Post date: Aug 22, 2013 10:48:44 PM
Actress and activist Daryl Hannah joins a White House protest against controversial means of drilling for oil and gas.
WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES (AUGUST 22, 2013) (NBC) - Dozens of protesters rallied outside the White House on Thursday (August 22) to call on U.S. President Barack Obama to ban fracking on federal lands.
The group "Americans Against Fracking", which represents more than 200 organizations, held the event to spread their message that protecting public land, water, and air is more important than the profits of the oil and gas industries.Joining the protest was actress-turned-activist Daryl Hannah who chanted and held a anti-fracking sign in the crowd.
"We all depend upon the very finite, increasingly finite, fresh, uncontaminated water resources. We depend upon uncontaminated and non-toxic soil. We depend upon an atmosphere and air that is not polluted. And we depend upon a somewhat stable climate. And fracking is anathema to all of those things," she told the gathering.
The Bureau of Land Management recently proposed rules for drilling and fracking on public lands.
Protesters say the rules are environmentally unfriendly. Hannah told the crowd that the BLM has a mandate to protect those public lands.
According to the Annual Energy Outlook by the Energy Information Administration, the estimate of technically recoverable shale gas reserves in the U.S., for which fracking is the primary means of extraction, is 482 trillion cubic feet (13.6 trillion cubic meters).