The oil and gas industry’s message on the safety of hydraulic fracturing isn’t working with the general public, so it’s time to shift strategies, a Colorado industry official said at a conference in Houston on Wednesday.
Tisha Schuller, president of the Colorado Oil & Gas Assoc. said many in the business have argued against the recent surge in interest in tighter regulations on the drilling technique by claiming it hasn’t created any drinking water contamination in the 60 years it’s been in use.
“It’s not working,” Schuller told attendees at IHS conference on unconventional oil and gas, held in conjunction with the 2011 NAPE Expo. “People are not hearing that.”
Rather, companies should send a message that stresses that the people who work in the industry live, work and play in the same communities as the rest of the population and value clean air and water just as much.
Then companies should point out the two key area of drilling operations where hydraulic fracturing could pose a threat – surface spills of chemicals and poor well casing and cement work – and explain what is done to assure safe operations there.
Schuller also notes the industry’s reaction to the notion of expanding state and national regulations may be working against it.
“It’s not working if you give the impression that we don’t want to be regulated at all or think we should be able to operate however we please,” Schuller said. “Our sound bites do imply that.”
David Blackmon, director of Government Affairs for El Paso Corp., told the audience the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent zeal to push hard against issues near and dear to the oil and gas business won’t bring an end to the industry.
While he described the current drive by the EPA to study fracturing as being motivated by the government’s desire to regulate it at any costs, he said companies shouldn’t worry about the outcome unnecessarily.
“Our industry, and most probably the same with other industries, we have reacted to EPA regulations as if it’s the end of the world, as if it would put us out of business,” Blackmon said.
But the industry has been around for 150 years and has changed with the new public and regulatory outlooks.
“It behooves our industry to have confidence in the people who run our companies and the scientists who can develop the technologies that let us move forward,” Blackmon said. “The EPA’s not going to shut us down now. We will get our business done.”
Whatever the reason, Schuller is absolutely correct.
I think its the dumbing down of America, and that the oil industry has always been terrible at PR.
But the problem the oil industry has with PR, is first the general public has to be educated about how the industry works. It is a complicated industry with many facets. And while most don’t want to bother with learning ……….and add to the pot that the only people who can teach are the industry ……..and most of the public would prefer to believe conspiracy theories about the demons that are the oil companies ….. then the end result is the teaching falls on deaf ears.
Anyone on forums such as these, who defends the oil industry, is immediately labeled as being an employee of XYZ Oil, the ad hominem argument is the first card played.
I can see why the industry has just decided to go on about their business and not bother, because it gets them nowhere and is a waste with most of the ignorant public.
The environmentalists in the country, with the aide of Hollywood, have done an excellent job of demonizing the oil industry, going all the way back to JR and Dallas. That kind of dramatic portrayal, is what the public prefers to believe.
Howdy Neighbor:
The problem with this is that a serious potential environmental problem might be completely missed.
Go back to when all of the “fracking” stuff was popularized. It was in June of 2009; there was an NPR segment on this and a few days later it was picked up in the Huffington post. The story was the earthquakes in Dallas and “was it caused by the fracking”?
Heck no… but… urban legend is popular so…
Yah, SMU figured it out that it was a wastewater disposal well near the DFW airport. Even at the time (and I was in a hydraulic fracturing class in the DFW area when the NPR segment came on!) I said it either had to be injection or depletion, and depletion was probably not an issue in the low compressibility Barnett.
Here is the potential disaster waiting to happen. You have heard of all of this “clean coal” thing… the coal folks are probably laughing all the way to the bank on this “frakking” nonsense. Well, for “clean coal” to work they need to store the CO2 underground.
At much higher rates than the wastewater injection well that caused the earthquakes in DFW.
Much, much higher.
Much higher.
And if CO2 from a “clean coal” plant leaks through a fault, unlike natural gas (which would go into the upper atmosphere), water (runoff along the ground), or even oil (there are natural seeps), it would remain near the ground and nobody can breath.
Now, current EPA proposed rules limit the pressure at which CO2 can be injected… but this limit effectively means that CO2 cannot be stored onshore in anything but depleted oil or gas reservoirs.
Thus… clean coal will never come to pass or they will dump the current EPA rules and inject at high pressure anyway….
Earthquakes.
Just google “Ashtabula earthquake injection” or “rocky mountain arsenal earthquake” if you think the DFW quakes were an isolated incident.
This is a perfect example of how political motives in the name of “safety” are really unsafe (and, since it can only advance the agenda of “clean coal”) and not helping the environment.
Along the lines of your other thread on the blackouts, yah, over 100 plants went out in Texas but your little neighborhood generator with the panels did just fine that day!
Solar, wind and natural gas… the clean combination.
If the earthquakes near Ft Worth TX were not a result of thousands of hydraulic fracturing jobs, and to consider that as a possibility is labeled “urban legend” — then what is the reason for the increase?
One injection well?
really?
so, one injection well can cause earthquakes but thousands of wells that inject hydraulic fluids under pressure sufficient to fracture shale formations is not…..
glad to hear it. now can we talk about the air pollution? maybe there is one old battered truck somewhere on the road that is causing all the increased air pollution in Dish, TX.
if we could only find that truck and ask the driver nicely to quit driving around making all those “urban legend” folks’lives miserable.
I’ve seen Gasland, and I tell everyone I can to watch it if it’s available to them, and I hope it wins the Oscar next weekend for documentaries. I pretty much figure when an oil & gas industry representative opens their mouth, they’re lying, and I don’t believe for one minute they actually care about human health if if means fewer dollars in their pockets. Now I know why in the past several years my allergies have become immensely worse and I get regular headaches. The air I’m breathing here in Dallas-Fort Worth is having its pollution doubled by the natural gas industry. Keep on talking. I won’t believe you.