Stu Varney Boots Gasland Fraud Josh Fox for Accusing Him of ‘Lying’

Fox Business host Stuart Varney booted anti-fracking activist Josh Fox after he accused him of lying during an interview to discuss a recent EPA report. The Environmental Protection Agency concluded in the recent study that there is not enough evidence to support claims fracking has caused harmful effects to drinking water.

Varney was first shocked when Fox rejected the supposition that the report meant what it said, yet still attacked the president as being pro-fracking, despite his administration’s radical environmental record and regulatory defeat at the Supreme Court.

“You think this administration wants to frack?” Varney asked. “That’s news to me!”

The interview began to get contentious when Fox tried to impugn Varney’s character by saying off-air he had told him that he would not support fracking on his own upstate New York property.

“Why would you not frack on our own property and then prescribe it for other people in America?” Fox asked.

However, Varney’s objections were based upon the fact his property is located in the watershed, not upon hypocrisy as Fox suggested.

But it was Fox’s response to Varney recalling how locals had always joked about lighting their tap water on fire 12 years ago when he bought the property, long before fracking was ever introduced and conducted.

“You are absolutely wrong,” Fox said. “I do believe you are lying right now.”

And that was all she wrote for Fox, who will not only likely never appear on FOX Business again but any one of the sister FOX News Channel cable networks.

“Lying?” Varney asked. “The interview is over, young man! I am not lying. I did it myself. Thank you. Goodbye. You are out of here, son! You are out of here! Don’t call me a liar! Don’t do that, son! Cut. That’s it. Thank you very much. Will you please leave?”

For Josh Fox, a radical environmentalist best known for directing the fraud-ridden “documentary” film Gasland, to accuse anyone of being a liar is rich to say the least. Below is the iconic “Flaming Faucet” scene from Gasland, which Fox bet his own credibility on, as well as the credibility of the film and the entire anti-fracking movement. It was also the first act of deception by Fox uncovered by those in the media who actually care about reporting the truth.

Powerful scene, isn’t it? However, the problem is that two years before the release of Gasland, Colorado regulators had investigated that exact same case and determined hydraulic fracturing and oil and gas development had nothing to do with it.

“There are no indications of oil & gas related impacts to water well,” according to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission report. In response to the blowback that followed in the aftermath of the film’s release, the COGCC once again clarified that the landowner’s water well “contained biogenic gas that was not related to oil and gas activity.”

But Fox wasn’t finished. In 2013, the release of Gasland Part II plastered another iconic scene showing a man in Parker County, Texas, lighting the end of a garden hose on fire, which the viewers (and targets, i.e. persuadable younger Americans) are supposed to believe is a result of fracking.

Except, according to a 2012 ruling of the Texas District Court, the landowner in the film conspired with a local consultant to “intentionally attach a garden hose to a gas vent — not to a water line — and then light and burn the gas from the end of the nozzle of the hose.”

So, what beef does Mr. Fox, who also lied about his own backstory (more on that below), have with the most liberal and environmentally active EPA the country has ever seen?

As the Texas court said, the “demonstration was not done for scientific study but to provide local and national news media a deceptive video, calculated to alarm the public into believing the water was burning … [and] alarm the EPA.”

And alarm the EPA it did.

Al “Crucify Them” Armendariz, a senior EPA official, initially worked with activists and Fox to request an endangerment order against the operator of the wells, Range Resources. Unfortunately, for Fox, the activists and the EPA, thorough geochemical gas fingerprinting concluded a natural source for what methane they did find in the area. Fracking had nothing to do with it and an EPA official later admitted under oath that the agency had not even bothered to conducted fingerprinting to find the source.

In 2012, the EPA dropped its case and Mr. Fox as quickly as they had carelessly picked both of them up.

“Range Resources’ Parker County gas wells did not contaminate groundwater,” the Texas Railroad Commission concluded and stated after the EPA dropped the order.

No wonder why Mr. Fox is hostile not only to Mr. Varney, a pro-fracking and pro-domestic energy advocate, but also to the diametrically opposed EPA.

More Pundit’s Perspective

Back to the backstory on Mr. Fox, shall we? The following is the transcript of Mr. Fox’s comments in the beginning of Gasland:

One day I got a letter in the mail. It was from a natural gas company. The letter told me that my land was on top of a formation that was called the Marcellus Shale which stretched across Pennsylvania…New York…Ohio…and West Virginia and that the Marcellus shale was the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.

I could lease my land to this company and I would receive a signing bonus of $4,750 an acre. Having 19.5 acres that was nearly $100,000…right there in my hand. Could it be that easy?

First, the lease was a draft developed by the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance (NWPOA), not a gas company lease. Second, it was drawn up after Fox said he received his offer, not before it. When confronted with these little discrepancies, Fox changed his story and admitted it was the NWPOA lease. He then went on to claim he and/or his father — though he wasn’t sure — had been members. His father was the actual owner, it turns out, and Fox claimed he dropped out before being forced to sign.

Except, no one was forced to sign nor did anyone even receive a letter in the mail. But, according to NWPOA official Betty Sutliff, the lies are even deeper and harder to keep up with. Below is her statement to Natural Gas Now:

Josh claimed he was part of the landowner pool that developed the lease and got the same lease as the farmers, even saying, “Duh!” He said they “formally” dropped out “at the stage when they said ok, you have to sign this.”

This presents several new problems for Josh as far as telling the truth. First there was no formal way of dropping out of NWPOA. The members were never under any obligation to remain members and were never required to sign anything.

In reality, NWPOA membership was always fluid with any number of people leaving to sign with another company, unable for whatever reason to stay the course with NWPOA. Even when it came down to crunch time, no one was forced to sign a lease and that was made very clear to the membership. It was not a group lease. Each member received his/her very own lease to either sign or not sign.

But, Fox said they dropped out before signing. However, that only makes his story harder to believe because now the biggest fabrication that Josh will have to try to cover up is his statement that he received the lease in the mail, and he doesn’t have any wiggle room here whatsoever.

All versions of the lease prior to the actual signing were sent electronically. None of the landowners got a hard copy in the mail.

The leases were handed out at the signings, which were held in various neighborhoods. At the signings volunteers sat for hours hand-collating the leases. Volunteers also manned computers on location to print out the cover pages with the lessors’ names on them. The page descriptions showing the parcel numbers and acreage were printed in advance to be inserted into the body of the lease that day. There were boxes and boxes of papers printed in advance so the leases could be assembled on the premises on the day of the signing.

So, how is it that Josh alone received a hard copy in the mail especially if they dropped out before the signings? And how did it arrive in the mail in 2008, a full year before it was even compiled at a signing in 2009?

Quoting Josh, “To suggest we never received a gas lease is insane, absurd.” Well, as far as I’m concerned, to suggest that they did receive a gas lease is insane, absurd.

I would say that Josh has got more ‘splainin’ to do. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to talk about it!

Indeed, it would seem to a rational thinking individual that Mr. Fox was luck to have even received an offer from Mr. Varney, which he ended up blowing with rampant dishonesty, just like the rest of his endeavors.