Fight Over Fracking - Protester Blockade breakout fighting
Channel: GroundHog News
Date: 2013-10-22

http://www.peoplestandup.ca
Fight Over Fracking

A blockade in a New Brunswick community is down today. But the anger in Rexton and elsewhere is still burning.
Hydraulic fracturing - or 'fracking'  - is a highly controversial practice to tap natural gas locked in the earth. While promising to deliver less polluting energy at lower costs, there is ample evidence that the rush to this energy source may be equally polluting, a danger to precious water sources and perhaps more costly in the long run. Banned in many countries and regions, fracking has become one of the most argued energy practices that have emerged in the last decade with earthquakes a potential by-product. Are the risks outweighed by the benefits? The industry's muscle has advanced this technology at a pace that has ignored, or overlooked, the science.

Development of technology financed by taxpayers, not industry.
Decades of federal support spurred the fracking boom. If we look at the history of how horizontal drilling techniques were commercialized, we find a strong base of government support through R&D, mapping techniques, cost-sharing programs, and billions of dollars in tax credits. The importance of federal assistance for new energy technologies and the establishment of a tax credit for drillers in 1980 that amounted to $10 billion through 2002, allowed the Department of Energy to provide crucial technical assistance during times of failure. "There's no point in mincing words. Some people thought it was stupid," said Dan Steward, a geologist who began working with the Texas natural gas firm Mitchell Energy in 1981. Steward estimated that in the early years, "probably 90% of the people" in the firm didn't believe shale gas would be profitable