Spinning the truth about Horizontal Fracturing
Spinning done with care
Recently there was an article on the Pressconnect website that was a typical piece of disinformation from another shill of the natural gas industry. It’s subtitle was “Hydraulic fracturing methods being misunderstood”. It was written by a stooge from the industry who wants to “set the record straight.”
Is this guy even remotely serious? How can we believe a pimp for the natural gas industry who wants to mislead us like this? He knows that the problem is with horizontal fracturing – not the procedure that he states, “has been performed safely and successfully in New York for decades, and there are about 13,000 active wells in New York today.”
There are almost NO horizontal wells in NY. horizontal fracturing has hardly ever been done here. The drilling that has been done here for decades has been vertical. And the the particular type of horizontal well that will be used in the Marcellus, the high well density that will be required, and the particular type of fracking that will be used do NOT have a long track record in NY (or anywhere else, for that matter). And there sure as hell aren’t “13,000 active horizontal fractured wells in New York today.” Not the New York on this planet, anyway.
There is a huge difference, no matter how they’d like to lead you to believe that there isn’t. Maybe they can’t tell the difference between horizontal and vertical, but you can.
The places that do have horizontal fracturing have a miserable legacy of the industry trying cover-up disasters, prevent legislation to regulate safety (they managed to weasel their way out of being regulated by the Clean Water Act) and prevent you from knowing what is in their secret fracturing solution, which they forcefully inject into the ground and tremendous pressure.
You can’t get to the truth about this stuff because the industry doesn’t want you to know the truth. It pays lobbyists millions to get itself exempted from regulations (remember Cheney’s secret meetings with these characters, when he wouldn’t even let the public know who he met with?)
Gill says, “At issue is the hydraulic fracturing process, which involves injecting a solution, consisting primarily of water…” Nice try. Once again he misrepresents the issue, which is not simply hydraulic fracturing, but HORIZONTAL fracturing (seems these industry experts really can’t tell the difference between horizontal and vertical – intentionally?)
I like the “…primarily water…” touch. Urine is primarily water, too, but I don’t expect that he drinks it. Once again, he misrepresents the issue. The main issue is not the water that is being injected (although it is salt-water, which has its own problems, but nothing compared to the poisons mixed in with the water).
The problems are with those poisons that he conveniently didn’t mention. Does he even know what they are? If so will he tell us? The answer to at least one of those questions is: Of course not.
The fracturing solution is a secret, ostensibly because Halliburton holds a patent on it and is protecting it from infringement. Not because it has environmental toxins that would disrupt endocrine systems, cause cancer, or poison the environment in other unspeakable ways.
Oh, no, Halliburton wouldn’t mislead us about that. And Paul McCartney is dead, Nixon had a secret plan to end the Viet Nam war, Bill Clinton didn’t have sex with that woman, and Bush knew that Saddam had WMDs . And I’m the Pope.
If Gill is any example at all (and much evidence shows that he is – see http://otegony.com/they-dont-even-lie-well), then it would seem that “The men and women in our industry” don’t give a rusty goddamn about “the public’s concerns about how the process of extracting natural gas might impact our natural resources.”
This is a trend. It seems like the only tactic these guys have is to twist the argument into being about vertical drilling, and hope you don’t notice. See the above link in previous paragraph to see how this tactic is used over and over. There’s no way it’s a coincidence. It’s an industry “talking point.”
This predatory industry is beginning to compete with the tobacco industry for spinning and misleading.
Don’t be fooled into thinking a Landowner’s Coalition can help you, either. Coalitions are a bad solution. Getting the “best deal” from these guys is like getting “the best deal” selling your daughter into slavery. The industry lives for suckers. It comes in and lowballs you for pimping your land, then along comes a Coalition, and compared to the industry, their contracts seem “so much better.”
Well, tuberculosis might be better than lung cancer, but you wouldn’t be standing in line to sign up for it, would you?
America needs energy. America can get it from other sources. If you know anything about this country, then you know we can do anything if we really want to. Are we going to settle for a poison band-aid solution to a serious problem, just so some predatory companies from other states and countries can make some money off our gullibility?
