T. Boone Pickens

Today, President Barack Obama announced his administration's “Climate Action Plan” for cutting carbon pollution in his second term in the Oval Office at Georgetown University and unfortunately, it's a full-throttle endorsement of every aspect of fracking and the global shale gas market.

Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is the toxic horizontal drilling process via which gas is obtained from shale rock basins around the world, and touting its expanded use flies in the face of any legitimate plan to tackle climate change or create a healthy future for children. 

Here is what President Obama said today at Georgetown about natural gas and fracking:
 
Now even as we're producing more domestic oil, we're also burning more clean-burning natural gas than any country on earth. And again, sometimes there are disputes about natural gas, but we should strengthen our position as the top natural gas producer because in the medium-term at least, it can provide not only safe cheap power, but it can only help reduce our carbon emissions.

Federally-supported technology has helped our businesses drill more effectively and extract more gas. And now we'll keep working with the industry to keep making drilling cleaner and safer, make sure that we're not seeing methane emissions, and to put people to work, modernizing our modern infrastructure so that we can power more homes and businesses with cleaner energy. The bottom line is natural gas is creating jobs, it's lowering many familes' heat and power bills and it's the transition fuel that can power our economy with less carbon pollution, even as our businesses work to develop and then deploy more of the even cleaner technology for the energy economy of the future.

Today, The New York Times ran an investigative piece uncovering a thick, multi-layered corruption scene, honing in on one man: U.S. Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK). Boren, many will recall, is one of the original co-sponsors of H.R. 1380, the NAT GAS Act, also known as the Pickens Plan, which would given tax credits to natural gas vehicles - the bigger the vehicle the more tax credits recieved. 

As I have covered on numerous occasions, the NAT GAS Act was written by and for the trio of energy magnate T. Boone Pickens; Pickens' long-time business partner and President and CEO of Clean Energy Fuels Corp., Andrew Littlefair; and Chesapeake Energy's CEO Aubrey McClendon. I coined the three a “self-enriching trifecta.” 

Boren, as revealed by the Times, has served for years as a useful pawn for the unconventional gas industry insiders, or what the Occupy movement has rightfully coined the “one-percent.”

“As Gas Riches Remake Plains, Lawmaker Shares in Bounty,” the NYT article written by Eric Lipton, reveals many important ties between Boren and the gas industry which he is dutifully serving as a “public servant.”

On Thursday, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures held a hearing on Energy Tax Policy and Tax Reform.

Three separate panels were held within the hearing itself: one on green energy credits included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, another examining different view points on the proper role of the tax code in promoting U.S. energy policies, and the third on House Resolution 1380, the NAT GAS (New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions) Act.

As stated in an earlier article, “The bill is 24-pages long and rewards [natural gas vehicles] with tax [subsidies] to help 'drive' consumption. The bigger the vehicle, the more tax credits given.” The bill's main purpose is to build up a massive fueling and vehicle infrastructure for the natural gas industry, which currently does not exist in the United States.

The NAT GAS bill was written by and for natural gas insiders, chief among them energy magnate T. Boone Pickens, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon and Clean Energy Fuels CEO Andrew Littlefair – referred to in an earlier post as the “self-enriching trifecta.” The bill currently possesses 183 bipartisan co-sponsors and until finally getting a hearing Friday, had sat in the Congressional coffers since early April.

Yesterday, I published an article for the Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch titled, “MSNBC’s (GE’s) Dylan Ratigan Show ‘Firewater?’ Series: Natural Gas Industry-Media Complex Exposed.”

Among other things, the article lays out the fundamental flaw with NBC’s coverage of anything pertaining to methane gas drilling–they are a “player in that game,” to put it bluntly, with a direct financial interest in the project occurring.

The article then proceeds to discuss, based on that troubling journalistic premise, the “Firewater?” series that took place on the Dylan Ratigan Show from Wed. June 8 through Fri., June 10, revealing all the ways that overarching premise flawed what was pitched as “in-depth coverage,” but in reality, served as a three-day advertising campaign for General Electric and the methane gas industry (an industry GE is a part of).