Can UAE-Backed Film Shut Down U.S. Fracking Boom?

As the U.S. changes the balance of power by exporting some of its abundant natural gas resources, a Hollywood propaganda film debuts claiming the technology making it possible will poison America's small towns. 'Promised Land," a film that does nothing to alter Hollywood's stereotype of businessmen, particularly energy industry executives, as greedy plunderers of the planet, opens this week in selected theatres.
The anti-fracking film is based on a not-true story about well contamination in a small Pennsylvania town with a healthy dose of junk science. As documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer, who is working on his own documentary, "FrackNation", has pointed out, the inspiration for the film was a spate of news reports about alleged ground water contamination from fracking wells in Dimock, Pa. "Promised Land" is set in rural Pennsylvania. At one point, Hollywood celebrities even brought water to 11 families who claimed fracking had destroyed their water and their lives. The only problem, notes McAleer, is the claims were debunked by both the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the Environmental Protection Agency, both of which found no evidence of contamination. But why spoil a good story with the facts? States like the United Arab Emirates, an OPEC member, are threatened by the oil and natural gas boom in shale formations like the Bakken in North Dakota and the Marcellus in, yes, Pennsylvania. The film's nothing more than an anti-fracking infomercial paid for by an Arab oil state. It should not surprise that major funding for the film, according to the Heritage Foundation's Lachlan Markey, comes from Image Media Abu Dhabi, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Media...more