By Paul Homewood
Of all the environmental campaigns mounted in this country, few have been more fervent, vociferous – and indeed effective – than the protests against fracking.
Over the past decade, groups such as Frack Off have successfully swung public opinion against what was once considered the answer to Britain’s energy needs.
In North America, where fracking – properly known as hydraulic fracturing, and by which water is pumped into beds of shale at high pressure to release gas – has been widely adopted, the process has helped to not only reduce energy prices, but is also reckoned to have given the US and Canada energy security for about a century.
Whereas here, in November 2019, the British Government announced a moratorium on fracking, stating it would ‘take a presumption against issuing any further Hydraulic Fracturing Consents’ in England. Similar suspensions were also announced in Scotland and Wales.
There is no doubt that if fracking were widely adopted throughout the UK and continental Europe, it would severely dent the demand for gas from Russia, and thereby lose Putin the billions he requires to prop up his regime and to prosecute his evil wars….
The timing could not be more acute, as this Tuesday – March 15 – the energy firm Cuadrilla has to concrete over its fracking wells in Lancashire on the orders of the Oil and Gas Authority.
The one man who will, of course, be delighted to see all that concrete being poured will be Vladimir Putin.
For the Russian President and his oligarchs, the ending of fracking in the UK and elsewhere will represent the cessation of a campaign secretly waged by the Russians to demonise fracking in the eyes of Western public opinion.
Before this can be dismissed as a paranoid conspiracy theory, one only has to take the words of none other than the former secretary-general of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
He said in a speech in London in June 2014: ‘I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.’
According to a former US Director of National Intelligence, RT’s stance reflects economic self-interest and a fear of ‘the impact of fracking and US national gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to [Russian gas giant] Gazprom’s profitability’.
In Britain, we have seen a similar eruption of anti-fracking groups, although they are less militant. The website of Frack Off features hundreds of such groups from all around the British Isles, each with a Facebook page and often a dedicated website.
Unsurprisingly, the finances of all these anti-fracking groups are opaque, and as they are not registered charities, they are not obliged to reveal the sources of their donations.
Even if a group such as Frack Off were to be completely transparent about the source of its funds, it is likely that even the organisation’s members would be in the dark as to where all the funding ultimately came from.
There is no doubt that if fracking were widely adopted throughout the UK and continental Europe, it would severely dent the demand for gas from Russia, and thereby lose Putin the billions he requires to prop up his regime and to prosecute his evil wars (File image)
You have to look to the US for evidence of how these Russian operations work, and how – in all likelihood – the Russians have mounted their fracking disinformation campaigns in Britain and the rest of Europe.
As with so many murky and clandestine operations, it all starts with an offshore company. In this instance, the company was called Klein Limited, and it was based in Bermuda. The role of Klein Limited was ostensibly to give money to charitable causes.
In 2011 and 2012, it gave a total of $23 million to the Sea Change Foundation, which in turn made donations to various anti-fracking and environmental lobbying groups in the US, including the Sierra Club Foundation and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
With funds from the mysterious Klein, the Sierra Club launched its ‘Beyond Natural Gas’ campaign in 2013, which vigorously and publicly campaigned against fracking.
What greatly disturbed American lawmakers was the source of Klein’s millions. ‘None of this foreign corporation’s funding is disclosed in any way,’ the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee noted in 2016.
Unsurprisingly, the finances of all these anti-fracking groups are opaque, and as they are not registered charities, they are not obliged to reveal the sources of their donations
‘This is clearly a deceitful way to hide the source of millions of dollars that are active in our system, attempting to effect political change.’
There can be very little doubt that the ultimate source has to be Russia. In 2017, the US Congress Committee on Science, Space and Technology wrote: ‘Although the source of Klein’s capital has not been documented… deep connections to the Russian government and energy sector strongly suggest it is the source of Klein’s capital.’
It is now time for Britain’s anti-fracking and other environmental lobbying groups to be transparent about the sources of their income. The words of the former secretary-general of Nato and those of American lawmakers simply can no longer be ignored.
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March 15, 2022 at 10:39AM
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