Administration Stacks Panel With Big Oil and Gas

[babsbunny]

http://www.ewg.org/release/administration-stacks-panel-big-oil-and-gas

CONTACT: EWG Public Affairs, 202-667-6982; [e-mail]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 10, 2011

The Obama administration panel named May 5 to study hydraulic fracturing, a natural gas drilling technique that injects thousands of gallons of chemical-laced water into the ground, is dominated by oil and gas industry professionals.

Notably, the panel does not include citizens from communities concerned about the damage to health, water and private property posed by the surge in natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

“An industry insider like John Deutch is completely unacceptable to lead this panel,” Environmental Working Group Senior Counsel Dusty Horwitt said. “It looks as if the Obama Administration has already reached the conclusion that fracking is safe.”

Fracking involves injecting a mix of water, sand and chemicals into a well under high pressure in order to fracture underground rock formations and unlock trapped gas and oil. The technology has been linked to water contamination, air pollution, release of methane and deteriorating health in communities near drilling sites.

[DFab420]

1. In actuality it seems STACKED with authors, professors, engineers, all who have first hand knowledge

of the Oil and Gas procedures

Panel chair John Deutch, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, now on the board of Cheniere Energy, Inc., a Houston-based liquified natural gas company that, according to Forbes Magazine online, paid Deutch about $882,000 from 2006 through 2009. During a stint on the board of Schlumberger Ltd., one of the world’s three largest hydraulic fracturing companies, Deutch received about $563,000 in 2006 and 2007, according to Forbes.

Stephen Holditch head of the petroleum engineering department at Texas A&M University and a leader in the field of hydraulic fracturing designs, first at Shell Oil, later as head of his own firm, acquired by Schlumberger in 1997. Today, he is engineering committee chairman at Matador Resources, a Dallas oil and gas exploration company.

Mark Zoback, a geophysics professor at Stanford and senior advisor to Baker Hughes, Inc., a Houston-based oilfield services company engaged in hydraulic fracturing. Zoback is chair of GeoMechanics International, a consulting firm that advises on various oil and gas drilling problems and that was acquired by Baker Hughes in 2008.

Kathleen McGinty, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the Clinton administration and a former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, now senior vice president of Weston Solutions, Inc., which consults for the oil and gas industry, including leading natural gas driller Chesapeake Energy, and a director of NRG Energy, a Princeton, N.J., wholesale power generation company whose assets include more than two dozen natural gas companies.

Susan Tierney, assistant secretary of the Energy department under President Clinton, now managing principal of Analysis Group, which consults for utilities that use natural gas and for the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, the natural gas pipeline industry association.

Daniel Yergin Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Prize, a 1991 book about the oil industry, and co-founder, chairman and executive vice president of IHS CERA, originally called Cambridge Energy Research Associates, acquired in 2004 by IHS, an international consulting firm whose clients include the oil, natural gas, coal, power and clean energy communities.

Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund, a New York-based nonprofit that focuses on environmental issues.


Although I do agree with this point:

EWG urges the administration to replace John Deutch as chairman of the panel with a neutral expert without direct financial ties to the industry being investigated.

[jwirr]

3. Are any of these people anti-fracking? Their credentials look pretty

pro-gas.

[Azathoth]

5. I would hope none of them are pro-fracking OR anti-fracking

Putting an activst or true-believer on an investigative panel defeats the entire purpose.

With that said, I can't imagine that the president of the Environmental Defense Fund is wildly enthusiastic about fracking.

[boppers]

6. I think they should have gone with veterinarians instead, or maybe podiatrists.

That way, there wouldn't be all these "expert opinions" on the topic.

[Enrique]

4. the oil companies are full of fine geologists

and "The Prize" was an excellent book, I loved it, though I knew it was written by an oil company guy.

The point is not that these people are uneducated, or bad in any way. The point is that they work for the oil companies.

[TheKentuckian]

11. This is crucial to get. Tony Heyward is a fucking geologist. Expert does not mean objective.

One just has a hope that it is implied but a scientist can be a shilling water carrier like the best PR folks.

The absolute refusal by some folks on the left to to follow and/or keep their my mind on the money is appalling.
If it isn't social issues then some couldn't be bothered, including civil liberties.

[Honeycombe8]

12. What's disturbing about that list of people is that it seems they all have an interest....

they all have an interest in the outcome, don't they?

One is a fracturing machine designer. Another is involved in a firm that is involved in actually USING natural gas that is obtained via fracturing and other procedures. Others earn their living by consulting for or being employed by companies that have an interest in the outcome.

I can see that the people have expertise in this area, and you'd want people with that expertise on the panel, or advisors to the panel. But for all or most of the panel members, and its chair, be persons who have an interest in the outcome?

That concerns me. Maybe not all is what it seems. I'm going to read up on this. I'm in Dallas, TX, and I know there is some controversy over natural gas drilling in a suburb north of here going on.

[nosmokes]

2. I'm shocked,shocked,I tell you.n/t

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[boppers]

9. "Debt commission stacked against SS".

SSDD.

[Armstead]

10. I looked at post #1.....With one exception, they all have ties to the industry

One can be an expert and still have a conscious or unconscious bias towards a practice.

It's kind of like health care "reform." They brought a lot of experts into the process, but advocates of actual reforms like single-payer universal coverage, were shut out from the start.

[Dark]

8. Talk about feeling bloated...

nt

[L0oniX]

13. John Douche. Anyone who thinks and says that fracking is safe is a fucking sociopath.

Watch "GasLand" ...on Netflix.