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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Fracking documentary nominated for Oscar

UPDATE 4/2: In a letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Energy In Depth has asked  the group to disqualify "Gasland" from consideration for the best documentary award because "The filmmaker alternates between misstating and outright ignoring basic and verifiable facts related to the impact of these activities on the health and welfare of humans, wildlife and the environment." Fox counters that his documentary is "backed up by facts 100 percent," and it is the industry that perpetuates falsehoods, Mike Soraghan of Greenwire reports for The New York Times. "Gasland exposes what they've been doing and they don't like it," Fox told Sorghan. "EID is a smear organization, a PR firm that has nothing to do with reality." (Read more)

Academy Award nominations might not be the first place to look for rural news, but the natural-gas industry has taken issue with a film nominated for best documentary. The film at issue is "Gasland," a documentary from director Josh Fox, that claims to illuminate the perils of natural gas drilling. "The Oscar nod guarantees even wider exposure for the controversial film, which uses images of flames leaping from kitchen faucets and polluted streams to make an argument for the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a drilling technique where water and chemicals are injected at high pressure deep underground to free up previously inaccessible natural gas deposits," John Collins Rudolf of The New York Times reports.

"This is a great moment that will bring more attention to the problem," Fox told the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y., which serves an area where fracking has divided residents. "It’s all about drawing more attention to the problem and the families who’ve been hurt by drilling." The natural gas industry predictably disagreed with that statement. "While it’s unfortunate there isn’t an Oscar category for propaganda, this nomination is fitting, as the Oscars are aimed at praising pure entertainment among Hollywood’s elite," Lee Fuller, executive director of Energy In Depth, a pro-drilling group, said.

The industry and some state environmental regulators have criticised the film for "including dubious claims about the perils of drilling," Rudolf writes. "Regulators in Colorado and Pennsylvania have conducted investigations that appear to debunk several alleged instances of pollution that Mr. Fox’s film associates with fracking." Fox disagrees with industry claims that the film isn't factually accurate. "The movie is absolutely factually accurate — we are compiling responses to every one of their claims," he said in a recent interview. (Read more)

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