http://www.truth-out.org/north-carolina-lawmakers-take-one-sided-look-fracking/1321996752North Carolina Lawmakers Take a One-Sided Look at Fracking
A group of North Carolina lawmakers is in Pennsylvania today on a fact-finding mission about the controversial method of extracting natural gas known as fracking -- and their tour guide is Chesapeake Energy, one of the nation's biggest fracking companies.
Reps. Mike Hager, Mitch Gillespie and Chuck McGrady -- all Republicans -- flew into Scranton, Pa. yesterday and today are scheduled to tour Bradford County, a major center of that state's natural gas industry. Here's what the trip's official itinerary says about the selection of the tour guide:
Chesapeake was chosen because they are the 2nd largest producer of US natural gas (in 1st qtr of 2011, they produced 2.7 billion cubic feet of gas per day), the #1 driller in US for past 20 years (more than 11,500 wells during past 20 years), the #1 driller of horizontal wells in the world (approx. 4100 wells), and the #1 producer of shale gas in the world (~1.7bcf/day during 3rd qtr 2011). Chesapeake is the #1 Marcellus leaseholder (1.72 million acres), the #1 Haynesville/Bossier (ArkLaTex region) leaseholder (500,000 acres), and #2 Barnett shale leaseholder (200,000 acres).
However, the one-page itinerary does not point out that Oklahoma-based Chesapeake has had serious environmental and workplace safety problems:
-snip of long list-
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who is paying for the travel,etc. the fly wonders