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One icy morning in February 2012, Hillary Clintons plane touched
down in the Bulgarian capital, Soa, which was just digging out from a
erce blizzard. Wrapped in a thick coat, the secretary of state descended
the stairs to the snow-covered tarmac, where she and her aides piled into
a motorcade bound for the presidential palace. That afternoon, they hud-
dled with Bulgarian leaders, including Prime Minister Boyko Borissov,
discussing everything from Syrias bloody civil war to their joint search
for loose nukes. But the focus of the talks was fracking. The previous
year, Bulgaria had signed a ve-year, $68 million deal, granting US oil
giant Chevron millions of acres in shale gas concessions. Bulgarians were
outraged. Shortly before Clinton arrived, tens of thousands of protesters
poured into the streets carrying placards that read Stop fracking with
our water and Chevron go home. Bulgarias parliament responded by
voting overwhelmingly for a fracking moratorium.
Clinton urged Bulgarian ofcials to give
fracking another chance. According to Boriss-
ov, she agreed to help y in the best specialists
on these new technologies to present the ben-
ets to the Bulgarian people. But resistance
only grew. The following month in neighbor-
ing Romania, thousands of people gathered
to protest another Chevron fracking project,
and Romanias parliament began weighing
its own shale gas moratorium. Again Clinton
intervened, dispatching her special envoy for
energy in Eurasia, Richard Morningstar, to
push back against the fracking bans. The State
Depart ments lobbying effort culminated in
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SE PTE MBE R/ OCTOBE R 201 4 | MOTHER J ONES 51
52 MOTHER J ONES | SE PTE MBE R/ OCTOBE R 201 4
T H E C H E V R O N C O M M U N I Q U S
Embassy in Warsaw helped organize a shale
gas conference, underwritten by these same
companies (plus the oil eld services com-
pany Halliburton) and attended by ofcials
from the departments of State and Energy.
In some cases, Clinton personally pro-
moted shale gas. During a 2010 gathering
of foreign ministers in Washington, DC,
she spoke about Americas plans to help
spread fracking abroad. I know that in
some places [it] is controversial, she said,
but natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel
available for power generation today.
She later traveled to Poland for a series of
meetings with ofcials, after which she an-
nounced that the country had joined the
Global Shale Gas Initiative.
That August, delegates from 17 countries
descended on Washington for the State
Depart ments rst shale gas conference.
The media was barred from attending, and
ofcials refused to reveal basic information,
including which countries took part. When
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) inquired
pany, Gazprom, plummeted by more than
60 percent between 2008 and 2009 alone.
Clinton, who was sworn in as secre-
tary of state in early 2009, believed that
shale gas could help rewrite global energy
politics. This is a moment of profound
change, she later told a crowd at George-
town University. Countries that used
to depend on others for their energy are
now producers. How will this shape world
events? Who will benet, and who will
not?The answers to these questions are
being written right now, and we intend to
play a major role. Clinton tapped a law-
yer named David Goldwyn as her special
envoy for international energy affairs; his
charge was to elevate energy diplomacy as
a key function of US foreign policy.
Goldwyn had a long history of promot-
ing drilling overseasboth as a Department
of Energy ofcial under Bill Clinton and as
a representative of the oil industry. From
2005 to 2009 he directed the US-Libya Busi-
ness Association, an organization funded
primarily by US oil companiesincluding
Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Marathon
clamoring to tap Libyas abundant supply.
Goldwyn lobbied Congress for pro-Libyan
policies and even battled legislation that
would have allowed families of the Locker-
bie bombing victims to sue the Libyan gov-
ernment for its alleged role in the attack.
According to diplomatic cables released
by WikiLeaks, one of Goldwyns rst acts
at the State Department was gathering oil
and gas industry executives to discuss the
potential international impact of shale
gas. Clinton then sent a cable to US dip-
lomats, asking them to collect information
on the potential for fracking in their host
countries. These efforts eventually gave rise
to the Global Shale Gas Initiative, which
aimed to help other nations develop their
shale potential. Clinton promised it would
do so in a way that is as environmentally
respectful as possible.
