Matt Damon’s Anti-Fracking Movie Financed by Oil-Rich Arab Nation

A new film starring Matt Damon presents American oil and natural gas producers as money-grubbing villains purportedly poisoning rural American towns. It is therefore of particular note that it is financed in part by the royal family of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.

The creators of Promised Land have gone to absurd lengths to vilify oil and gas companies, as Scribe’s Michael Sandoval noted Wednesday. Since recent events have demonstrated the relative environmental soundness of hydraulic fracturing – a technique for extracting oil and gas from shale formations – Promised Land’s script has been altered to make doom-saying environmentalists the tools of oil companies attempting to discredit legitimate “fracking” concerns.

While left-leaning Hollywood often targets supposed environmental evildoers, Promised Land was also produced “in association with” Image Media Abu Dhabi, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Media, according to the preview’s list of credits. A spokesperson with DDA Public Relations, which runs PR for Participant Media, the company that developed the film fund backing Promised Land, confirmed that AD Media is a financier. The company is wholly owned by the government of the UAE.

The UAE, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), has a stake in the future of the American fossil fuel industry. Hydraulic fracturing has increased the United States’ domestic supply of crude oil and natural gas in areas such as the Bakken shale formation and has the potential to increase domestic production much more in the foreseeable future. That means more oil on the market, and hence lower prices for a globally traded commodity.

Fracking is boosting the country’s natural gas supply as well. While the market for American natural gas is primarily domestic, the Energy Department recently approved Cheniere Energy’s plan to export about 2.2 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas per day from Louisiana. The Department is considering LNG export applications from seven other companies.

A strong global market presence for American natural gas could also work to the UAE’s disadvantage. The Arab nation ranks seventh worldwide in proven natural gas reserves. For instance, Japan’s energy imports are expected to rise significantly over the next five years. The country is currently a major importer of UAE natural gas. If it decided to import more LNG from the United States to accommodate its increased energy demands, it could deal a blow to the UAE economy.

Another source of competition might come from other industries that use natural gas to manufacture other products. As American gas grows cheaper the United States becomes a more attractive destination for industries that manufacture petroleum-intensive products. The UAE, meanwhile, has invested billions attempting to shore up its own share of the plastics and chemicals markets, both of which rely on petroleum products and are likely to gravitate towards the cheapest sources of those products.

All of this suggests a direct financial interest on the UAE’s part in slowing the development of America’s natural gas industry. Pop culture can be a powerful means to sway public opinion. While Promised Land, like anti-fracking documentary Gasland, appears to inflate the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, it may have an impact on the public’s view of the practice.

"Have said it before, it will come out that OPEC financed the American “environmental” movement and the democrats it supports."

Damon simply joins Obama, if we are to believe Percy Sutton, attorney for Charles Rangel, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and retired Manhattan borough chair. Obama’s education was funded by the largest private stockholder of News Corp., owner of FOX News, WSJ, major holder of Citicorp, Cisco, Apple, Oracle, etc. Bin-Talal is one of Harvard University's largest benefactors, twenty million dollars about the time Obama was admitted to Harvard Law, and in 2005, benefactor of the Alwaleed bin-Talal Center for Islamic Studies, the largest division of Harvard Divinity School. While bin-Talal's palace looks like the playboy mansion, complete with provocatively dressed and beautiful staff, including the pilot for his personal Boeing 720. (Watch Mansour on Youtube since you probably won't find his 70s Berkeley radio diatribes, and try to imagine the stern and militant Mansour being served cocktails by gorgeous Muslim bunnies in the bin-Talal palace). Bin-Talal has a multimillion dollar investment in Islamic studies, and not just at Harvard, but at Georgetown, Cambridge, American Universty, and other happy recipients of petroleum largess, covering both the soul and the pocketbooks of those must inevitabley convert, one way or another, to Islam.

Obama’s handler was Khalid al-Mansour nee. Don Warden, a Boalt Hall grad. and Black Panther founder, who became a recruiter for Wahabi Islam in US prisons under bin-Talal in the mid-1970s. Bin-Talal attended Menlo College in the SF Bay Area about the time Warden/Mansour was attending Boalt Hall in Berkeley.

Vernon Jordan, Valerie's father-in-law, interviewed Mansour in 1979, about the time Mansour met with Obama at Occidental, and wrote a just discovered (by Frank Miele) article about Mansour’s plans to implement an educational program for minorities in the US by the Saudi Prince bin-Talal. Vernon Jarrett was long a friend and associate of Frank Marshall Davis, both in the Communist Party, and as Chicago Journalists. Jarrett and Davis may even have come from the same town. The time line, at least, suggestests that Marshall Davis passed his acolyte on to Mansour, who, as Warden, was well connected with the revolutionary left and with Black Nationalists, Malcolm X, Farrakhan, Wright. It is a tangled web which has had Hollywood support for decades. At least Rudy Giuliani turned down bin-Talal’s ten million dollars to soften the sting of 9/11, executed by Saudi soldiers.

Wonder if Mansour, who has represented OPEC in international courts, handled the funding of Damon's film? Bin-Talal has been quite open about his influence over the editorial policies of his and Murdoch's WSJ and FOX News. They were too have moved the FAX News headquarters to Qatar under the management of one of Murdock's sons (which would have been interesting because Murdoch is a Jew, though his wife may not have been; beginning to sound like the futile wishes of Jews under the Nazis, when any Jewish ancestry became a death sentence, but the Jewish elites couldn't accept that their social and educational status would not protect them).

Obama’s support, much like Damon's, tells much about his economic decisions, and easily explains the Keystone Pipeline interference and obstruction of petroleum development everywhere except in Brazil, Mexico, Libya, etc. etc. The less we produce the more we must buy from Obama’s sponsors.

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