Vice President Joe Biden Promotes U.S. as Fracking Missionary Force On Ukraine Trip

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During hisย two-day visit this week to Kiev, Ukraine, Vice President Joe Biden unfurled President Barack Obama’s โ€œU.S. Crisis Support Package for Ukraine.โ€

A key part of the package involves promoting the deployment ofย hydraulic fracturing (โ€œfrackingโ€)ย in Ukraine.ย Dean Neu, professor of accounting at York University in Toronto,ย describes this phenomenon in his book โ€œDoing Missionary Work.โ€ And in this case, it involves the U.S. acting as a modern-day missionary to spread the gospel of fracking to further its own interests.ย ย ย ย ย 

With the ongoing Russian occupation of Crimea serving as the backdrop for the trip, Biden made Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its dominance of the global gas market one of the centerpieces of a key speech he gave while inย Kiev.

โ€œAnd as you attempt to pursue energy security, thereโ€™s no reason why you cannot be energy secure. I mean there isnโ€™t. It will take time. It takes some difficult decisions, but itโ€™s collectively within your power and the power of Europe and the United States,โ€ Biden said.

โ€œAnd we stand ready to assist you in reaching that. Imagine where youโ€™d be today if you were able to tell Russia: Keep your gas. It would be a very different world youโ€™d be facingย today.โ€

The U.S. oil and gas industry has long lobbied to โ€œweaponizeโ€ its fracking prowessย to fend off Russian global gas market dominance. It’s done so primarily in twoย ways.

One way: by transforming the U.S. State Department into a global promoter of fracking via its Unconventional Gas Technical Engagement Program (formerly the Global Shale Gas Initiative), which is a key, albeit less talked about,ย part of President Obama’s โ€œClimate Actionย Plan.โ€

The other way: by exporting U.S. fracked gas to the global market, namely EU countries currently heavily dependent on Russia’s gasย spigot.ย 

In this sense, the crisis in Ukraineย โ€” as Naomi Klein pointed out in a recent articleย โ€” has merely served as a โ€œshock doctrineโ€ excuseย to push through plans that were already long in the making. In other words, it’s โ€œold wine in a new bottle.โ€

Gas โ€œSupport Packageโ€ย Details

Within the energy security section of the aid package,ย the White House promises in โ€œthe coming weeks, expert teams from several U.S. government agencies will travel to the region to help Ukraine meet immediate and longer term energyย needs.โ€

That section contains three main things the U.S. will do to ensure U.S. oil and gas companies continue to profit during this geopoliticalย stand-off.ย 

1) Help with pipelines and securing access to gas at the midstream level ofย production.ย 

โ€œToday, a U.S. interagency expert team arrived in Kyiv to help Ukraine secure reverse flows of natural gas from its European neighbors,โ€ the White House fact sheet explains. โ€œReverse flows of natural gas will provide Ukraine with additional immediate sources ofย energy.โ€

2) Technical assistance to help boost conventional gas production in Ukraine. That is, gas obtainedย notย from fracking and horizontal drilling, but via traditional verticalย drilling.ย 

As the White House explains, โ€œU.S. technical experts will join with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and others in May to help Ukraine develop a public-private investment initiative to increase conventional gas production from existing fields to boost domestic energyย supply.โ€

3) Shale gasย missionaryย work.

โ€œA technical team will also engage the government on measures that will help the Ukrainian government ensure swift and environmentally sustainable implementation of contracts signed in 2013 for shale gas development,โ€ says the White House.ย 

ExxonMobil Teaching Russiaย Fracking

Ironically, as the U.S. government teams up with theย European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to teach Ukraine fracking in order to wean the country off of Russian gas, U.S.-based โ€œprivate empireโ€ ExxonMobil is doing the same work in Russia to help the country tap into its shale oil and gasย bounty.ย 

Among its myriad partnerships with the Russian oil and gas industry,ย ExxonMobil has signed a joint venture in December 2013 with state-owned company Rosneft to help it tap the massiveย Bazhenov Shaleย basin.

โ€œThe JV will implement a pilot work program in order to assess and determine the technical possibility of developing theโ€ฆBazhenov formationโ€ฆin Western Siberia,โ€ reads a Rosneft press release. โ€œThe plan is to perform the pilot work program within 2013-2015ย timeframe.โ€

Forbes has reported theย Bazhenov is roughly 80 times the size of the Bakken Shale, already the biggest field by a long shot in the U.S. and one visible from outer space.

Climate Changeย Taboo

Traditionally, missionaries do charity work in service to humanity. But the enormous climate impact of frackingย โ€” given the climate change math โ€” calls those doing the Lord’s work in the shale gas sphere intoย question.ย 

So in the case of the U.S. government and Ukraine, the concept of missionary work has been flipped on itsย head.

That is, the most profitable companies on the face of the planet โ€” both in the U.S.ย and in Russiaย โ€” are set to profit at the expense of everyone else, including the stability of earth’s climateย system.ย 

Photo Credit: Shutterstock |ย Stevenย Frame

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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