuel.
That’s because economic forces appear to be at least temporarily
working against Obama’s vision. Plentiful supplies of natural gas have
flooded the market and lowered prices, which significantly dampened
interest in gas exploration in the last two years.
The continued recovery in drilling is now being led by fracking for oil, not natural gas, according to federal government data....
Forget all the guilt-tripping fart mist as selling point then.
During his last campaign, Obama promised to create 5 million jobs in “green energy’’ fields over 10 years.
The actual number generated by such energy producers as wind and
solar has been much lower. Wind energy companies have recently been
shedding jobs as federal tax credits begin to expire and China floods
the US market with subsidized components.
Yeah, yeah, blame it on the Chinese (sigh).
The economic realities facing Obama and the solar and wind advocates
he courted in 2008 could not be more starkly illustrated than along an
interstate frontage road in the Front Range region of Colorado. A solar
panel manufacturing facility owned by Abound Solar sits idle, bankrupt,
despite the $400 million green-energy loan guarantee Abound secured
through Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus package.
See: Solar $hortout$
Even as the solar factory awaited a trustee’s auction, nearby fields were dotted with dozens of fracking wells.
The streets of Fort Lupton in Weld County crawl with rigs, water
tankers, and trucks bearing pipes and chemicals. Fracking wells dot lots
next to schools, golf courses, churches, and tracts of suburban homes.
Plans are in the works to ring the banks of a reservoir with wells.
No, I'll pass on the glass of water, thanks.
A
number of drilling rigs are operated by locally owned businesses and
subcontractors who contend Obama’s support for their industry seems
late. Obama mentioned natural gas as an important source of energy in
2008 but did not give it the same emphasis he does now....
Certainly Obama’s support of natural gas production in his convention
speech was not quite the same as “drill, baby, drill,’’ the chant of
delegates at the 2008 Republican convention. But the change in emphasis
was clear. The move makes it easier for him to pivot away from such
embarrassments as Abound and Solyndra, the California solar panel
company that went bankrupt despite receiving a $500 million,
government-guaranteed loan under the stimulus package.
Related: Obama's Ro$e-Colored $ungla$$e$
Even if we had all the money wasted on the wars back it would still be going to the wrong places. System is broke, folks.
The new approach also could help protect him from accusations by
challenger Mitt Romney that he stifled domestic energy production.
Romney unveiled proposals in August to expand drilling in offshore sites
and federal lands and reduce regulations, while seeking to portray
Obama as hostile to new drilling....
No energy for campaigI simply have no more energy for the campaign, folks. God has spoken, and I am disgusted with the s***-fooley show from Democrats.
Obama counters that oil production increased 13 percent on federal
lands during the first three years of his presidency, while the
government offered for sale millions of acres of oil- and gas-rich
federal holdings. It says it has streamlined permitting on federal
property.
Nonetheless, energy companies poured three times more money into
Romney’s campaign coffers — $4.2 million, compared with $1.3 million for
Obama — as of Sept. 3, according to the Center for Responsive Politics,
a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that reports publicly released data.
Energy executives said the Interior Department rules unveiled in May impose too many requirements on drillers.
“I would like a reasonably balanced approach, which we are not getting from the Obama administration whatsoever,’’ said Kevin P. Kauffman, founder and chief executive of Denver-based KP Kauffman Co. Inc., an oil and gas production company. “It’s a war against us.’’
Ah, Kauffman covered in the slick of hyperbole!
--more--"
Globe never mentioned the WATER you can LIGHT on FIRE that seems to come with the fucking, 'er, fracking.
Related: Globe $chilling For Shale
What do you expect from a money paper?
Also see: New York suit to review fracking rebuffed
Yes, it's a sign all Americans understand no matter what language you speak.
