In June, Shell Oil halted its newly dug shale-gas wells at the Yuzivska gas field in southeastern Ukraine, and gave as the reason the civil war there, though only after Ukrainian government troops had ousted the local residents (who had opposed fracking) was Shell even enabled to dig the wells, so Shell's departure was puzzling. Then, on 19 June 2014, Igor Alexeev at the oilprice blog presented the reasonable hypothesis of "The Real Reason Shell Halted Its Ukrainian Shale Operations": "In reality, the truth may be closer to the fact that company is disappointed with the economic viability of what it once thought was a large shale deposit and is looking for a way out."
The other big gas deal in Ukraine was with Chevron, and it was in the western part of the country, where there was and is no civil war. On Monday night 15 December 2014, Reuters headlined, "Ukraine says Chevron plans to pull out of $10 bln shale gas deal," and reported that, "Chevron had told the government it was pulling out of the deal," and that Chevron "declined to give further details."
All of a sudden, the idea that Obama had taken over Ukraine in a bloody February coup in order to win Ukraine's gas potential are beginning to sound a bit overblown, or else the White House, where Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden and John Kerry's friend and family-wealth-fund advisor Devon Archer were hired by a multibillionaire Ukrainian thug and gas-speculator Ihor Kolomoysky for the board of his Ukrainian gas-exploration company, must be very disappointed to have slaughtered so many people who live on the Yuzivska field, all for nothing.
Such are the risks of 'entrepreneurship.'
Perhaps Obama and Kerry and other promoters of the coup and ethnic cleansing such as John McCain will now send a few flowers to funerals of at least a token number of the soldiers who are dying there so needlessly, and maybe even of some of the thousands of civilians in Ukraine's southeast who have been killed by them -- just to pay their respects, of course, not as any sort of commentary upon those U.S. officials' sponsorship of the slaughters there. After all, Obama and Kerry and McCain aren't Ukrainian officials. They're just observers, and concerned American citizens regarding the misfortunes of America's newest colony.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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