Intelligence Report: Anti-Fracking Enviros Are Funded by Vladimir Putin
By ANDREW FOLLETT Published on January 30, 2017
https://stream.org/intelligence-repo...ladimir-putin/
President Vladimir Putin's Russia is funding and supporting anti-hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, environmental activists, according to an intelligence community report.
The Russian government, which
relies heavily on selling oil to other countries for revenue is
concerned "about the impact of fracking and U.S. natural gas production on the global energy market," according to the intelligence report. The intelligence community points out that RT, the country's
government-funded international media outlet, ran
62 different anti-fracking stories of dubious legitimacy in 2015.
"Buried within the U.S. intelligence community's report on Russian activities in the presidential election is
clear evidence that the Kremlin is
financing and choreographing anti-fracking propaganda in the United States," Drew Johnson, a fellow of the non-partisan Taxpayers Protection Alliance, summarized in a Newsweek piece.
"By targeting fracking, Putin hopes to increase oil and gas prices, destabilize the U.S. economy and threaten America's energy independence."
High-level Russian oil and political interests have been
funding American environmental groups to lobby for new regulations and restrictions on fracking, which reduces the amount of international competition for Russian oil and natural gas.
For example, a shell corporation with ties to a Russian state oil interest "donated"
$23 million to an environmental bundler that passed the funds to The Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the League of Conservation Voters, according to a report by the Environmental Policy Alliance....
...American fracking has created a "perfect economic storm" of historically cheap oil and natural gas, which greatly weakened Putin's Russia. America surpassed Russia's production early in 2015 as the world's largest and fastest-growing producer of oil and natural gas....