How Hillary Clinton's State Department sold fracking to the world A trove of secret documents

[Ichingcarpenter]

A trove of secret documents details the US government’s global push for shale gas


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.


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

[Scuba]

1. A cynic might wonder whether the US regulates big oil or the other way around.

[tularetom]

2. Like I needed another reason to oppose her

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that Hillary Clinton was in bed with oil companies.

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. I think Chevron is on the top of my list

for evil oil companies......

They pay no taxes and if anyone thinks they are
'Amerikan' is just kidding themselves they are evil world wide entities and don't give a fuck about the planet.

fracking is just evil

[nationalize the fed]

5. Lookie what logo is showing during the speech wherin

Assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland admits that the US spent FIVE BILLION DOLLARS on Ukraine over the past _ years.

"Frack Baby Frack!!!!"

It was fracking hilarious making fun of Palin for "Drill Baby Drill" but unless I've got fracking wrong, fracking is all about drilling.

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. yep, saw that way back

Ukarine were pawns in the global game and chevron was pulling some of the strings in our government and theirs.

Thank goodness for released secret documents and whistleblowers that exposes this game of death against the planet and humans.

[Feral Child]

3. I will be most displeased

if she gets the nomination. There'll be a grimace on my face when I cast my vote for her.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Apparently the State Dept. is just an appendage of corporations

esp. energy interests, which is to say, Halliburton, etc.

The octopus has absorbed all of government, it appears.

[Ichingcarpenter]

8. yet the US government supports them

As do taxpayers with their generous tax subsidies.

16 Giant Corporations That Have Basically Stopped Paying Taxes -- While Also Cutting Jobs

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/16-giant-corporations-have-basically-stopped-paying-taxes

[postulater]

9. I can see my next yard sign now.

Vote Hillary - lesser of two evils!

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. the wikileaks monsanto state department§memos

A number of issues stand out in the report:

1 ) The cozy nature of the relationship between State Department officials and biotech companies. According to the report, "[o]ne strategy memo even included an 'advocacy toolkit' for diplomatic posts," and in Indonesia, in 2005, diplomats continued to lobby on behalf of Monsanto, the country's largest biotech firm -- with a total of 49 cables -- after the company paid a $1.5 million fine for bribing an Indonesian official "to relax or repeal an environmental rule governing the planting of GE crops." The same year, ambassadors to South Africa passed along information about job openings in the government's biotech regulatory agency to Pioneer and Monsanto, suggesting the companies "could advance 'qualified applicants' to fill the positions."

2 ) The questionable honesty of the State Department's messaging. For example, "[t]he State Department encouraged embassies to 'publicize that agricultural biotechnology can help address the food crisis," when evidence that it could was simply not there. In fact, a 2009 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists debunked the industry line that GE crops outperform conventional ones, and as herbicide-resistant weeds have become more common, GE crops yields have fallen. Besides, when it comes to hunger we know the problem has more to do with money than food, since we currently produce much more food than it would take to feed the entire world's population. Much of the world just can't afford it.

3 ) During those five years, the number of cables dealing with the promotion of biotechnology grew at a faster rate than overall cables. Politically, it makes sense that a nation with a major interest in GMOs specifically would ramp up efforts as the technology remained unpopular around the globe -- but as it remains controversial both stateside and abroad, it's hard not to wonder how much more these efforts have ramped up even further between 2009 and today.

But what really stands out in the cables quoted in the report is the length to which State Department officials were willing to go for American biotech companies. In a statement to Reuters, Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter said, "It really gets down to twisting the arms of countries and working to undermine local democratic movements that may be opposed to biotech crops, and pressuring foreign governments to also reduce the oversight of biotech crops." Some of the State Department's messages use military language -- here's one of the most egregious, with regard to the European Union's reluctance to weaken its stringent biotech rules:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-hatfield/new-analysis-of-wikileaks_b_3306842.html

[Nihil]

11. Thank you for an excellent - and very much needed - thread.

Add this one to her Keystone XL "work" and all of the other shit she's pulled
over the years for when the cheerleaders try to rewrite history (again).




> 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,

What? No snipers?