Washington Times: Is Obama Setting NG Up for a Fall?

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It seems that MDN is not the only skeptic when it comes to President Obama’s election year conversion to supporting shale gas and fracking. An article in yesterday’s Washington Times asks the question, “Is the natural gas sector set up by Obama to be sabotaged?” Some industry observers believe the administration is publicly supporting fracking and drilling, while behind the scenes they are attempting to sabotage it:

“They’re trying to make it more difficult for the industry to survive while the president is standing in front of the country saying we’re going to create jobs through hydraulic fracturing,” said Ken von Schaumburg, former deputy counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency during the Bush administration.

Mr. Obama “is talking the game, but you can’t support the industry and then have this aggressive rule-making process going on,” Mr. von Schaumburg said.*

While the President talks the talk, his EPA is ready to make it much harder to continue using fracking technology, and his supporters are talking of a total ban on fracking:

The agency [EPA] will this year release a widely anticipated study on hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the use of water, sand and chemical mixtures to crack underground rock and release huge quantities of gas. The practice is widely used in Pennsylvania, North Dakota and other states, and has helped revitalize small-town economies and led directly to the creation of thousands of jobs in recent years.

Many in the gas industry fear that the upcoming EPA study will call for harsh new regulations on the process, and many environmental groups – a key constituency for Mr. Obama during this year’s re-election bid – are publicly pushing the administration to outlaw fracking entirely.

“We can’t wait much longer for the clean energy revolution. We need to clean up a fossil fuel industry run amok, by ensuring … natural gas safeguards that go much further than what the president suggested,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement after the State of the Union address.*

The EPA has tried to tie fracking to chemical contamination of water supplies in Pavillion, Wyoming, even though the fracking done in Pavillion was not done in shale and even though the EPA’s so-called study has not been subject to any kind of review—yet. The EPA is now on a fishing expedition in Dimock, Pennsylvania to see if they can twist the data there to be their second case of chemical contamination of water supplies due to fracking—this one is in a shale drilling operation.

Bottom line: Obama’s actions (via his EPA) and his words, don’t match up.

*The Washington Times (Jan 29, 2012) – Natural gas sector set up by Obama to be sabotaged?

5 Comments

  1. Oh! That makes a lot of sense. Obama publicly supports gas development while  secretly  sabotaging it  to make himself look what… decisive? Get Real! 
     Using the Washington Times for analysis into Obama’s thinking is like  using Chavez of Venezuela
     to describe the virtues of capitalism.

  2. i want the development of shale gas more than many, but i believe the only way to go forward is to allow EPA to do wider testing in demock and hopefully prove that the water quality wasnt the greatest there to start with.

  3. Don’t kid yourself. Obama is the worst thing the oil and gas industry has ever seen. Obama has also let several billion of those “bailout” dollars go to boost other oil production in other countries. How about the pipeline his administration stopped in its tracks? I would much rather trade goods with our neighboring canada than give them the cold shoulder and in turn have them sell their oil to the chinese which is what is in the works right now. It sure seems to me that he wants natural gas to fail. In fact it seems most of the time he wants America to fail.

  4. Oilman,
     After Obama is reelected he  most likely would  have quietly approved the Keystone pipeline against the strong opposition of the base of his party who believe the oil sands of Canada are the most climatically  damaging source of oil on the planet .They are. The Republicans hoped to damage Obama by forcing him to make a no win decision by Feb. He did. That oil was going to the Gulf to be refined or sold as crude everywhere.Oil is fungible . Obama ,you remember , opened areas of the Gulf in 2010 and was immediately rewarded with the BP oil spill.Recently, before the SOTUS , more permits had been issued for deep water.
      President Obama is trying to lead the country out of the fossil fuel era  fully realizing that we will be dependent on oil, gas, and coal for decades to come. Natural gas development  is a blessing he supports because it creates job, reduces dependence on foreign oil and is cleaner than other fossil fuels.He is also going to insist that gas development be done in an environmentally responsible way Tell me; do you think this furor over fracking would be going on today if Cabot Oil and a few others had been responsible? He also must consider the long term effects of every decision on climate change; which  Pentagon studies  have said is a major threat  to our national security. I bet you never heard that on fox news.                                                                                                 
      If you are looking for the true enemy of natural gas development, look at the Koch brothers and others of their ilk who have done everything they can to prevent  Congress from supporting the Pickens Plan to incentivise natural gas usage. They benefit from low natural gas prices.
      Don’t try to me that Obama wants  America to fail; you only lower yourself to the sheep [ dittoheads] that parrot back  the words of a very rich man that gets paid to preach hate.

  5. No you are very wrong. I was in the west when it was booming and Obama shut it down. I was in Texas when it was booming and obama shut it down. Now it looks as if I will have to go drill for oil for the communists to use because he chooses to shut down yet another project that will create untold thousands of jobs. I have never owned a pair of socks since the day I was born that the oilfield did not buy. I assure you I know what I am talking about. I get my facts straight from the horses mouth as my company has engineers in place in 90 countries around the globe that help with these projects. I don’t watch much TV at all and it sounds to me that you either dreamed that whole statement up or got the info from the yahoo newsroom. Saying that he would most likely do something is not getting it done and also not creating jobs. I HOPE he is out of a job later this year.