It’s a lot more interesting question this week, and not just because the anti-frackers are stirring up hysteria in St. Tammany Parish here in Louisiana and in Denton, Texas, where local politicians are griping about air quality from natural gas drilling but want to attract the soon-to-be-relocated Sriracha pepper sauce plant (whose current California neighbors are running it off for its offense to air quality).

No, the reason it’s worth asking who the money is behind the anti-fracking crowd is that in Europe, it turns out Vladimir Putin is behind the movement.

Russian agents are secretly working with environmental campaigners to halt fracking operations in the UK and the rest of Europe, the head of Nato warned yesterday.

Vladimir Putin’s government has ‘engaged actively’ with green groups and protesters in a sophisticated operation aimed at maintaining Europe’s reliance on energy exports from Moscow, said Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

He said the Russians had mounted a highly developed disinformation campaign to undermine attempts to exploit alternative energy sources such as shale gas.

Moves to start fracking in the UK have been disrupted following a sustained campaign by environmentalists that has created fears about its impact.

Speaking at the Chatham House foreign affairs think-tank in London, Mr Rasmussen said: ‘I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.’

We already know that Image Nation Abu Dhabi, a film investment concern funded by a government made up of oil sheikhs, was the money behind Matt Damon’s anti-fracking propaganda flick Promised Land. Another anti-fracking propaganda film, Josh Fox’s Gasland, was funded by deceased Venezuelan petrotyrant Hugo Chavez. We also know many of the anti-fracking nonprofits currently operating in this country are getting checks from George Soros, who has substantial investments in shale drilling companies and a lot of offshore energy concerns which would benefit from a slowdown in fracking here in America.

It would sure be interesting to have all the cards on the table, though, and to have full disclosure of who funds the anti-fracking movement. With the prospect of American energy independence arising from fracking, and the beneficial geopolitical and economic changes which could arise from it, there are definitely some powerful and perhaps even hostile interests it would benefit the public to know are involved.

If that is in fact that case, of course. Like it appears to be in Europe.