What do a billionaire, ice hockey, Penn State, a gasaholic governor, a multinational corporation, and fracking have in common? Award-winning journalist Walter Brasch has the answer,

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by Walter Brasch

Royal Dutch Shell, which owns or leases about 900,000 acres in the Marcellus Shale, had a great idea.

It wanted to frack the Ukraine. But, there was opposition. So, Royal Dutch Shell decided to create a junket for some of the Ukrainians opposed to fracking to show them just how wonderful fracking is.

They were going to bring the Ukrainians to northeastern Pennsylvania, and give them an all-expenses-paid four day tour. The tour was to begin at the end of July. Other shale gas corporations have created press junkets, where they lay out a nice day or two of activities, complete with handouts, trinkets, meals, and lodging. Members of the establishment press often go on these junkets. Some take what they're told, rework it, and put it into print or on the air.

 Now, the people of the Ukraine anti-fracking movement aren't idiots. They weren't just going to take whatever they were shown and told. So, they contacted the state's leading fractivists and anti-fracking organizations. They wanted to learn all the facts--not just what was spoon-fed to them. They were willing to talk to anti-fracking activists when there were no other scheduled activities.

 But Royal Dutch Shell was monitoring FaceBook and the Internet, and saw that the Ukrainians were trying to talk to the grassroots movement in Pennsylvania to get all sides of the issue.

What a company with solid PR would do would be to just deal with it--and hope that its side could be presented, and the people would make reasonable decisions. But, Royal Dutch Shell, apparently, has some rather lame six-figure income PR people and administrators.

Royal Dutch Shell decided it didn't want to deal with having any opposition to its PR tour. So, the company that has about $360 billion in assets--and made about a $27 billion profit last year, placing it No. 1 on the Fortune 500 list--cancelled the tour less than a week before it was to begin.

But the story doesn't end with a cancelled press junket. Royal Dutch Shell is embedded into Pennsylvania politics.

The foreign-owned company was thinking about building an ethane cracker plant about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. A cracker plant takes natural gas and breaks it up to create ethylene, primarily used in plastics. Royal Dutch Shell considered placing the plant beside the Ohio River in Pennsylvania, Ohio, or West Virginia. All three states were interested, but Pennsylvania held out the most lucrative corporate welfare check for the company, which had spent $14.5 million in lobbying during 2012, about 10 percent of all lobbying costs for all gas and oil corporations.

The Pennsylvania legislature handed over a 15 year exemption from local and state taxes, apparently without consulting local officials in Beaver County's Potter and Center townships. Tom Corbett, who never met a gas driller he didn't like, then approved a $1.65 billion tax credit over 25 years, tweeting, "A crackerplant would create up to 20,000 permanent jobs in Southwest PA." The reality is considerably lower.

Shell stated it planned to hire only 400 to 600 persons; because of the location, many new employees would probably be Ohio and West Virginia residents. Even if all possible indirect jobs--including more low-wage clerks at local fast food restaurants--were added, the most would be about 6,000--7,000 employees.

Pennsylvania may have been able to attract the plant without giving up so much corporate welfare. A Shell news release stated the company "looked at various factors to select the preferred site, including good access to liquids rich natural gas resources, water, road and rail transportation infrastruc ture, power grids, economics, and sufficient acreage to accommodate facilities for a world scale petrochemical complex and potential future expansions." Even then, Shell said it could be "several years" before construction would begin. At the proposed location, the Horsehead Corp., which signed an agreement with Shell to sell the land, has until April 30, 2014, before Shell could begin construction.

Corbett may have believed that extending corporate welfare to Royal Dutch Shell was just good business, and would spur job creation and the economy. But, there is another probability for his generosity, and it's both personal and political.

Dory Hippauf's "Connecting the Dots" series explains why Corbett may have been so generous with extending tax credits and subsidies, and it begins with billionaire Terrance (Terry) Pegula, who sold East Resources to Royal Dutch Shell in 2010 for $4.7 billion. East Resources, according to reporting in the Buffalo News, had "a less-than-stellar track record in the environmental dicey business of drilling for natural gas." Terry and Kim Pegula donated $280,000, and Shell donated about $358,000, to Corbett's political campaign for governor . As governor, Corbett appointed Pegula in March 2011 to the newly-formed Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission, which was loaded with pro-fracking energy company executives prior to being disbanded after fulfilling Corbett's vision to produce a pro-industry report.

