Fighting the fracking paranoia of anti energy left

Fuel Fix:
When a Texas landowner took his fear that a gas driller had poisoned his well to federal regulators, the company, Range Resources Corp., turned around and sued him for conspiring “to harm Range.”

In Pennsylvania, a state lawmaker who criticized the company was dubbed “completely unhinged” by a Range representative and had his fundraising e-mails to its executives leaked to the local newspaper.

Critics say the Fort Worth-based company, which pioneered the use of hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale, has taken a hard line with residents, local officials and activists. In one case it threatened a former EPA official with legal action; in another it stopped participating in town hearings to review its own applications to drill, because local officials were asking too many questions and taking too long.

“Range Resources is different from its peers in that it chooses to severely punish its critics,” said Calvin Tillman, the former mayor of Dish, Texas, and an activist who has been subpoenaed and issued legal warnings by Range. “Most companies avoid the perception of the big-bad-bully oil company, while Range Resources embraces it.”

The company counters that it enjoys a great working relationship with lease holders, residents and officials in the overwhelming majority of the 250 municipalities where it operates, but faces determined opponents in a few.
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There is much more.

I think Range's success in fighting the EPA's bogus claims against it has made opponents of fracking more determined to harm the company.  The paranoid opposition to fracking by the anti energy left seems to get worse with each failure to stop the process.  They have been able to get political support in New York which has prevented drilling, but in other states the process is being successfully used to safely produce oil and gas in quantities that is making this country less dependent on outside sources.

The anti energy left sees fracking as a serious problem with their campaign to push less efficient alternative energy and their carbon phobic agenda.   They had a two prong attack on carbon based energy.  They have been losing the fight on global warming/climate change as their computer model projections are shown to use invalid assumptions.  Their other rational was that the supply of oil and gas was shrinking and therefore we had to switch to alternatives.

That rationale has also been shown to be invalid as the shale revolution has made clear.  I think they target companies like Range because they are angry that it successfully fought off the bogus charges of the EPA.  You should never underestimate the vindictive nature of the anti energy left.  They seem to be on a PR offensive against Range and resent the fact that the company is fighting back.

They can't win on their original two lines of attack so they are trying to frighten people and make them think that fracking is scary.  That fight is not going well for them either.  The movies they have generated have been flops, and the Democrat Governor of Colorado is drinking fracking fluid to prove it is safe.  For the anti energy left all that is really scary.

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