In Boston: Activists Disrupt Natural Gas Lecture

Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon Not Welcome

Chesapeake Energy has been called the 2nd largest producer of natural gas in the United States. While CEO of Chesapeake Aubrey McClendon sells natural gas as the key to “fueling America’s clean energy future,” the residents of Marcellus Shale-rich areas tell a different story: poisoned groundwater, toxic waste, and rural communities that have seen their once pristine air now contaminated with higher levels of o-zone than Los Angeles.

CONTACT: KATE BUCKETTE 570-854-2288

February 25, 2010

Activists representing the Marcellus Shale field residents spoke to the dirty truth of gas drilling at McClendon’s lecture at Harvard University titled “Natural Gas: Fueling America’s Clean Energy Future”. After comments shouted from audience members about what chemicals are used in fracking, concerns of health defects, and how gas and oil companies are exempt from regulations, McClendon abandoned the lecture forty minutes early, clearly shaken by the feedback. One activist showed him a jar of murky brown water to represent well water after fracking, and asked McClendon if he would drink it, as people are forced to drink contaminated water. He said no.

After the lecture, activists delivered a packet with letters, questions and comments to McClendon directly from impacted community members. As he was escorted out of the building, about 15 people sang songs of ecocide to liven up his exit.

Residents of the shale fields are actively resisting the greedy, destructive endeavors of Chesapeake Energy and its cohorts. According to residents of Pulteney, NY, “On Superbowl Sunday an overflow crowd of 500 people met in tiny Pulteney, NY to oppose Chesapeake’s injection well application. US Rep. Eric Massa even said he would give up his life by lying in front of a frack truck trying to prevent this happening.”

According to the Charleston Gazette, Chesapeake Energy "underpaid royalty owners by $134 million and deserved to pay $271 million more in punitive damages."

WHAT IS HYROFRACKING? Using a new drilling process known as "high-volume hydraulic fracturing" ('hydrofracking'), gas companies are seeking to tap a huge natural gas reserve, the Marcellus Shale, extending from southern West Virginia to upstate New York. Unlike in conventional gas reserves, the gas in the Marcellus is trapped and dispersed throughout the shale in tiny deposits. Corporations drill into the shale and release millions of gallons of water mixed with thick chemical slurry under pressure to release the gas in the fracking process. Each well may be fracked up to 10 times in its lifetime.

Each fracking uses 2-9 million gallons of fresh water that can be drawn from lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands, and once contaminated, that water is too toxic to return to the watershed. Hydrofracking has been linked to contaminated drinking water supplies; some nearby residents can generate a fireball just by holding a lighter to their faucet. The water itself has been contaminated with fracking fluid, the chemical slurry the industry is able to use only because of Bush-era exemptions to the Clean Water Act.