Drilling advances

	Vol. 232 No. 4
JIM REDDEN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Root cause of fracphobia easy to pin down

History is replete with examples of fear of the unknown striking panic into otherwise sensible and clear-headed individuals. We recall how the approaching new millennium spurred widespread fears that the world’s computer network would go wacko and effectively shut down life as we knew it. The anxiety over the feared Y2K bug brought back faint memories of Cold War-era air raid drills where we were instructed to duck beneath our school desks, as if that would protect us from the nuclear annihilation that we were warned was around the corner.

Thankfully, we never disintegrated in a mushroom cloud, and the closest most of us ever come to computer-generated devastation is the occasional hard drive crash or a temporary Internet outage. So, why were we so frightened? Because the “experts” told us we had to be.

As recent news reports bear out, therein lies the root cause of the epidemic that has spawned a collective migraine throughout the oil and gas industry. I am referring, of course, to fracphobia.

Unlike deepwateritis, we cannot attribute this disorder solely to politicos and regulators, who suffer from pre-existing conditions of misjudgment, an inability or lack of desire to come to grips with reality, and a serious obsession with political expediency that would be goofy if not so damaging. Unfortunately, the genesis of fracphobia goes a bit deeper.

As we know, the origin of this neurosis can be traced back nearly 63 years, when hydraulic fracturing became a widely accepted technique. Most folks paid it no mind and even fewer knew what it was or cared, mainly because it was used in areas where rigs seldom brought a second glance.

To see what’s different now, we need only to glance at where the main outbreaks of fracphobia have been concentrated. It should come as no surprise that most of the complaints center in the Marcellus shale play of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and New York. Ironically, many of the complaints are coming out of Pennsylvania, which is widely regarded as the birthplace of the oil industry. It was there in 1859 that “Colonel” Edwin Drake drilled the Titusville well that is credited with laying the foundation for today’s oil industry, and he is celebrated locally with a museum and park. Logic would seem to dictate that of all the states in the Marcellus, Pennsylvania would be the last to see drilling rigs as foreign objects.

News reports out of last month’s CERA- Week conference in Houston offered a logical explanation. According to these accounts, the problem is not with rigs per se, but rather their number and the rate at which they arrived.

“I think the bulk of that [fear] is happening in states like Pennsylvania and New York, where the amount of drilling growth is something they haven’t seen before and the system is not really set up to handle the volume of activity from the public’s perspective,” Stacy Schusterman, chief executive of Samson Investment, told the Houston Chronicle.

That’s reasonable, but what makes this neurosis especially perplexing is that the economic downturn has hammered communities in the Marcellus especially hard. What’s more, those areas are just now thawing out from one of the coldest and bleakest winters on record. Rational thinking would suggest that these folks would welcome an abundant, relatively inexpensive and clean fuel source that brings with it lots of high-paying jobs. But, no, the message is clear: We’d rather close schools, furlough teachers and inhale odious coal emissions than permit these revenue- and job-producing rigs on our native soil.

It must be pointed out that residents of Pennsylvania and other states within the Marcellus coexist very comfortably with coal mining, a multigenerational enterprise more or less taken for granted. Residents are willing to accept the dangers, health risks, noxious emissions and downright ugliness of mines because, well, they have always been there.

Unfortunately, this baffling phobia is far from being contained. In early March, Quebec said it would put the brakes on shale drilling until it could get a better handle on what fracing is all about. France soon followed, extending a previously imposed ban until mid-June. While both are said to have considerable shale reserves, neither has necessarily been a hotbed of drilling activity. At the time of the suspension, Quebec, for example, reportedly had drilled a grand total of 29 shale wells and carried out 18 frac jobs.

Echoing comments from CERAWeek, former Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard, the chief spokesman for the province’s oil and gas association, told The Canadian Press that locals saw even that comparatively small level of activity as too much, too fast. “We all forgot that there [is] absolutely no culture, no experience of gas and oil development in Quebec—that we were starting afresh,” Bouchard said.

According to the Montreal Gazette, high-profile Quebecers like Cirque du Soleil’s Guy Laliberté and actor Roy Dupuis, who likely never saw a rig up close, were among the most vocal in demanding a halt to shale drilling. That rekindled memories of last summer when celebrities demanded offshore activity cease and desist, even though most of them probably think of a semi as a vehicle for moving cheese from Point A to Point B.

What’s the oil and gas industry to do? In my tiny southern West Virginia hometown, an abandoned mine was converted years ago into an exhibition where folks can actually go inside and see exactly how the whole process of extracting coal is carried out. Like they say, the more you know about something, the less frightening it becomes.

Certainly, no one is advising that the locals be invited to a look-see during a high-pressure frac flowback, but perhaps we need to do a better job of showing what we do, how we do it and why. We also must recognize that as baseless as the concerns may be, given the evidence, they exist and must be addressed frankly.

The bottom line is that now, more than ever, is not the time for blanket “no comments” and an unyielding allegiance to holding all things close to the vest. After all, it’s in our own best interests.