Emails Confirm Hillary Clinton Used Her State Department Role to Press Countries to Embrace Fracking

A campaign commercial that aired in upstate New York in April touted Hillary Clinton’s work as secretary of state forcing “some of the world’s worst polluters” to make “real change.” Then she promised to “stand firm with New Yorkers opposing fracking, giving communities the right to say ‘no.’ ”

Lee Fang and Steve Horn reported at The Intercept on Monday:

The television spot, which was not announced and does not appear on the official campaign YouTube page with most of Clinton’s other ads, implied a history of opposition to fracking, here and abroad. But emails obtained by The Intercept from the Department of State reveal new details of behind-the-scenes efforts by Clinton and her close aides to export American-style hydraulic fracturing — the horizontal drilling technique best known as fracking — to countries all over the world.

Far from challenging fossil fuel companies, the emails obtained by The Intercept show that State Department officials worked closely with private sector oil and gas companies, pressed other agencies within the Obama administration to commit federal government resources including technical assistance for locating shale reserves, and distributed agreements with partner nations pledging to help secure investments for new fracking projects.

The documents also reveal the department’s role in bringing foreign dignitaries to a fracking site in Pennsylvania, and its plans to make Poland a “laboratory for testing whether US success in developing shale gas can be repeated in a different country,” particularly in Europe, where local governments had expressed opposition and in some cases even banned fracking.

The campaign included plans to spread the drilling technique to China, South Africa, Romania, Morocco, Bulgaria, Chile, India, Pakistan, Argentina, Indonesia, and Ukraine.

In 2014, Mother Jones reporter Mariah Blake used diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks and other records to uncover how Clinton “sold fracking to the world.” The emails obtained by The Intercept through a separate Freedom of Information Act request provide a new layer of detail.

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—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.