Petro Plutocracy

Petro Plutocracy by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., May 9, 2012, ecowatch.org
From its inception, hydrofracking has been an outlaw enterprise. The industry was born in a provision drafted in secret by oilman Dick Cheney’s clandestine energy task force specifically exempting it from the Safe Drinking Water Act, a shale fracking method devised and patented by Cheney’s former company Halliburton. … Regulatory capture has given the industry’s worst actors de facto immunity from their criminal behavior. … These species of habitual lawbreakers require the protection of crooked politicians and captive agencies to insulate criminal companies from the consequences of their illegal behavior. … On Thursday, AP’s investigators forced the U.S. EPA to admit that it had withheld—for nearly a month—a devastating study showing groundwater contamination linked to fracking from oil and gas wells in Pavillion, Wyoming. At the command of Wyoming’s republican Governor Matt Mead—an indentured servant to the fracking industry—the EPA delayed issuing the report. Mead then ordered state officials to “take a hard line” on the industry’s behalf. A team of tobacco scientists and biostitutes at Wyoming’s Department of Environmental Quality next dutifully used the delay to gin up critical questions meant to debunk EPA’s science to help soften the blow from the federal study that sent shock waves through the oil and gas industry.