The nation’s most notorious fractivists — including criminal emeritus Cliff Willmeng and the man who famously compared fracking to slavery, Wes Wilson –- have been leaning on the town council in Erie (Boulder County, USA) for weeks to ban fracking.

So as expected, Willmeng and Wilson were front and center before the council Tuesday night leading the charge for a one-year ban on oil and gas development.

The skirmish comes as no surprise. The City of Boulder, Boulder County, Longmont, and Lafayette have all chugged the anti-fracking Kool-Aid. The interesting thing about Erie, though, is that it is the one Boulder County community where fracking is actually taking place.

One might conclude as inevitable, that Erie would follow its Boulder brethren and ban fracking too, right?

Wrong.

While the communities in Boulder that have little to no fracking have taken the bold move of banning the energy development, the one community that actually has fracking, has given it the OK.

From the Boulder Daily Camera:

After exhaustive public comments at meetings and via email over the last two weeks, a majority of the board found the town’s leverage had improved enough to dismiss a moratorium in favor of working toward MOUs with Encana as well as Anadarko Petroleum.

Gruber said the moratorium was introduced two weeks ago out of desperation. Now that Encana and Anadarko have expressed a desire to negotiate — and Encana submitted a letter noting it will not pursue new development in Erie for at least 90 days while an MOU is negotiated — Gruber said the threat of a moratorium is no longer necessary.

Willmeng confessed in a Facebook past that his fractivism was not just about helping the citizens of Erie, but “so we can connect to a national strategy…”

And as we reported earlier today, it’s not so much a national strategy, as interference from foreign markets.