While everybody focuses on Syria and wonders what in the heck the United States is doing, let me talk about different subject: fracking. Because we have a chance to mess that up, too, if we are not careful. And getting it right is really important.
In going through some articles I had saved, I found this article from the Chicago Tribune, August 17 2008: “Using energy to gain power”. The article talked about how Russia was using its natural gas resources to gain political power. Here are some excerpts from the article:
“[A]t a time when its relations with the West are at their iciest in years, the Kremlin is increasingly flexing its geopolitical might with another weapon few could have imagined during the decades-long Cold War: pipelines, conduits of energy and clout that Russia is deftly maneuvering in pincer-like fashion around Europe
Emboldened by sky-high oil prices and its renewed status as a force to be reckoned with on the world stage, Russia wants a stranglehold on Europe's energy market, analysts say, and is pursuing that aim through a cordon of natural gas and oil pipelines that would make America's NATO allies heavily dependent on the Kremlin for hydrocarbons.
That dependence worries U.S. allies in Europe because Russia has shown its willingness in the past to use its energy wealth as a political weapon by shutting off gas and oil supplies. …
Europeans still remember the row between Ukraine and Russia over prices that resulted in a plunge in natural gas supplies to Europe in 2006.
More recently, Czech leaders accused the Kremlin of deliberately curtailing Russian oil supplies to the Czech Republic in July, in retaliation for Czech support of the proposed U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
‘Gazprom's [the Russian state-owned energy company] monopoly-seeking activities cannot be explained by economic motives alone,’ U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) wrote in a statement to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this summer. ‘Clearly Gazprom has sacrificed profits and needed domestic infrastructure investments to achieve foreign policy goals. The Kremlin and Gazprom have shut off energy supplies to six different countries during the last several years.’”*
Fortunately, things have changed since 2008. According a report in The Economist of June 29, 2013, “Gazprom is a wounded giant these days”. The article continues:
“In the past Russia was so confident of its producer power that it felt able to bully clients: it cut off gas supplies to Ukraine in both 2006 and 2009 during contract negotiations.”
But now:
“Europeans are finding they have bargaining power: Bulgaria recently negotiated a 20% price cut in its new ten-year contract with Russia. Others are also determined to free themselves from their dependence on a country that has used energy as a weapon of foreign policy.”
Why the change? Back to The Economist:
“A spectre is haunting Russia: the spectre of shale gas. It is seeping into the salons of power, discomfiting Russia’s leaders and their bizniz cronies. … Russian politics are … built on conventional oil and gas: Vladimir Putin is in essence the CEO of Russian Energy Inc. The revolution in unconventional gas production from shale beds, which began in the United States and is now spreading around the world, is shaking Russian state capitalism to its foundations. …
The shale revolution is changing the balance of power between the Russian bear and its European customers. … America’s shale-driven transformation from a declining energy power to the world’s biggest gas producer, and a potential big exporter, is pushing down the price of gas on the world market. Supplies of Middle Eastern liquefied gas that America no longer wants are now being offered to Europeans. This week a consortium was chosen to pipe gas from Azerbaijan to western Europe, further reducing dependence on Russian supplies. … Poland and Ukraine are intent on developing their own supplies of shale for strategic as well as economic reasons.”**
To say this is good news is an understatement. Vladimir Putin is not a nice man, and Russia under his leadership is not a country that you want to be powerful. I have no interest bossing Russia around (though we should definitely complain when Russia violates the rights of its citizens), but it is definitely a good thing if Russia has less power over its neighbors, whether economic or political.
In other words, not only has shale gas brought energy costs down, started to bring jobs in energy-intensive industries back to the United States, and reduced CO2 emissions, it is also helping reduce the influence of Vladimir Putin. This is a very good thing. The problem is some people don’t seem to care.
Many on the left and in the environmental movement are opposed to fracking. (As an example, see here.) They claim it can pollute ground water supplies. They say natural gas is still carbon-based so it is not clean enough. They worry that increased supplies of oil and gas from shale will drive down the price of energy, making green energy too expensive.
I have no problem with regulations to insure fracking is safe, but the other objections don’t make sense to me. But I don’t want to get into a theological argument on natural gas with the true believers of green energy. The point is, for the here and now, fracking has helped make Vladimir Putin less influential. If you care about peace and freedom, less influence for Vladmir Putin is a good thing. Eight years ago, he said: “[T]he demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [twentieth] century.” Maybe it was for him and the Soviet Communist Party, but for the countries of eastern Europe and the Baltics, and even some of the former republics of the Soviet Union, it was a great thing.
If the development of shale gas and oil helps reduce the power and influence of Vladimir Putin, then freedom demands that we do whatever we need to in order to continue that development.
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* Alex Rodriguez, “Using energy to gain power,” Chicago Tribune, August 17, 2008, page 14.
** Also, see this from the current issue of The Economist:
“Fortunately, Mr Putin’s influence is declining. European countries who were dependent on Russian gas used to be easy to bully. Now a mix of falling energy consumption, new pipelines that skirt round Russia, the exploitation elsewhere of shale gas and oil, and the subjection of Russian energy producers to EU competition rules has eroded his clout.”
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