- March 6, 2012
- Posted by: Art Berman
- Category: The Petroleum Truth Report
On March 5, 2012, The New York Post featured a post called “Another Shale Gas Attack Full of Hot Air.” The author, Abby W. Schachter, noted my dissatisfaction with being mis-quoted in the recent Rolling Stone article “The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind the Gas Boom.”
She wrote, “Only trouble with the claim is the main person Goodell uses to substantiate this claim has now written that he was misquoted, that the reporter had a political agenda and that there is no truth to the reporter’s claim.”
She, apparently, has the same problem mis-quoting me as Goodell. I wrote that I was mis-quoted but never said that the author had a political agenda or that there was no truth to the reporter’s claim.
The statements incorrectly attributed to me in Rolling Stone are “According to Arthur Berman, a respected energy consultant in Texas who has spent years studying the industry, Chesapeake and its lesser competitors resemble a Ponzi scheme, overhyping the promise of shale gas in an effort to recoup their huge investments in leases and drilling. When the wells don’t pay off, the firms wind up scrambling to mask their financial troubles with convoluted off-book accounting methods.”
What I wrote was “That may be what Goodell thinks but that is not what I said, think or imply.”
The two quoted statements by me that follow in the same paragraph were accurately represented by Goodell.
2 Comments
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Sounds like anybody with an agenda on either side can twist your words to say what they want you to say.
I heard you on the kunstlercast the other day. You were very well spoken, and it was very informative. Thank you!
Thanks for your comments.
I know it’s always a risk to give an interview especially with a major national paper, magazine or TV channel. In this shale discussion, there are well-funded, organized and professional public relations spinners listening for mistakes or things they can use to show that I have no credibility. I don’t regret doing this interview. When I read the mis-quote, I was sick because it was exactly what the PR legions were looking for, and I didn’t, wouldn’t say it. But, so far, so good.
Art