Austin Yack:
As Mitt Romney understood all too well, Vladimir Putin has long sought to interfere with domestic American politics. Years before Donald Trump came down that escalator and Hillary Clinton’s staff was tricked into giving up its e-mail passwords, Russia was pouring millions of dollars into anti-fracking campaigns across Europe and the U.S.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a drilling technique in which high-pressure liquids are blasted into rock, allowing for the extraction of oil and natural gas that was previously impossible to reach. The technology is the main reason that the U.S. has moved toward energy independence in recent years, and it could potentially allow Europe to break its dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. Which, naturally, makes it a threat to the Kremlin’s interests.
In 2012, Bulgaria issued a shale-gas license to Chevron. Immediately, activists pounced, peddling hyperbolic warnings that fracking pollutes drinking water. (In reality, the practice carries a minimal risk of groundwater pollution when done properly.) Protests erupted, and the Bulgarian government caved, banning fracking entirely. Gazprom, Russia’s state-run energy company, proceeded to give the Bulgarian government a 20 percent discount for signing a ten-year contract for the provision of natural gas.
One year later, Romania fell victim to a similar campaign, believed to be spearheaded by Putin. The Pungesti commune, in the northwest, “became a magnet for activists from across the country opposed to hydraulic fracturing,” the New York Times reported. Russia “is playing a dirty game” to “keep this energy dependence,” concluded Iulian Iancu, the chairman of the Romanian Parliament’s industry committee.
And why wouldn’t it? European countries that are dependent on Russian oil and natural gas — especially those in the east — help keep Russia’s economy, and thus Putin’s regime, afloat. Gazprom supplies 30 percent of the European Union’s natural gas, which means that the Kremlin has the power to turn off much of Europe’s energy supply at any time. In fact, it already did so once, during the coldest months of 2009.
In 2014, after multiple European countries banned fracking following protests, NATO secretary general Fogh Anders Rasmussen warned that “Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations — environmental organizations working against shale gas — to maintain dependence on imported Russian gas.”
We know that Rasmussen’s warnings were heard across the Atlantic, because even Hillary Clinton echoed them. At a private speaking event in 2016, she recalled that during her time in the State Department:
We were up against phony environmental groups, and I’m a big environmentalist, but these were funded by the Russians to stand up against any effort, “Oh that pipeline, that fracking, that whatever will be a problem for you,” and a lot of that money supporting that effort was coming from Russia.
Nothing has changed since Clinton was in office. While investigating Russian meddling in the November presidential election these past few months, the U.S. intelligence community found that Russia is concerned “about the impact of fracking and U.S. natural gas production on the global energy market” and Gazprom’s “potential challenges” if other countries begin fracking.
Obama colluded with the Russians, to the extent he could, to prevent fracking on FEDERAL lands in the USA.
What Obama and Russia could NOT do was prevent fracking on private land.
Using that technique on private land the USA became one of the biggest oil producers on earth!
Naturally, Obama took the credit.
Under President Trump Europe will have an alternate option to buy oil and gas from the US OR Russia, whichever each country prefers.
Any guess what would have happened under a Pres Hillary?
(Her public position was expressed at the Mr 2016 debate: CLINTON: #1, I don’t support it when any locality or any state is against it. #2, I don’t support it when the release of methane or contamination of water is present. I don’t support it, #3, unless we can require that anybody who fracks has to tell us exactly what chemicals they are using. So by the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places where fracking will continue to take place. And I think that’s the best approach, because right now, there places where fracking is going on that are not sufficiently regulated. So first, we’ve got to regulate everything that is currently underway, and we have to have a system in place that prevents further fracking unless conditions like the ones that I just mentioned are met. )
The russians rubbing elbows with the Greens i im nit at all surprised since many midddle east oil tycoons financed Matt Damons crappy anti0fracking movie PROMISED LAND and BP used to be called British Petrolium and changed it to beyon Petru,ium around the time of the gulf oil disaster and the facts that Grepeace ships(Arctic Sunrise and Rainbow Warrior II)still use fossil fuel and the NRDC can always count on useful idiots like DiCaprio to do ads or junk mail for them and the Sierra Club can always count on Robert Redford to do ads for them just like the Wilderness Society and the facts that back in the 1990’s when Greenpeace was carrying on about dolphins and Dolphin Safe Tuna they left a over dozen oil drums for of toxic waste on the docks of San Pedro California
Yet we are to believe Putin wanted Trump in office. Trump would threaten Russia’s only source of income while Hillary would assist Russia in using natural gas supplies as a weapon and would sell any national asset as long as she gets to wet her beak.
One has to suspend reality to believe such crap.