The story continues at Penn State, where the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research (MCOR) announced that with funding provided by  General Electric and ExxonMobil--which donated a combined $2 million to Penn State, the University of Texas, and the Colorado School of Mines--it would offer a "Shale Gas Regulators Training Program." The Center had previously said it wasn't taking funding from private industry. However, the Center's objectivity may have already been influenced by two people--Tom Corbett, who sits on the university's board of trustees, and Terry Pegula.

Hippauf made a few more connections. Pegula, a Penn State graduate, is full owner of the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League. Penn State had Division II ice hockey teams that played in a 1,350 seat stadium. That would change. In September 2010, Penn State announced that Pegula and his wife, Kim, donated $88 million, the largest individual gift in Penn State's history, to fund a world-class 6,000-seat ice hockey arena; the men's and women's ice hockey teams would now become Division I athletics; the arena will be completed this Fall. While understanding a person's motives is difficult, it's possible the Pegulas wanted to do something nice for Penn State. It's also possible they saw Penn State as a feeder school to the NHL, especially the Sabres. There is also another possibility.

On the day Pegula gave the money to Penn State, he said, "[T]his contribution could be just the tip of the iceberg, the first of many such gifts, if the development of the Marcellus Shale is allowed to proceed."

So, now we have connections between Penn State, a billionaire with connections to Penn State  and Pennsylvania's governor, and the world's largest gas and oil multi-nation corporation, which has substantial holdings in Pennsylvania--and is afraid to allow Ukrainians to hear about the negative effects of shale gas drilling.

[Dr. Brasch's latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth look at the effects of fracking upon health, the environment, and the economy; he also discusses the politics of fracking. The book is available at www.greeleyandstone.com, amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and your local bookstore.]

Authors Website: http://www.walterbrasch.com

Authors Bio:

Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist and professor of journalism emeritus. His current books are Before the First Snow: Stories from the Revolution , America's Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights, and 'Unacceptable': The Federal response to Hurricane Katrina, available at amazon.com, borders.com and most major on-line bookstores. BEFORE THE FIRST SNOW is also available at www.greeleyandstone.com (20 discount)

Walter Brasch, a deeply valued Senior Editor at OpEdNews passed from this world on February 9, 2017, age 71, his obituary follows:

Walter M. Brasch, Ph.D., age 71, of 2460 Second Street, Bloomsburg (Espy), died Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017, at Geisinger Medical Center, Danville surrounded by his family.

He was an award-winning former newspaper reporter and editor in California, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio; professor emeritus of mass communications and journalism at Bloomsburg University; and an award-winning social issues journalist and book author.

Walter was born March 2, 1945, in San Diego, the son of Milton Brasch and Helen (Haskin) Brasch and was a 34 year resident of Espy.

In his early years he was a writer-producer for multimedia and film companies in California, and a copywriter and political analyst for advertising and public relations companies. For five years during the late 1990s, he was the media and social issues commentator for United Broadcasting Network. He was also the author of a syndicated newspaper column since 1992 and the creative vice-president of Scripts Destitute of Phoenix.

Dr. Brasch was a member of the Local Emergency Planning Committee and was active in the Columbia County Emergency Management Agency. He was vice-president of the Central Susquehanna chapter of the ACLU, vice-president and co-founder of the Northeast Pennsylvania Homeless Alliance, a member of the board of the Keystone Beacon Community for healthcare coordination, and was active in numerous social causes. He was co-founder with his wife Rosemary Brasch of The Oasis, a biweekly newsletter for families and friends of personnel stationed in the Persian Gulf. Later, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, they published The Oasis 2, for families of persons in combat zones. They were supported by the Bloomsburg Chapter, America Red Cross and Geisinger Medical Center, Danville.

He was the author of 20 books, most which fuse historical and contemporary social issues. Among his books are Black English and the Mass Media (1981); Forerunners of Revolution: Muckrakers and the American Social Conscience (1991); With Just Cause: The Unionization of the American Journalist (1991); Sex and the Single Beer Can: Probing the Media and American Culture (1997); Brer Rabbit, Uncle Remus, and the 'Cornfield Journalist': The Tale of Joel Chandler Harris (2000); The Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Era (2001); Unacceptable: The federal Response to Hurricane Katrina (2005); America's Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights (2006); Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush (2007);  and Before the First Snow (2011). He was co-author of The Press and the State (1986), awarded Outstanding Academic Book distinction by Choice magazine, published by the American Library Association.

