TELL PRESIDENT OBAMA DON’T SHIP
FRACKED GAS TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES!

It appears that the Obama administration is about to clear the way for gas corporations to export gas to countries such as Japan, India, and China without first conducting an environment review. If this happens, every American will be hurt.

Thousands are likely to have their property seized by eminent domain so the industry can build pipelines, compressor stations, and export terminals. Millions will be forced to cope with the environmental and health problems that are the inevitable consequences of shale gas extraction. American manufacturers will be hurt by rising energy costs. Consumers will pay higher utility bills and more money for products made in America.

Why should ordinary Americans be forced to pay this price just so a handful of gas corporations can make a killing—and so other countries can fuel their economies with cheap gas fracked in America?

Read more: The Case Against Exports

PRO FRACKER TAKES OVER DOE

Although Ernest Moniz is routinely described as an MIT professor, the truth is, he’s also a “friend of fracked gas”—and not a particularly honest one at that. In 2011, he chaired a study group that released a report touting the benefits of natural gas but failed to disclose that he’d been paid over $300,000 for serving on the board of a consulting firm with close ties to the gas industry.

And Moniz wasn’t the only one in that study group with a serious conflict of interest. Just before the report was released, his co-chair joined the board of Talisman Energy, and last year made over five million dollars (US) in just eleven months as executive vice-president. Wonder if this had anything to do with his statement that the environmental damage caused by fracking is “challenging but manageable?”

And there’s more. A third member of the group that produced the report owns more than a million dollars of stock in Cheniere, a company that wants to export fracked gas overseas.

Read more: Industry Partner or Industry Puppet? How MIT’s influential study of fracking was authored, funded, and released by oil and gas industry insiders, by the Public Accountability Initiative

A WIN IN SANFORD

Last fall, many fair-minded people on both sides of the fracking debate were shocked when the Town of Sanford suddenly announced that residents would no longer be permitted to comment on fracking, or the town board’s pro-fracking agenda, at public meetings. In response, Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy partnered with local residents and NRDC to sue the board for violating the free speech rights of the people of Sanford.

We’re happy to report that last week the Town of Sanford agreed to rescind its “gag order,” and to establish new rules governing public participation in meetings.