But environmental groups were barely
consulted, while industry played a crucial
role. When Goldwyn unveiled the initiative
in April 2010, it was at a meeting of the Unit-
ed States Energy Association, a trade organi-
zation representing Chevron, Exxon Mobil,
and ConocoPhillips, all of which were pur-
suing fracking overseas. Among their top
targets was Poland, which preliminary stud-
ies suggested had abundant shale gas. The
day after Goldwyns announcement, the US
late May 2012, when Morningstar held a se-
ries of meetings on fracking with top Bulgar-
ian and Romanian ofcials. He also touted
the technology in an interview on Bulgar-
ian national radio, saying it could lead to
a vefold drop in the price of natural gas.
A few weeks later, Romanias parliament
voted down its proposed fracking ban and
Bulgarias eased its moratorium.
The episode sheds light on a crucial but
little-known dimension of Clintons dip-
lomatic legacy. Under her leadership, the
State Department worked closely with en-
ergy companies to spread fracking around
the globepart of a broader push to ght
climate change, boost global energy sup-
ply, and undercut the power of adversaries
such as Russia that use their energy resourc-
es as a cudgel. But environmental groups
fear that exporting fracking, which has
been linked to drinking-water contamina-
tion and earthquakes at home, could wreak
havoc in countries with scant environmen-
tal regulation. And according to interviews,
diplomatic cables, and other documents
obtained by Mother Jones, American of-
cialssome with deep ties to industry
also helped US rms clinch potentially
lucrative shale concessions overseas, raising
troubling questions about whose interests
the program actually serves.
Geologists have long known that there
were huge quantities of natural gas locked
in shale rock. But tapping it wasnt eco-
nomically viable until the late 1990s, when
a Texas wildcatter named George Mitch-
ell hit on a novel extraction method that
involved drilling wells sideways from the
initial borehole, then blasting them full of
water, chemicals, and sand to break up the
shalea variation of a technique known
as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Be-
sides dislodging a bounty of natural gas,
Mitchells breakthrough ignited an energy
revolution. Between 2006 and 2008, do-
mestic gas reserves jumped 35 percent. The
United States later vaulted past Russia to
become the worlds largest natural gas pro-
ducer. As a result, prices dropped to record
lows, and America began to wean itself
from coal, along with oil and gas imports,
which lessened its dependence on the Mid-
dle East. The surging global gas supply also
helped shrink Russias economic clout:
Prots for Russias state-owned gas com-
Top 10 countries with
recoverable shale gas resources
(in trillion cubic feet)
Source: US Energy
Information
Administration
GAS LANDS
China
1,115
Argentina
802
Algeria
707
United
States
665
Brazil
245
Russia
285
South
Africa
390
Canada
573
Mexico
545
Australia
437
SE PTE MBE R/ OCTOBE R 201 4 | MOTHER J ONES 53
observers were surprised when he quietly
stepped down just before its launch.
When I approached Goldwyn following
a recent speaking engagement in Washing-
ton, DC, to ask about his time at the State
Department and why he left, he ducked
out a side door, and Kalicki blocked the
corridor to keep me from following. Gold-
wyn later said via email that he had simply
chosen to return to the private sector.
Around the time of his departure,
WikiLeaks released a slew of diplomatic
cables, including one describing a 2009
meeting during which Goldwyn and Ca-
nadian ofcials discussed development of
the Alberta oil sandsa project beneting
some of the same rms behind the US-
Libya Business Association. The cable said
that Goldwyn had coached his Canadian
counterparts on improving oil sands mes-
saging and helped alleviate their concerns
about getting oil sands crude to US mar-
kets. This embarrassed the State Depart-
ment, which is reviewing the controversial
Keystone XL pipeline proposal to transport
crude oil from Canada and is under re
from environmentalists.
After leaving State, Goldwyn took a job
with Sutherland, a law and lobbying rm
continue their fossil fuel development.
The industry began ghting hard for ac-
cess to shale elds abroad, and promoting
gas as the fuel of choice for slashing carbon
emissions. In Europe, lobbyists circulated a
report claiming that the European Union
could save 900 billion euros if it invested in
gas rather than renewable energy to meet its
2050 climate targets. This rankled environ-
mentalists, who argue fracking may do little
to ease global warming, given that wells and
pipelines leak large quantities of methane,
a potent greenhouse gas. They also fear it
could crowd out investment in renewables.
