from alternet.org: The way to beat Vladimir Putin is to flood the European market with
fracked-in-the-USA natural gas, or so the industry would have us
believe. As part of escalating anti-Russian hysteria, two bills have
been introduced into the US Congress – one in the House of
Representatives ( H.R. 6), one in the Senate (S. 2083)
– that attempt to fast-track liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, all
in the name of helping Europe to wean itself from Putin’s fossil fuels,
and enhancing US national security. 

According to Cory Gardner, the Republican congressman who introduced
the House bill, “opposing this legislation is like hanging up on a 911
call from our friends and allies”. And that might be true – as long as
your friends and allies work at Chevron and Shell, and the emergency is
the need to keep profits up amid dwindling supplies of conventional oil
and gas. 

For this ploy to work, it’s important not to look too closely at
details. Like the fact that much of the gas probably won’t make it to
Europe – because what the bills allow is for gas to be sold on the world
market to any country belonging to the World Trade Organisation. 

Or the fact that for years the industry has been selling the message that Americans must accept the  risks to their land, water and air that come with hydraulic fracturing (fracking)
in order to help their country achieve “energy independence”. And now,
suddenly and slyly, the goal has been switched to “energy security”,
which apparently means selling a temporary glut of fracked gas on the
world market, thereby creating energy dependencies abroad. 

And most of all, it’s important not to notice that building the
infrastructure necessary to export gas on this scale would take many
years in permitting and construction – a single LNG terminal can carry a
$7bn price tag, must be fed by a massive, interlocking web of pipelines
and compressor stations, and requires its own power plant just to
generate energy sufficient to liquefy the gas through super-cooling. By
the time these massive industrial projects are up and running, Germany
and Russia may well be fast friends. But by then few will remember that
the crisis in Crimea was the excuse seized upon by the gas industry to
make its longstanding export dreams come true, regardless of the
consequences to the communities getting fracked or to the planet getting
cooked. 

I call this knack for exploiting crisis for private gain the shock
doctrine, and it shows no signs of retreating. We all know how the shock
doctrine works: during times of crisis, whether real or manufactured,
our elites are able to ram through unpopular policies that are
detrimental to the majority under cover of emergency. Sure there are
objections – from climate scientists warning of the potent warming
powers of methane, or local communities that don’t want these high-risk
export ports on their beloved coasts. But who has time for debate? It’s
an emergency! A 911 call ringing! Pass the laws first, think about them
later. 

Plenty of industries are good at this ploy, but none is more adept at
exploiting the rationality-arresting properties of crisis than the
global gas sector. 

For the past four years the gas lobby has used the economic crisis in
Europe to tell countries like Greece that the way out of debt and
desperation is to open their beautiful and fragile seas to drilling. And
it has employed similar arguments to rationalise fracking across North
America and the United Kingdom.