Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: apparently nein, Bad Nigel, Bakken, Christian Parenti, Colorado Springs Gazette, energy production, fracking is new technology, fracking is old technology, fraulein, icepick, limits to growth, Nigel Somebody, oil production propaganda, peak oil, propaganda, shale formations, stabbing one's eyes out, Thatcher
All on the same page.
This bit by Christian Parenti in The Nation is an example of lefty journalists carrying water for the oil and gas lobby, unknowingly or not, by repeating the false narrative that fracking is new technology:
As the economists say, demand calls forth supply. Just look at all the new shale gas. The United States has gone from having a twenty-year supply of known reserves to a 100-year supply, thanks to the new technology of hydraulic fracturing used to get at both gas and oil. Whatever one wants to say against the practice of fracking (and, for the record, I believe it is dangerous and so I’m against it), it has opened up huge new fossil fuel reserves and thus pushed the notion of “peak oil” further into the future. (The real problem is not too little oil, but too much oil and the pollution it causes.) In other words, technology and innovation continue to transcend the limits of supply.
Parenti is depressingly incorrect on a fundamental level. Fracking hasn’t “pushed the notion of ‘peak oil’ further into the future.” Peak Oil has dragged fracking into the present. I do agree about fracking being environmentally dangerous, but Parenti needs to spend more time researching his subject. Like five minutes more.
via http://www.thenation.com/article/171610/limits-growth-book-launched-movement#
Even anti-fracking activists in anti-fracking pieces blindly repeat the industry’s PR that fracking and horizontal drilling are new technology. Do some research kids! It’s good! From Truth-out.org:
Advanced fracking technology has allowed gas drillers to uncover previously unavailable gas reserves from deep underground shale formations. The new technology, known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, has quickly industrialized rural communities in states across the US and become one of America’s most high profile environmental controversies.
I mean, that writer really sounds like he knows what he’s talking about with that string of words there, does he not?
Local news outlets always get it wrong. That’s their job. If they don’t, it signals something really major is about to happen, like the water getting sucked out to sea before the tsunami hits.
New technology has allowed drillers to reach oil for the first time that’s been trapped under the Kansas soil for millions of years. Horizontal fracking drills a diagonal path through the rock, releasing it with a combination of chemicals, water, and sand.
I enjoy that part — where ‘horizontal fracking drills a diagonal path…” Icepick, eyes. Stab, stab, stab.
Of course the Colorado Springs Gazette opinion writers got it terribly wrong. They should call that paper Everything In Here Is Wrong. Gazette. But You Love It Gazette:
New technology, fracking, makes the area a promising source of natural gas and oil that our country needs if we are to free ourselves from foreign fuel.
via http://www.gazette.com/articles/oil-148424-council-gas.html#ixzz2Fq8T83ZN
No surprises there. But the Germans?
Germans — wrong:
Thanks to a new technology called fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, shale buried deep underground and hard to reach can now be extracted in a more lucrative way.
via Deutche Welle: http://www.dw.de/whats-behind-the-natural-gas-boom-in-the-us/a-16459631
You’d think the German reporters would be more precise or something, but apparently nein.
The Brits have been deciding if they want to “take part in the fracking revolution,” or not, as if the country’s notable lack of shale formations were a minor technicality.
Former British Secretary of State for Energy from the Thatcher years Nigel Somebody got it all hilariously wrong in his recent wildly incoherent pro-frack screed in the Daily Mail:
Until recently, the cost of extracting the gas has been prohibitive.
He got that part mostly right.
But the combination of two innovative technologies — horizontal drilling and fracking to release the natural resources — has changed all that.
No Nigel. Bad Nigel.
Fracking is also “new technology” over at Reuters, big time:
The Bakken shale formation and its bounty of oil and gas is a proving ground for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” as the new technology loosens more than 150 million barrels a year out of the ground in Montana and neighboring North Dakota alone.
via http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/14/usa-montana-schweitzer-idUSL1E8NDII420121214
To review, fracking is NEW. new new new. New technology, that has unlocked previously unreachable reserves of oil and gas.
Are we all on the same page now?
Related posts: Fracking is old technology, Chris Martenson on the fracking narrative
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