How Hillary Clinton's State Department sold fracking to the world

[cali]

One icy morning in February 2012, Hillary Clinton’s plane touched down in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, which was just digging out from a fierce blizzard. Wrapped in a thick coat, the secretary of state descended the stairs to the snow-covered tarmac, where she and her aides piled into a motorcade bound for the presidential palace. That afternoon, they huddled with Bulgarian leaders, including prime minister Boyko Borissov, discussing everything from Syria’s bloody civil war to their joint search for loose nukes. But the focus of the talks was fracking. The previous year, Bulgaria had signed a five-year, $68m deal, granting US oil giant Chevron millions of acres in shale gas concessions. Bulgarians were outraged. Shortly before Clinton arrived, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets carrying placards that read “Stop fracking with our water” and “Chevron go home.” Bulgaria’s parliament responded by voting overwhelmingly for a fracking moratorium.

Clinton urged Bulgarian officials to give fracking another chance. According to Borissov, she agreed to help fly in the “best specialists on these new technologies to present the benefits to the Bulgarian people.” But resistance only grew. The following month in neighbouring Romania, thousands of people gathered to protest another Chevron fracking project, and Romania’s parliament began weighing its own shale gas moratorium. Again Clinton intervened, dispatching her special envoy for energy in Eurasia, Richard Morningstar, to push back against the fracking bans. The State Depart­ment’s lobbying effort culminated in late May 2012, when Morningstar held a series of meetings on fracking with top Bulgarian and Romanian officials. He also touted the technology in an interview on Bulgarian national radio, saying it could lead to a fivefold drop in the price of natural gas. A few weeks later, Romania’s parliament voted down its proposed fracking ban and Bulgaria’s eased its moratorium.

The episode sheds light on a crucial but little-known dimension of Clinton’s diplomatic legacy. Under her leadership, the State Department worked closely with energy companies to spread fracking around the globe—part of a broader push to fight climate change, boost global energy supply, and undercut the power of adversaries such as Russia that use their energy resources as a cudgel. But environmental groups fear that exporting fracking, which has been linked to drinking-water contamination and earthquakes at home, could wreak havoc in countries with scant environmental regulation. And according to interviews, diplomatic cables, and other documents obtained by Mother Jones, American officials—some with deep ties to industry—also helped US firms clinch potentially lucrative shale concessions overseas, raising troubling questions about whose interests the programme actually serves.


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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/10/how-hillary-clintons-state-department-sold-fracking-to-the-world

Yeah, Hillary, great friend to big oil is quite the environmentalist. She really cares about climate change.

[nationalize the fed]

1. Yeah but her "advisers" were special

[Katashi_itto]

2. Go Hillary!!!! I don't mind her as president

as long as she makes good and finally finishes the job turning the country into a dystopian wasteland.

I might even vote for her on that platform.

[cali]

3. more:

Hillary Clinton is likely to be more conservative on energy policy in 2016 than she was 8 years ago

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/09/04/hillarys-likely-2016-position-on-energy-slightly-to-the-right-of-her-positions-in-2008/

[NorthCarolina]

5. Unfortunately, as a politician in today's 'democracy' you go where the $cash$ is.

Big energy has deep pockets for those politicians willing to help their cause. Trading votes for gold, it's the *new* American way. Brought to you by the GOP and their DLC compadres.

[Laelth]

4. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[MisterP]

6. you don't understand the party's post-1994 functioning

nowadays it's enough to just say, repeatedly and loudly enough, that X is the greenest President ever and that excusing oil leaks, protecting them from suits, and giving them taxpayer money is just the best X could do; and if you do insist on spreading GOP lies to the effect that X ISN'T the biggest threat to Big Oil in all history, they have a special sandbox forum to kick you out of

this is all very specialist poli sci stuff so it's hard to discern at first glance!