Aubrey McClendon, the CEO of Chesapeake Energy, has a acceptability for getting a boxy street-fighter, so his company's acknowledgment to my commodity in Rolling Stone is no surprise. (You can appearance the absolute acknowledgment here.) What is hasty is how anemic it is. The aggregation absolutely dodges the article's axial point: that Chesapeake is highly-leveraged abutting operated by a accumulated charlatan who affianced in circuitous arrangement to accumulation off the apparition that America has a about absolute accumulation of bargain accustomed gas.
Michael Kehs, the carnality admiral of cardinal diplomacy and accessible relations at Chesapeake, says that afterwards searching at my work, the aggregation absitively that they would never get a fair shake. In fact, afterwards some antecedent hesitation, McClendon bidding annihilation but action at the anticipation of getting featured in Rolling Stone. He brought an affair of the annual with him to our account in Oklahoma City and asked me to autograph it. He aswell brought a archetype of my book, Big Coal, which he aswell asked me to sign. If it came out, he said, he had bought 25 copies and beatific them to his friends. He told me the book had "radicalized" him on his angle about the atramentous industry.
Kehs aswell boasts that Chesapeake offered me "full transparency." The aggregation did acquiesce me to appointment a conduct rig in Pennsylvania, showed me about their campus in Oklahoma City, and provided me with quick briefings from top executives. But if it came time to acknowledgment added abundant questions, all traces of accuracy vanished. A quick example: I asked Chesapeake three times to accommodate me with a accomplishment for the absolute aggregate of bedraggled flowback baptize the aggregation handled in the Marcellus Shale arena endure year. I got no answer.
Even added disturbing, if I asked McClendon anon if he or his aggregation had contributed any money to presidential candidates or their PACs during the accepted campaign, he said flatly that they had not. This was analytical to me, because McClendon has a continued history of authoritative attack donations, and generally encourages others in the industry to accord to PACs as a way to accomplish abiding their choir are heard. So I asked him afresh in email a few canicule later: The acknowledgment was still "no." A anniversary later, a researcher at Rolling Stone apparent that Chesapeake had absolutely contributed $250,000 to Rick Perry's attack endure fall. If I asked Kehs about this, he accepted it was true. Apparently McClendon operates in a apple area a division actor dollar attack accession can just blooper one's mind.
As to Chesapeake's specific points:
The "reality" of 100 years of accustomed gas. This affirmation is a abundant archetype of the affectionate of ambiguous abode that Chesapeake – and the accustomed gas industry as a accomplished – specializes in. The affirmation advisedly confuses what geologists accredit to as the "resource" and the "reserves." The ability is basically all the accustomed gas that geologists accept exists; the accepted assets is what they accept is currently recoverable at today's prices, with today's technology. The ability is absolutely abutting to 100 years; but according to a lot of calculations (including the Potential Gas Committee, a admired antecedent that is cited by Chesapeake), the assets is added like 11 years. The absolute bulk of gas we'll be able to get out of the arena in the approaching depends on factors like bulk and appeal and whether new technologies can be developed to get at hard-to-extract gas, and whether or not you affliction that it requires announcement and conduct our way through suburbs and civic parks. Chris Nelder over at Slate has a acceptable album on this. The agitation over assets admeasurement is important, because it raises a lot of absorbing questions about approaching activity investments. If McClendon wants to advance hundreds of millions of his dollars to catechumen cars to accustomed gas, that's up to him – but why advance big public dollars in a ammunition that ability not endure abundant added than a decade?
The believability of Arthur Berman. As is generally the case with Chesapeake, those who disagree with or criticize their plan are absolved as inconsequential. But Berman is a broadly admired geologist and activity consultant; I awful acclaim examination a PowerPoint presentation he gave at Battle beforehand this year.
Chesapeake's bizarre off-book accounting practices. This is hardly a arguable statement; about every banking analyst I talked to mentioned it. In addition, it is discussed at breadth in this contempo Forbes story, and is a big acumen why humans like Phil Weiss, an analyst at Argus Analysis Group, said absolute to me about Chesapeake: "I don't assurance them."
The bread-and-butter allowances of bargain accustomed gas. Nobody disputes that bargain accustomed gas would be a acceptable affair for the economy. The catechism is, is this a acceptable new development that can be counted on for decades to come, or artlessly a "bubble" brought on by a acreage grab and conduct frenzy? And what are the added costs – in ecology destruction, in breach allotment from renewable activity – accompanying to this bang in bargain gas?
The believability of Gasland. The accustomed gas industry has formed continued and harder to smear Josh Fox, the administrator of Gasland, and has failed. Here's Fox's own defense of the criticisms in Gasland.