By early 2011, the State Department was
laying plans to launch a new bureau to in-
tegrate energy into every aspect of foreign
policyan idea Goldwyn had long been
advocating. In 2005, he and a Chevron ex-
ecutive named Jan Kalicki had published
a book called Energy and Security: Toward
a New Foreign Policy Strategy, which argued
that energy independence was unattain-
able in the near term and urged Washing-
ton to shift its focus to energy securityby
boosting global fossil fuel production and
stiing unrest that might upset energy mar-
kets. Goldwyn and his ideas had played a
key role in shaping the bureau, so some
about industry involvement, the department
would say only that there had been a lim-
ited industry presence. (State Department
ofcials have since been more forthcoming
with Mother Jones: In addition to a number
of US government agencies, they say at-
tendees heard from energy rms, including
Devon, Chesapeake, and Halliburton.)
During the cursory press conference
that followed, Goldwyn, a short, bespec-
tacled man with a shock of dark hair, ar-
gued that other nations could avoid the
environmental damage sometimes associ-
ated with fracking by following Americas
lead and adopting an umbrella of laws
and regulations. A reporter suggested that
US production had actually outpaced the
ability to effectively oversee the safety
and asked how we could be sure the same
wouldnt happen elsewhere. Goldwyn re-
plied that attendees had heard about safe-
ty issues from energy companies and the
Groundwater Protection Council, a non-
prot organization that receives industry
funding and opposes federal regulation of
fracking wastewater disposal.
Goldwyn and the delegates then board-
ed a bus to Pennsylvania for an industry-
sponsored luncheon and tour of some
shale elds. Paul Hueper, director of en-
ergy programs at the State Departments
Bureau of Energy Resources, says the tour
was organized independently and that en-
ergy rms were only invited to the confer-
ence itself to share best practices. We are
very rm on this, he insisted. We do not
shill for industry.
While the meeting helped stir up inter-
est, it wasnt until 2011 that global frack-
ing fever set in for real. That spring, the
US Energy Information Administration
(EIA) released its initial estimate of global
shale gas, which found that 32 countries
had viable shale basins and put global re-
coverable shale gas at 6,600 trillion cubic
feetenough to supply the world for more
than 50 years at current rates of consump-
tion. This was a rich opportunity for big
oil and gas companies, which had largely
missed out on the US fracking boom and
were under pressure from Wall Street to
shore up their dwindling reserves. Theyre
desperate, says Antoine Simon, who co-
ordinates the shale gas campaign at Friends
of the Earth Europe. Its the last push to
Southern
Petroleum
System
Paris
Basin
France
Southeast
Basin
Thrace
Basin
Southeast
Anatolian
Basin
Cantabrian
Basin
Lusitanian
Basin
North Sea-
German System
Alum
Shale
Lublin
Basin
Pannonian-
Transylvanian
Basin
Carpathian-
Balkanian Basin
Dnieper-
Donets
Basin
Podlasie Basin
Baltic
Basin
Northern
Petroleum
System
Number of Drilling Concessions/
License Permits
0-25
26-100
101+
Countries with a ban
or moratorium on
shale fracking
bulgaria
romania
poland
luxembourg
czech
republic
netherlands
russia
russia
lithuania
ukraine
france
Sources: Friends of the Earth Europe/media reports
K
A
R
E
N

M
I
N
O
T
Sources: Friends of the Earth Europe, media reports
54 MOTHER J ONES | SE PTE MBE R/ OCTOBE R 201 4
T H E C H E V R O N C O M M U N I Q U S
Earth Europe, featured presentations from
Exxon Mobil, Total, and Halliburton
warned that failure to develop shale gas will
have damaging consequences on European
energy security and prosperity and urged
European governments to allow shale gas
exploration to advance so they could fully
understand the scale of the opportunity.
US lobbying shops also jumped into the
fray. Covington & Burling, a major Wash-
ington rm, hired several former senior EU
policymakersincluding a top energy of-
cial who, according to the New York Times,
arrived with a not-yet-public draft of the Eu-
ropean Commissions fracking regulations.
In June 2013, Covington staffer Jean De
Ruyt, a former Belgian diplomat and ad-
viser to the European Commission, hosted
an event at the rms Brussels ofce. Ex-
ecutives from Chevron and other oil and
gas behemoths attended, as did Kurt Van-
denberghe, then one of the commissions
top environmental regulators. These strate-
gies appeared to pay off: The commissions
recently released framework for regulating
fracking includes recommendations for
governments but not rm requirements.
