The launch of ProPublica was greeted with a bit of fanfare last year. ProPublica was formed through the efforts of the Herb an Marion Sandler who sold their Savings and Loan Company to Wachovia for billions of dollars with very good timing-considering the billions of dollars in losses that stemmed from this purchase due to buried problems in the mortgage portfolio and that have cratered the stock of Wachovia. ProPublica was promoted as a nonpartisan investigative news site that would engage in the types of journalistic investigations that were becoming increasingly unaffordable for media outlets as they cut their budgets.
American Thinker noted that the Sandlers (close confidant of activist liberal billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros) were very active in promoting a far-left agenda. Our prediction seems to be not far off the mark.
The group is now promoting the view that the Marcellus Shale (a vast natural gas rich area that encompasses a chunk of northeast America) should not be developed because of putative environmental concerns.Much of it lies in upstate New York and Appalachia-areas that face economic difficulties that could be relieved by developing these resources.The New York Sun takes this report to task: Geology.com reports on a study earlier this year by a geology professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia, Gary Lash, who found that the Marcellus Shale may contain more than 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
If 10% of that is recoverable, it could supply America's natural gas needs for two years and would have a "wellhead value" of $1 trillion, according to Geology.com. In other words, by the time the story is over, upstate New York will end up looking not like Appalachia but like Dallas or Dubai. Already, Western New York landowners are getting bonuses of up to $2,000 an acre from companies wanting to lease gas extraction rights. Those bonuses are before royalties to the landowners, which can amount to 12.5% of the value of the gas that is extracted.
The national security consequences would also be considerable. Every unit of energy that comes from upstate New York is a unit that doesn't have to come from Iran or Venezuela or Saudi Arabia
The Sun also noted that the environmental risks can be overcome-as they have been in other areas with large natural gas deposits. The Barnett Shale is Texas is being rapidly developed, despite the fact that much of it lies underneath Dallas. No ill effects have been noted and prosperity and growth has enriched "Big D."
But ProPublica would rather leave this area struggling and America more dependent on anti-American energy exporters.
Watch for more of this type of agenda-driven journalism from ProPublica.
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