Fugitive methane emissions. With the accessible barring of Josh Fox, no one gets McClendon and added Chesapeake admiral cranked up like Robert Howarth, the Cornell University assistant who was one of the aboriginal to catechism the bulk of accustomed gas that is artifice from wells, pipelines and compressor stations. This is a badly important issue, because the industry has continued argued that one of the big advantages accustomed gas has over atramentous is that it can advice abate global-warming pollution. It's accurate that afire accustomed gas releases about bisected as abundant CO2 as an agnate bulk of coal. But the botheration is that if it comes to accoutrement heat, accustomed gas – aka methane – is about 21 times as almighty as CO2 (although it stays in the atmosphere a abundant beneath time). And as it turns out, there are a lot of leaks in the assembly of accustomed gas. Exactly how abundant is hotly debated (here is a acceptable backgrounder on the agitation and actuality is a summary of the latest peer-reviewed research). Some studies accept apparent that accustomed gas could, in fact, be worse for the altitude than coal. But even if you don't agency in arising rates, alive to accustomed gas is not traveling to activate to stop all-around warming. As a new study by altitude scientist Ken Caldeira and tech billionaire Nathan Myhrvold argues, alive to accustomed gas "cannot about abate the altitude accident in the next 100 years."
The believability of Deborah Rogers. The accustomed gas industry has been aggravating to discredit Rogers anytime back she began speaking out about the economics of shale gas. She can stand up for herself.
Bias in the Battle study. There is some balladry in the actuality that scientists at McClendon's alma academy were the aboriginal to conduct a rigorous, peer-reviewed abstraction assuming methane clearing into bubbler baptize wells abreast conduct sites. The study was appear in the Proceedings of the Civic Academy of Sciences, one of the a lot of celebrated accurate journals in America. The angle that it is "biased" and accounting by scientists angled on putting Chesapeake out of business is absolute delusional. As for the criticisms of Michael Krancer of the Pennsylvania Department of Ecology Protection, the authors of the abstraction abode that here.
Methane levels in the Vargson well. Arguing that the methane was, in effect, already there, is a archetypal aegis of the gas industry whenever there is a botheration with methane contagion in a well. It's the industry agnate of the schoolyard taunt, "You can't prove it!" In fact, the Vargson able-bodied is one of the best advised in Bradford County. Tom Darrah, a admired geologist at Duke, has advised the actual abstracts at the Vargson able-bodied and says absolutely that the top levels of methane are "well aloft accustomed levels." As I point out in the story, the able-bodied was aswell one of 17 cited in a almanac $1 actor accomplished adjoin Chesapeake levied by the Pennsylvania Department of Ecology Protection.
Consequences of Chesapeake's able-bodied blow-out in Bradford County. While I was visiting Chesapeake, one controlling declared the ecology accident from the blast like this: "We dead a brace of frogs." It is absolutely accurate that, accustomed the calibration of the blowout, Chesapeake did a acceptable job of aspersing the impact. But the abounding ambit of the accident is unclear. A study by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which is a annex of the federal Centers for Disease Control, begin a 10-fold admission in methane and assorted salts in one adjacent well. It's aswell account pointing out that the analysis of the blow-out cited by Chesapeake was hardly independent. Louis Simpson, a board member of SAIC, the aggregation that wrote the report, is aswell a lath affiliate of Chesapeake Energy. As Jim Gipson, Chesapeake's administrator of media relations, put it in an email anachronous endure October 17: "The abode was never characterized as independent."
Fracking aqueous disclosure. It's important to accentuate that the chemicals appear on Fracfocus.org, the website the industry afresh set up to abode the apropos about the chemicals getting injected during fracking operations, are appear voluntarily. Which agency that drillers do not accept to acknowledge annihilation on this website that they don't wish to. As for the Pennsylvania DEP requirements cited by Chesapeake in their response, admission to those annal crave digging through paperwork in bounded appointment of the DEP or filing a Right to Know request. And even then, says a agent for the DEP, "Drillers may denote on these letters specific portions of the dispatch almanac as barter abstruse or arcane proprietary information." In added words, if they affirmation it is proprietary, they don't accept to acknowledge it publically (although in some situations, they can be accountable by the state).
Finally, there is one affirmation fabricated by Kehs in the company's acknowledgment that is absolutely true: Like all writers who accomplish use of a abundance of analysis and interviews, I "omitted" assertive things from my article. I didn't acquaint you – abashment on me! – that Chesapeake has about operated at a accident back October 2003, its basic spending beyond banknote from operations in every individual quarter. Or that it faces a bent investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for violations of the Clean Baptize Act in West Virginia. Or about how it hid abaft carapace companies to grab acreage in Michigan – again approved to swindle hundreds of owners out of money and contracts.
I affliction these errors of omission, and achievement added reporters will chase up on them.
No hay comentarios :