Oil and Gas executives in Texas have called emergency meetings this week over proposed legislation in Texas that might force them to reveal what chemicals they inject into the ground and groundwater in a process called “fracking” (or hydraulic fracturing). Whole towns along the Barnet Shale, where ten of thousands of fracked wells exist, have reportedly been poisoned, wildlife obliterated, and children afflicted with serious illnesses, while natural gas pumps and stations advertise natural gas as a “clean, green fuel” and Ohio Governor John Kasic prepares to open up state parks to fracking, a move which elicited a rare comment to the press by former Vice President Dick Cheney, “it’s about fracking time.”
Readers may remember that the former Vice President had an exemption inserted into a 2005 energy bill, which fans call the “Haliburton loophole”, removing EPA authority to regulate fracking. A video made it onto Youtube shortly afterward, purportedly featuring the Vice President saying “Frack those mother frackers. They can fracking go get fracked. And frack their kids too.” A bystander is heard asking “Mr. Vice President, who exactly do you mean?” at which point an apparently inebriated Cheney replies “humans. Fracking humans. Those fracking frackers. Frack all of them.” Shortly thereafter, Eminem, released his hit song “Without Me” which included the words “Dick Cheney fracked me s’why I so fracked up.”
In Oklahoma, where fracking originated, Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon and Larry Nichols, Executive Chairman of Devon Energy, companies that get 100% of their natural gas from fracking, told the press in a joint statement, “We don’t think most people want to know what we’re injecting into the ground where they live. If they knew, they’d be unhappy about knowing, and that’s the message we have to send to the few, overly inquisitive people who are asking questions about this.” Immediately after providing the statement to the press, the executives commissioned a marketing study to look at renaming fracking to something less disturbing, such as “poking shale”, “laying pipe”, “glory hole pile driving”, “the hot mystery injection”, or “bumping oilies with a stranger”.
Update: Shortly after our report was published, Sarah Palin expressed displeasure that she hadn’t been interviewed on the subject. When asked for comment, she asked what the subject was, and then replied “Nevermind. It’s more of those fat cats at the EPA trying to keep America down with another blood libel. But that’s not what we’re about, we’re not Katie Couric. We’re about, and you know, the little pockets of America, and we’re not talking about the rapture.”