Shilling for Shale, Fronting for Fracking, What a Gas...Naturally

(graphic was featured on NPR's website)

As commenters have noted, Tom Gjelten and Peter Overby brought NPR ME listeners a three part commercial from their sponsor ANGA. It's worthwhile to take a look at the comments beneath each story's web link (Part I, Part II, and Part III) and click on "Most Recommended." Let's just say shale ain't the only thing getting drilled... For example, part II of the series had Gjelten claiming that most of the drilling and fracking is done by "mom and pop" operations. An NPR listener wrote

"Another poorly researched piece. The main companies working the Marcellus Shale in NE Pennsylvania include: Chesapeake (7,600 employees), Hess (13,500 employees), and of course Schlumberger (87,000 employees). Fortuna Energy is a subsidiary of Talisman (2,388 employees). These companies have global reach and oil as well as natural gas interests. Cabot (notorious for environmental violations and fracturing fluid chemical spills around Dimock, PA) has 560 employees - again, no 'mom and pop' operation."

On the infomercial sidebars that accompany the NPR stories you can see the following:

The perversely named American Clean Skies Foundation is a front organization for the same mom and pop Chesapeake Energy corporation mentioned by the listener [if in doubt, click on the "About US" tab on the "Clean Skies" page, and look at the chairman, Aubrey McClendon of Chesapeake Energy Corporation!] Oh, and that friendly sounding, Ground Water Council, is the organization of STATE ground water regulators, which are the very organizations that gas drillers want to deal with to get around federal environmental rules!

This gas series began without any critical reservations whatsoever, touting the shale gas reserves as a nearly limitless supply of clean energy, where the only concern is the economic feasibility of fracking it out of the shale rock. Given the firestorm of criticism evidenced in the comments section under each of the stories, NPR obviously tried to run some hasty last minute, "balancing" operations. They expanded the "series" page to include a May 27th piece more critical of fracking and tacked on a web article also. The final report of the series offers this sad little gassy seep of concern:

"Well, remember, Steve, from one our earlier pieces, to get gas out of shale rock you've got to fracture the rock. They do this by blasting water into it. The concern is that that might cause some contamination of drinking water supplies. There are chemicals that are used in that water."

Would have been nice to include some of those concerned stakeholders in this series, like real journalists do. Apparently that would have ruined the three-day, 20-plus minutes of drill baby drill hype that NPR wanted to frack us with.

Shell Game

(that's Inskeep on the half-shell and Odum blowing)

Inskeep takes on Marvin Odum, Shell Oil's president of operations in the Americas. Yeah, Inskeep was really tough on this guy - he asked him about a House committee investigation into Shell and Interior department improprieties (and the letter Odum received from Rep. Markey); he pointed out that wind (and solar energy) could provide all US energy needs if the commitment were made to the infrastructure needs; he brought up Shell's dismal ethical rankings on Covalence; he even brought up Shell's involvement in human rights abuses in Nigeria. Just kidding.

Really Inskeep had a cozy, comfortable (oily, odious) schmooze session with Odum. Inskeep is just so curious as to how the Shell's Angels are going to deal with rising demands for oil, and if more offshore drilling really will provide enough oil for our needs. If you ever wondered what Inskeep's moral vision of Corporatism is, he lays it out in this interview. He asks Odum,

"...but if you think of us as a leaky ship, let's say, I mean do you worry as a corporate executive, that you'll do some well-intentioned things and you'll have the right motivations, and you'll plug a few leaks in the ship...but in the end the ship is still sinking."

Why of course Shell Oil does "well-intentioned things" and has "the right motivations," after all they have the profits to prove it.

Coal and Corn

Coal

As a resident of Central Illinois, I guess I have to chime in on the "clean coal" FutureGen plant site awarded to Mattoon, IL about 45 minutes south of here. The story was reported on Tuesday's ATC. Melissa Block spoke to Matt Wald of the New York Times. It was a frustratingly 'pro-coal' report.

Wald said, "so you then end up with carbon dioxide, nicely separated, and more hydrogen...and then you have this nice, clean flow of carbon dioxide that you can dispose of....eventually, chemically is absorbed into the rock and never bothers us again."

Block, at least interjects "Theoretically?"

Wald then goes on to insist that "we're going to have to test this out." He ends his interview with sarcasm aimed at critics of "clean coal" saying, "the leading candidate for replacing fossil fuels right now is what I like to call WT, it all sounds better as an acronym, that's wishful thinking."

NPR should have had some spokespeople on from Greenpeace who could have offered some correctives to the myth of clean coal. There is a place for discussion of the pros and cons of carbon sequestering and coal, but all this "nice" "clean" sarcasm is really not helpful.

Corn

Today NPR talked with a Midwestern corn farmer (and ethanol investor) about the energy bill. Living in Central Illinois, one hears a lot about the glories of ethanol - but very little about the many downsides (this link is worth visiting just for the photo of Bush huffing ethanol!). NPR has done a somewhat better job on ethanol, as in this piece from about two years ago, but they will need to have a lot more about the health and environmental problems of ethanol specifically and corn in general which Michael Pollan writes and lectures about extensively.


I'd be happy to hear from readers who know more about these two subjects than I do.