Hillary's "200,000 jobs" located ...

... in Poland.

Back in the year 2000, when Hillary Clinton was wearing a Yankee cap and running for stepping stone to the White House Senator from New York, she won hearts and minds of Upstate voters by promising to bring us 200,000 new jobs.  As you may recall, we elected Mrs. Clinton, but Upstate continued to loose another 32,400 jobs before she bailed out of New York to become Obama's Secretary of State.

Surely the "smartest woman in the word" wasn't wrong about her ability to create jobs.  In fact, Mrs. Clinton is indeed supporting a wave of prosperity and job growth - in Europe!  Per the State Department's official website, "Offices reporting Directly to the Secretary, Global Shale Gas Initiative," Hillary explains how US taxpayers are supporting shale gas drilling ("fracking") in areas other than Upstate New York:

The Department of State (DOS) launched the Global Shale Gas Initiative (GSGI) in April 2010 in order to help countries seeking to utilize their unconventional natural gas resources to identify and develop them safely and economically. Shale gas is one of the most rapidly expanding trends in onshore U.S. oil and gas exploration and production.

To date, partnerships under GSGI have been announced with China, India, Jordan and Poland, with bilateral agreements possible with several other additional countries.

Yes, fracking jobs are on finally the way to a long neglected rural backwater - not in the Finger Lakes, however, but rather Nowa Wieś Lęborska County, Poland.

In the wide open Polish countryside, wind bends trees over towards the narrow roads and whistles against the side of a van driving along a weaving route to an emerging hot spot on the global energy map. “This is the county hall,” says host Ryszard Wittke, the mayor of Nowa Wieś Lęborska County. He points to an unremarkable building that badly needs a paint job. “It is going to get renovated,” he adds quickly. “And so is the road of death. They are going to start working on it in May.” Before his guests can ask if this rural lane is the one with the scary nickname and how it was earned, the mayor calls attention to a row of nice houses. “We do have some people here that are well off, you know,” says Wittke.

The affluent homeowners are not the majority. Not by a long shot. Formerly an area of many collective farms, Wittke’s county is poor even by Polish standards. The average income is the minimum wage of around 1,200 zloty a month or about $430. It seemed absurd to read the mayor’s prediction in a regional newspaper that the inhabitants of Nowa Wieś Lęborska County will soon live like the people of Kuwait.

But such bold statements, while possibly exaggerated, are rooted in fact. Wittke’s county is the site of Poland’s first exploratory shale gas drilling. One well, named LE1 Łebień, is being drilled by ConocoPhillips in co-operation with Lane Energy, a subsidiary of 3Legs Resources. With the notable exception of a drilling rig that had to be transported a long distance, the site was ready to go by late spring. It took 33 days to drill to a depth of 3,100 meters.

Follow the link above for Patrycja Romanowska's excellent article in Alberta Oil Magazine.  

Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration are helping US and Canadian energy companies bring prosperity to Poland, while at the same time working hard to keep Upstate freezing in the dark.