His last book is Fracking America: Sacrificing Health and the Environment for Short-Term Economic Benefit (2015), a critically-acclaimed novel that looks at what happens when government and energy companies form a symbiotic relationship, using "cheaper, cleaner" fuel and the lure of jobs in a depressed economy but at the expense of significant health and environmental impact.

During the past two decades, he won more than 150 regional and national media awards from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, Society of Professional Journalists, National Federation of Press Women, USA Book News, Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group, Pennsylvania Press Club, Pennsylvania Women's Press Association, Pennsylvania Associated Press Broadcasters Association, Penn-writers, International Association of Business Communicators, Pacific Coast Press Club, and Press Club of Southern California. He was recognized in 2012 by the Pennsylvania Press Club with the Communicator of Achievement award for lifetime achievement in journalism and public service.

He was an Eagle Scout; co-recipient of the Civil Liberties Award of the American Civil Liberties Union, 1996; and was honored by San Diego State University as a Points of Excellence winner in 1997. In 2000, he received the Herb Caen Memorial Award of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. For the Pennsylvania Humanities Council he was twice named a Commonwealth speaker. He also received the meritorious achievement medal of the U.S. Coast Guard.

At Bloomsburg University, he earned the Creative Arts Award, the Creative Teaching Award, and was named an Outstanding Student Advisor. He received the first annual Dean's Salute to Excellence in 2002, a second award in 2007, and the Maroon and Gold Quill Award for nonfiction. He was the 2004 recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Service Award. For 22 years, he was Editor-In-Chief of the awarding-winning Spectrum Magazine, part of the journalism program of the Department of Mass Communications, Bloomsburg University until his retirement in 2010.  The community magazine was published twice a year by students for residents of Columbia and Montour counties in northeastern Pennsylvania and one of the few to be inducted into the national Associated Collegiate Press hall of fame. The magazine was also a consistent award winner in competition sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists, Columbia Scholastic Press Association, and the American Scholastic Press Association. He primarily taught magazine editing and production, public affairs reporting, feature writing, newspaper editing; every Fall, he taught a 250-student section on mass communications and the popular arts.

 Dr. Brasch was co founder of the qualitative studies division of the Association for Education in Journalism, president of the Keystone State professional chapter and for three years deputy regional director of the Society of Professional Journalists, from which he received the Director's Award and the National Freedom of Information Award. He was president of the Pennsylvania Press Club, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Women's Press Association, and founding coordinator of Pennsylvania Journalism Educators. He was a featured columnist for Liberal Opinion Week, senior correspondent for the American Reporter, senior editor for OpEdNews, and an editorial board member of Journalism History and the Journal of Media Law and Ethics.

He was a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, Author's Guild, National Writers Union (UAW/AFL-CIO), The Newspaper Guild (CWA/AFL-CIO), and the Society of Environmental Journalists. He was a life member of the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega, and was indicted into the national scholarship honor societies Phi Kappa Phi (general scholarship), Kappa Tau Alpha (journalism), Pi Gamma Mu (social sciences), and Kappa Tau Alpha (sociology.) He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the East, Contemporary Authors, Who's Who in the Media and Who's Who in Education. Dr. Brasch earned an A.B. in sociology from San Diego State College, an M.A. in journalism from Ball State University, and a Ph.D. in mass communication/journalism, with a cognate area in both American government/public policy and language and culture studies, from The Ohio State University.

He is survived by his wife of 34 years, the former Rosemary Renn the most wonderful thing that happened in his life and whom he loved very much; two sons, Jeffery Gerber, Phoenix AZ and Matthew Gerber and his wife, Laurel  (Neyhard)  of Bloomsburg, a sister, Corey Brasch of Sacramento, Calif; a niece, Terri Pearson-Fuchs, Calif, numerous cousins; and his beloved dogs Cabot and Remy.

Funeral services will be held on Wednesday, at 2:00 p.m. at the Dean W. Kriner Inc. Funeral Home & Cremation Service,  325 Market St., Bloomsburg with family friend, Nathaniel Mitchell officiating. Interment in Elan Memorial Park, Lime Ridge.

Friends may call at the funeral home on Tuesday from 6 - 8 p.m. or Wednesday from 1-2 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Walter M. Brasch Scholarship Fund,

c/o First Keystone Community Bank, 2301 Columbia Blvd, Bloomsburg, PA 17815 or to

Mostly Mutts, 284 Little Mountain Rd., Sunbury, PA 17801