Russian news: Ukraine: The West's Next Fracking Victim - Russia Insider

US interest in Ukraine’s energy resources, a subject that has gone almost unreported but which we have discussed previously, carries on unabated.

Last week Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s President, voiced hopes for cooperation with the US in shale gas development. And during her trip to Kiev, US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said the US would assist Ukraine in developing its energy sector.

The key problem however remains as before. For an oil and gas industry, having the main fields stuck in a war zone just about tops the list of worst-case scenarios.

The two biggest investors in Ukrainian energy remain Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron. Shell has a hydrocarbons production-sharing agreement with the Ukrainian government at the Yuzivska field, which lies across Donetsk and Kharkiv regions of Ukraine, slap in the middle of the war zone. As a result Shell has been forced to put shale projects on hold since February 2014. Chevron was luckier, having signed a shale gas production-sharing agreement for the Olesska field, which is in western Ukraine and therefore has been unaffected by the conflict so far.

All this is happening under the slogan of reducing energy dependence on Russia. Supposedly the American shale gas revolution model will help Ukraine achieve that. The US State department acts as the main promoter of shale gas, selecting countries and “helping them understand” their shale gas potential. This noble mission, also supposedly aimed at reducing CO2 emissions, is called Unconventional Gas Technical Engagement Program (UGTEP).

Complete story at - Russian news: Ukraine: The West's Next Fracking Victim - Russia Insider

Russia Is Pushing Back | New Eastern Outlook

The concept of “supply and demand” is a basic in economics. The rarer a commodity or resource is, the more it costs. The more abundant a resource or commodity is, the less it costs. Scarcity increases an items market value.

Oil and Natural Gas, despite government subsidies and other efforts to the contrary, are still subject to basic economic laws. The more oil and natural gas on the market, the less the cost. If the price of oil or natural gas falls, this means less profit for those who sell it.

The United States and Russia top the global oil and natural gas market. The US has just recently surpassed Russia as the top oil and natural gas producer.

The price of natural gas is in great decline due to a new innovation. The practice of hydraulic fracking, recently introduced in the US as a means for extracting shale gas resources, has created a huge abundance of natural gas. The price of natural gas is going down, threatening global markets.

In addition, oil is in over abundance. New African oil markets are also opening up. Oil and natural gas are non-renewable resources, yet the problem for the Wall Street bankers with names like Morgan and Rockfeller, is that there is too much of it. To keep the prices high, scarcity is a necessity.

The Rise of Russia and China

Russia, with its state owned natural gas company, is the top rival of the US in the natural gas market. The removal, or weakening of Russia within the world natural gas market is an economic necessity for the owners of US natural gas companies.

The Soviet Union was once the primary rival of the United States. It led a block of countries, some led by Communists, others led by Independent Nationalists, who developed independently, and broke the economic chains of Wall Street and London.

The events of 1991 devastated the USSR and Eastern Europe, causing a surge of poverty, chaos, and suffering. However, emerging from this chaos and suffering has been the nationalist government of Vladimir Putin. Russia has re-emerged from the crisis of the 90s, as an economic power. It is exporting oil and natural gas, and building an alliance with China, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran.

Complete story at - Russia Is Pushing Back | New Eastern Outlook

Before the fear of war, fear of fracking in Ukraine | Al Jazeera America

SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — A hot July day, and the neighbors and children of a half-ruined five-story building on Bulvarnaya Avenue gathered around a bench for a long discussion of their daily fears.

Locals seemed to have consensus on who’s at war: the U.S. and Russia over control of Ukraine, they all agreed. But even now, three months past the day the first shell fell on Slovyansk, they still had trouble comprehending why their green, sleepy hometown still was trapped in this conflict.

Residents of the bombed building remembered how in April, local and Russian-assigned rebel commanders chose to set up the capital for their forces in this town.

The people of the Donbass, the country’s gritty industrial region in the east, were not naive. They realized that gas pipelines crossing the border with Russia and the shale gas fields near Slovyansk — with a potential reserve of about 3 trillion cubic meters of gas — were the cause of constant tension between Russia and Ukraine.

But with pipes in their backyards or running right next to their homes, with their feet firmly on ground that stands over a vast shale deposit, they knew the struggle was not really over Ukraine itself. They were in the middle of a war about energy.

Depending on the political winds blowing between Kiev and Moscow, the Russian gas giant Gazprom cut off natural gas to Ukraine or turned it on again. The shale gas is an important potential source for Ukraine and possibly southeastern Europe. If it proves possible to tap, Ukraine hopes this supply would undercut Gazprom’s monopoly, a move that could change Europe’s energy map and its political contours as well.

