Russia funding anti-energy left's anti-fracking effort?

Newsweek:

Recent intelligence reports show that Russia is interested in influencing more than just America's elections. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies have taken aim at undermining the U.S. energy industry, as well.

Buried within the U.S. intelligence community's report on Russian activities in the presidential election is clear evidence that the Kremlin is financing and choreographing anti-fracking propaganda in the United States. By targeting fracking, Putin hopes to increase oil and gas prices, destabilize the U.S. economy and threaten America's energy independence.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a decades-old drilling technique in which water and sand is pumped through rock at a high pressure to release previously unreachable deposits of oil and natural gas.

Thanks to new technologies which are making the process more efficient and environmentally friendly, fracking now supports 4.3 million jobs and generates about half a trillion dollars in economic benefit to the United States every year. Additionally, natural gas prices have dropped in half thanks to the corresponding boost in supply, saving American families an average of $200 a year.

Fracking is the major reason why the United States is on pace to become completely energy independent by 2020. America relies on fracking to produce more than 1.5 billion barrels of oil a year -- over half of the total U.S. oil output.

Russia sees all this as a threat.

The Russian government, which relies heavily on energy exports for revenues, is concerned "about the impact of fracking and U.S. natural gas production on the global energy market," according to the intelligence report. Increased U.S. gas exports, the report continues, creates "potential challenges" for the profitability of Gazprom, Russia's state-owned oil and gas monopoly.

In response to America's growing fracking industry, RT, Russia's government-funded international media outlet, aired air a slew of dubious attacks against fracking.

Over just seven months in 2015, RT managed to ram 62 different anti-fracking television stories and news reports down viewers' throats. That doesn't even include an hour-long, largely discredited anti-fracking documentary that airs regularly on RT in America and around the world.
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Fracking is a strategic threat to Russia's ability to coerce Europe to accept its policies are face a cut off of gas.  With American LNG gas as a competitor, Russia no longer has that stick.   The anti-energy left in the US is playing into Russia's hand and that of OPEC.

Besides the geopolitical problem posed by the efforts of the anti-energy left, they have no viable alternative to many of the uses of natural gas for petrochemical products and even medicine.  These people are a danger to this country and themselves.