They chose the weakest option they had,
says Simon of Friends of the Earth Europe.
People at the highest level of the commis-
sion are in the industrys pocket.
Goldwyn was also busy promoting frack-
ing overseasthis time on behalf of indus-
try. Between January and October 2012,
his rm organized a series of workshops
on fracking for ofcials in Bulgaria, Lithu-
ania, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine, all
of them funded by Chevron. The events
were closed to the publicwhen Romanian
journalist Vlad Ursulean tried to attend the
Romanian gathering, he says Goldwyn per-
sonally saw to it that he was escorted out.
Goldwyn told Mother Jones that the work-
shops featured presentations on technical
aspects of fracking by academics from the
Colorado School of Mines and Penn State
University. Chevron, he maintains, had
no editorial input. But all of these coun-
triesexcept Bulgaria, which was in the
midst of anti-fracking protestswould later
grant Chevron major shale concessions.
In some cases, the State Department had
a direct hand in negotiating the deals. Giten-
stein, then the ambassador to Romania, met
with Chevron executives and Romanian of-
cials and pressed them to hand over mil-
lions of acres of shale
99 percent drop. Geological conditions and
other factors in Europe and Asia also made
fracking more arduous and expensive; one
industry study estimated that drilling shale
gas in Poland would cost three times what it
does in the United States.
By 2013, US oil giants were abandoning
their Polish shale plays. The expectations
for global shale gas were extremely high,
says the State Departments Hueper. But
the geological limitations and aboveground
challenges are immense. A handful of coun-
tries have the potential for a boom, but there
may never be a global shale gas revolution.
The politics of fracking overseas were
also fraught. According to Susan Sakmar,
a visiting law professor at the University of
Houston who has studied fracking regula-
tion, the United States is one of the only na-
tions where individual landowners own the
mineral rights. In most, perhaps all, other
countries of the world, the underground re-
sources belong to the crown or the govern-
ment, she explains. The fact that property
owners didnt stand to prot from drilling
on their land ignited public outrage in
some parts of the world, especially Eastern
Europe. US ofcials speculate that Rus-
sia also had a hand in fomenting protests
there. The perception among diplomats in
the region was that Russia was protecting
its interests, says Mark Gitenstein, the for-
mer US ambassador to Romania. It didnt
want shale gas for obvious reasons.
Faced with these obstacles, US and Euro-
pean energy companies launched a lobbying
blitz targeting the European Union. They
formed faux grassroots organizations, plied
lawmakers with industry-funded studies,
and hosted lavish dinners and conferences
for regulators. The website for one industry
confabwhich, according to Friends of the
that touts his deep understanding of pipe-
line issues, and launched his own company,
Goldwyn Global Strategies.
In late 2011, Clinton nally unveiled
the new Bureau of Energy Resources, with
63 employees and a multimillion-dollar
budget. She also promised to instruct US
embassies around the globe to step up their
work on energy issues and pursue more
outreach to private-sector energy rms,
some of which had generously supported
both her and President Barack Obamas
political campaigns. (One Chevron execu-
tive bundled large sums for Clintons 2008
presidential bid, for example.)
As part of its expanded energy mandate,
the State Department hosted conferences
on fracking from Thailand to Botswana.
It sent US experts to work alongside for-
eign ofcials as they developed shale gas
programs. And it arranged for dozens of
foreign delegations to visit the United
States to attend workshops and meet with
industry consultantsas well as with envi-
ronmental groups, in some cases.
US oil giants, meanwhile, were snapping
up natural gas leases in far-ung places. By
2012, Chevron had large shale concessions
in Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, and
South Africa, as well as in Eastern Europe,
which was in the midst of a claim-staking
spree; Poland alone had granted more than
100 shale concessions covering nearly a
third of its territory. When the nation lit
its rst shale gas are atop a Halliburton-
drilled well that fall, the state-owned gas
company ran full-page ads in the countrys
largest newspapers showing a spindly rig
rising above the hills in the tiny village of
Lubocino, alongside the tagline: Dont put
out the ame of hope. Politicians prom-
ised that Poland would soon break free of
its nemesis, Russia, which supplies the lions
share of its gas. After years of dependence
on our large neighbor, today we can say that
my generation will see the day when we
will be independent in the area of natural
gas, Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared.