That’s how, in this region, shale gas became a political and nationalistic issue as well as an economic one. A visitor to the Donbass in February or March wouldn’t have heard fear of war but fear of fracking, with residents fearful their land would be destroyed.

Complete story at - Before the fear of war, fear of fracking in Ukraine | Al Jazeera America

Here's What Fracking Can Do to Your Health | Mother Jones

If you know one thing about fracking, it might be that the wells have been linked to explosive tap water. Of course, a tendency toward combustion isn't the biggest problem with gas-infused water; it's what could happen to you when you drink it.

Although the natural gas industry is notoriously tight-lipped about the ingredients of the chemical cocktails that get pumped down into wells, by now it's widely known that the list often includes some pretty scary, dangerous stuff, including hydrochloric acid and ethylene glycol (a.k.a. antifreeze). It's also no secret that well sites release hazardous gases like methane and benzene (a carcinogen) into the atmosphere.

So just how dangerous are fracking and other natural gas extraction processes for your health (not counting, for the sake of argument, explosions and earthquakes)? Is it true, as an activist-art campaign by Yoko Ono recently posited, that "fracking kills"?

The answer to that second question is probably not, especially in the short term and if you don't work on or live across the street from a frack site (which, of course, some people in fact do). But that doesn't mean it's okay to start fracking away next to kindergartens and nursing homes: Gas extraction produces a range of potentially health-endangering pollutants at nearly every stage of the process, according to a new paper by the California nonprofit Physicians Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy, released today in Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed journal published by the National Institutes of Health.

Complete story at - Here's What Fracking Can Do to Your Health | Mother Jones



CC Photo by Flickr User greensefa Subject is Ban Fracking.

Why US fracking companies are licking their lips over Ukraine | Naomi Klein | Comment is free | The Guardian

The way to beat Vladimir Putin is to flood the European market with fracked-in-the-USA natural gas, or so the industry would have us believe. As part of escalating anti-Russian hysteria, two bills have been introduced into the US Congress – one in the House of Representatives (H.R. 6), one in the Senate (S. 2083) – that attempt to fast-track liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, all in the name of helping Europe to wean itself from Putin's fossil fuels, and enhancing US national security.

According to Cory Gardner, the Republican congressman who introduced the House bill, "opposing this legislation is like hanging up on a 911 call from our friends and allies". And that might be true – as long as your friends and allies work at Chevron and Shell, and the emergency is the need to keep profits up amid dwindling supplies of conventional oil and gas.

For this ploy to work, it's important not to look too closely at details. Like the fact that much of the gas probably won't make it to Europe – because what the bills allow is for gas to be sold on the world market to any country belonging to the World Trade Organisation.

Or the fact that for years the industry has been selling the message that Americans must accept the risks to their land, water and air that come with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in order to help their country achieve "energy independence". And now, suddenly and slyly, the goal has been switched to "energy security", which apparently means selling a temporary glut of fracked gas on the world market, thereby creating energy dependencies abroad.

Complete story at - Why US fracking companies are licking their lips over Ukraine | Naomi Klein | Comment is free | The Guardian

Chevron has no plans to end fracking agreement with Ukraine - SFGate

Last year, Chevron Corp. signed an agreement to bring the fracking revolution to Ukraine, hunting for natural gas trapped in shale rocks near the Polish border. Now the government that signed the agreement is gone, toppled by a popular uprising. And Russia's abrupt annexation of Crimea has cast doubt on Ukraine's future.

But Chevron isn't pulling out. The San Ramon oil company still has employees in Ukraine, although they have not yet begun exploring for gas. And the current administration has every incentive to stick with the agreement. The country depends on Russia for more than 50 percent of its natural gas. And Ukraine also badly needs income, analysts say.

"That's the best way for (Ukraine) to become financially solvent," said Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at UC Davis. "It'll take a while. It doesn't solve the immediate crisis. But it's definitely the way forward."

In fact, Chevron may be in a better position to weather the crisis than other Western oil companies interested in Ukraine. Royal Dutch Shell last year signed an agreement with the government of then-President Viktor Yanukovych to explore a shale formation in eastern Ukraine, an area with a large population of ethnic Russians. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin insists he has no intention of seizing eastern Ukraine, many Western officials don't believe him.

Complete story at - Chevron has no plans to end fracking agreement with Ukraine - SFGate