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Texas Sharon's Bluedaze

Fracking News

NPR exposes Range Resources’ mafia style tactics

July 9, 2011 By TXsharon

If you missed This American Life today, go get the podcast. This program exposes some of the mafia style tactics used by this industry.

Change the name of the operator but the same tactics are used universally throughout this industry. Listen then let me know how familiar this sounds.

440:GAME CHANGER
Originally aired 07.08.2011

A professor in Pennsylvania makes a calculation, to discover that his state is sitting atop a massive reserve of natural gas—enough to revolutionize how America gets its energy. But another professor in Pennsylvania does a different calculation and reaches a troubling conclusion: that getting natural gas out of the ground poses a risk to public health. Two men, two calculations, and two very different consequences.

PROLOGUE.

Host Ira Glass tells the stories of two professors, each making a calculation that no one had made before. One gets acclaim. One ends up out of a job. The first, Terry Engelder, a geologist at Penn State, was estimating the amount of natural gas that’s recoverable from the Marcellus shale, a giant rock formation that’s under Pennsylvania and several other Eastern states. The second, Conrad “Dan” Volz, at the University of Pittsburg, estimated how much toxic crap—chemicals and pollution from gas exploration—might be getting into water supplies. (6 1/2 minutes)

ACT ONE. YOU’VE GOT SHALE.

Producer Sarah Koenig continues the story Terry Engelder and Dan Volz, their rival calculations about natural gas in Pennsylvania, and how each was treated by his university. She explains how Pennsylvania’s universities, politicans and industry have united to develop natural gas. Other states have been more cautious. (26 1/2 minutes)

ACT TWO. GROUND WAR.

Sarah takes us to Mt. Pleasant, PA, where a gas exploration company called Range Resources has leased 95% of the township’s land. This led to a standoff between Mt. Pleasant and Range, starting with zoning disputes and ending in a full scale PR war—a war in which the town was seriously outgunned. (23 1/2 minutes)

Song: “Let’s Make a Deal”, The New Kings

SELECTED CONTRIBUTORS: Sarah Koenig
PHOTO: Copyright (c), Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2011, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

New label: Big Gas Mafia

About Sharon Wilson

Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.

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Filed Under: Big Gas Mafia

Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    July 12, 2011 at 3:01 am

    Truly despicable and pathological methodology used to divide and conquer small communities cohesive fabric and souls'. They've got the modus down.

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