And we will be setting terms.
But shale was not the godsend that in-
dustry leaders and foreign governments had
hoped it would be. For one, new research
from the US Geological Survey suggested
that the EIA assessments had grossly overesti-
mated shale deposits: The recoverable shale
gas estimate for Poland shrank from 187 tril-
lion cubic feet to 1.3 trillion cubic feet, a
The Romanians were
just sitting on the leases,
and Chevron was
upset, says former US
ambassador to Romania
Mark Gitenstein. So I
intervened.
[continued on page 72]
72 MOTHER J ONES | SE PTE MBE R/ OCTOBE R 201 4
the chevron communiqus
back down. Along with other American
energy rms, it lobbied to insert language
in a proposed US-EU trade agreement al-
lowing US companies to haul European
governments before international arbitra-
tion panels for any actions threatening
their investments. Chevron argued this
was necessary to protect shareholders
against arbitrary and unfair treatment
by local authorities. But environmental
groups say it would stymie fracking regu-
lation and point to a $250 million lawsuit
Delaware-based Lone Pine Resources has
led against the Canadian province of
Quebec for temporarily banning fracking
near a key source of drinking water. The
case hinges on a similar trade provision.
Despite the public outcry in Europe, the
State Department has stayed the course.
Clintons successor as secretary of state,
John Kerry, views natural gas as a key part
of his push against climate change. Under
Kerry, State has ramped up investment in
its shale gas initiative and is planning to ex-
pand it to 30 more countries, from Cambo-
dia to Papua New Guinea.
Following the Crimea crisis, the Obama
administration has also been pressing East-
ern European countries to fast-track their
fracking initiatives so as to be less depen-
dent on Russia. During an April visit to
Ukraine, which has granted concessions
to Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell, Vice
President Joe Biden announced that the
United States would bring in technical ex-
perts to speed up its shale gas development.
We stand ready to assist you, promised
Biden, whose son Hunter has since joined
the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
Imagine where youd be today if you
were able to tell Russia: Keep your gas. It
would be a very different world. n
This story was supported by the Fund for Investigative
Journalism.
ters ofce, a Romanian ofcial met with
Chevron executives and an embassy-based
US Commerce Department employee to
craft a PR strategy for the project. They
agreed to organize a kickoff event at Victoria
Palace in Bucharest. As a spokesman, they
would tap Damian Draghici, a charismatic
Romanian lawmaker who was a recognized
personality among the Roma minority,
which had a considerable presence around
Chevrons planned drilling sites. It was re-
ally extraordinarythe level of collaboration
between these players, says Ursulean, who
has written extensively about Chevrons ac-
tivities in Romania. It was as if they were all
branches of the same company.
The strategy did little to soothe the
publics ire. When Chevron nally did
attempt to install the rig in late 2013,
residentsincluding elderly villagers who
arrived in horse-drawn cartsblockaded
the planned drilling sites. The Romanian
Orthodox Church rallied behind them,
with one local priest likening Chevron
to enemy invaders. Soon, anti-fracking
protests were cropping up from Poland to
the United Kingdom. But Chevron didnt
concessions. The
Romanians were just sitting on the leases,
and Chevron was upset. So I intervened,
says Gitenstein, whose State Department
tenure has been bookended by stints at May-
er Brown, a law and lobbying rm that has
represented Chevron. This is traditionally
what ambassadors do on behalf of American
companies. In the end, Romania signed a
30-year deal with Chevron, which helped set
off massive, nationwide protests.
When the government began weighing
a fracking ban, it didnt sit well with Giten-
stein, who went on Romanian television
and warned that, without fracking, the na-
tion could be stuck paying ve times what
America does for natural gas. He added
that US shale prospectors had obtained
great successeswithout consequences for
the environment, I dare say. The proposed
moratorium soon died.
A few weeks later, Chevron was preparing to
build its rst fracking rig near Pungesti, a tiny
farming village in northeastern Romania.
According to a memo from the prime minis-
[continued from page 54]
We are very firm on
this, insists the State
Departments Paul
Hueper. We do not
shill for industry.