Go Green

The New York Times has a story about the natural gas boom and how some are saying it’s good for the environment. Others question whether or not the boom will last. The story quotes Aubrey McClendon, chairman and CEO of Oklahoma City’s Chesapeake Energy Corp.:

“It’s almost divine intervention,” said Aubrey K. McClendon, chairman and chief executive of the Chesapeake Energy Corporation, one of the nation’s largest natural gas producers. “Right at the time oil prices are skyrocketing, we’re struggling with the economy, we’re concerned about global warming, and national security threats remain intense, we wake up and we’ve got this abundance of natural gas around us.”

Senior Democrats in Congress are getting behind natural gas, portraying it as an alternative fuel for transportation that can serve as a stopgap until renewable sources of energy, like solar and wind power, become economical on a broad scale.

“You can have a transition with natural gas that is cheap, abundant and clean,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, said Sunday on “Meet the Press” on NBC.

–John Sutter

By John Sutter

Chesapeake Energy Corp., based in Oklahoma City, hired on a former TV man from Oklahoma City to run a “news” channel on the internet. As the Wall Street Journal points out, the energy company faces growing opposition to drilling in populated areas:

This fall, it will launch Shale.TV, a Web site devoted exclusively to creating new content about the massive natural-gas field known as the Barnett Shale, located in and around Fort Worth, Texas, and one of Chesapeake’s most important assets. Chesapeake has signed up well-known local journalists, including a longtime local television anchor, to run the site and produce three hours of new programming every day.

The station will feature nightly news. It’s being produced by a subsidiary of an Oklahoma ad firm, Ackerman McQueen. The agency runs similar sites for the NRA, the WSJ story points out.