Russia Sounds Alarm on Shale Natural Gas -- Wall Street Journal

Earlier this week I suggested Gazprom had infiltrated the EPA. That was tongue-in-cheek; I may not have been too far off the mark.

Gazprom and the EPA now appear to agree: fracking is dangerous.

Shale gas has revolutionized the gas business in the U.S., and industry experts and executives say the same could happen in Europe and Asia.

Russia, however, has repeatedly downplayed the role of shale gas and insisted it won’t hurt its lucrative model of extracting gas at deposits in West Siberia and pumping it through huge pipelines to consumers in Russia and Europe.

But in a sign the phenomenon is in fact being taken seriously, the board of directors at the world’s biggest gas producer, state-owned OAO Gazprom, this week highlighted environmental risks and the high costs of production in Europe.

Comments at the link were priceless: a) Gazprom using a page from Al Gore's playbook; and, b) when have the Russians ever been concerned about the environment.

By the way, the US has now leapfrogged over Russia and is now the #1 producer of natural gas in the world. Despite all the efforts of the administration to hamstring the oil and gas industry on shale gas development, the US has jumped to number 1.

The EPA might argue otherwise, that it hasn't determined whether fracking is dangerous, but facts speaker louder than teleprompted words: the EPA is set to issue federal guidelines on fracking, and that wouldn't be necessary if the EPA didn't think fracking was dangerous.