{"id":12016,"date":"2015-09-09T06:59:37","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T11:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12016"},"modified":"2015-09-09T06:59:37","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T11:59:37","slug":"australian-aboriginals-fear-gas-fracker-aubrey-mcclendons-down-under-drilling-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12016","title":{"rendered":"Australian Aboriginals Fear Gas Fracker Aubrey McClendon’s Down Under Drilling Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Australian Aboriginals Fear Gas Fracker Aubrey McClendon’s Down Under Drilling Plans<\/a><\/h3>\n

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Energy companies the world over would love to think they could be first in the queue at the next big global frontier for fossil fuel\u00a0energy.<\/p>\n

Aubrey McClendon was a key figure in creating the last big energy boom in his own backyard, using the controversial hydraulic fracturing technology to release gas from shale in the United\u00a0States.<\/p>\n

Now McClendon\u2019s company\u00a0American Energy Partners<\/a>\u00a0(AEP<\/span>) thinks it has found that new global frontier in a vast and remote corner of Australia\u2019s Northern Territory (NT<\/span>).<\/p>\n

AEP<\/span>\u00a0has made two major investments in the\u00a0NT<\/span>\u00a0in recent weeks where drillers hope McClendon will kick-start another fracking boom.\u00a0McClendon built his former company Chesapeake Energy from the ground up to become a major player in the United States shale gas fracking\u00a0boom.<\/p>\n

At one point, only ExxonMobil was producing more gas than\u00a0Chesapeake.<\/p>\n

But already McClendon\u2019s hopes of recreating a\u00a0US<\/span>-style gas \u201cfracking\u201d boom in Australia are coming up against resistance from Aboriginal Australians \u2014\u00a0one of the oldest continuous cultural groups<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0planet.<\/p>\n

Land\u00a0grab<\/strong><\/p>\n

Exploration licences cover many millions of acres of land in the\u00a0NT<\/span>\u00a0and many of those are with a view to drilling for gas using hydraulic fracturing \u2014 a process where large amounts of water, sand and chemicals are pumped at pressure to create small cracks in the rocks to release the\u00a0gas.<\/p>\n

A key to McClendon\u2019s success in the\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0was in acquiring rights over huge land areas of prospective shale gas, a tactic he appears to be trying to mirror in Australia. Chesapeake Energy called this a \u201cland grab<\/a>\u201d business\u00a0strategy.<\/p>\n

McClendon is also known for his financial risk taking, a trait that caused one analyst at business magazine Forbes to dub him \u201cAmerica\u2019s most reckless billionaire<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australian Aboriginals Fear Gas Fracker Aubrey McClendon’s Down Under Drilling Plans Energy companies the world over would love to think they could be first in the queue at the next big global frontier for fossil fuel\u00a0energy. Aubrey McClendon was a key figure in creating the last big energy boom in his own backyard, using the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8829,8828,8826,41,8825,8827,5317,1041,331,412,722],"class_list":["post-12016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-aep","tag-american-energy-partners","tag-aubrey-mcclendon","tag-australia","tag-australian-aboriginals","tag-chesapeake","tag-desmog-blog","tag-exxonmobil","tag-fracking","tag-hydraulic-fracturing","tag-shale-gas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12017,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12016\/revisions\/12017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}