Energy Issues

 Vol. 233 No. 6

This just in—the state of Vermont has banned hydraulic fracturing. It is the first state in the U.S. to do so, although New York has a temporary moratorium on fracturing. According to the Wall Street Journal¹, Democratic Governor Peter Shumlin signed the law on May 16 at a Statehouse ceremony surrounded by environmentalists and Twinfield Union School students, who pushed for the ban. Environmentalists don’t surprise me. But schoolkids?

Really, schoolkids had something to do with getting a law banning fracturing passed? Schoolkids are worried about the danger of hydraulic fracturing which, so far as I know, has not resulted in a single fatality among the general public? The same kids who adore high school football, a game that killed 11 young men in the U.S. last year, alone (although it does appear that Twinfield Union School does not have a football team)? The same group of kids who account for nearly one-third of all fatal automobile accidents? Do you suppose they would push for a ban on driving for their age group?

If you think the idiocy ends there, think again. What we have here is a classic NIMBY (not in my backyard) position. While signing the bill into law, Shumlin stated, “Let the other states be the guinea pigs” for hydraulic fracturing. Gutsy move, if you ask me.

But Shumlin was not finished. At the signing ceremony he noted that “human beings survived for thousands and thousands of years without oil and without natural gas.” Indeed, they did, but also without modern transportation, refrigeration, many modern medicines, widespread electricity, synthetic materials, such as plastic, and almost everything else we take for granted today. The good governor may want to go back to riding a horse to work, while enjoying an average life span of 40-something years, but I don’t.

Elsewhere in the talk, Shumlin noted that “the science on fracking is uncertain at best.” If that is true after 63 years of fracturing, and more than a half-million frac jobs, how much faith can we put in cell phones, microwaves and electronic computers, all more recent technologies that have been linked to health hazards? Of course, all this is dreadful political pandering. No one I have spoken to sees much, if any, oil and gas development activity for Vermont. The move is much akin to banning the keeping of Tyrannosaurus Rex’s as pets in Paris.

The facts contradict Shumlin. If you think my criticism is harsh, let’s look at the other side of the coin. Freeing Up Energy: Hydraulic Fracturing: Unlocking America’s Natural Gas Resources, from the American Petroleum Institute²,  contains some interesting, and valuable, estimates of the economic and employment benefits of development of the Marcellus shale. According to economists and industry experts at Penn State³, for example, development of the Marcellus Shale has the potential to create the second-largest natural gas field in the world. A recent study estimates that in 2009, development of this resource added more than 44,000 new jobs in Pennsylvania, $389 million in state and local tax revenue, over $1billion in federal tax revenue, and nearly $4 billion in value added to the state’s economy. Similarly, in West Virginia, it created more than 13,000 new jobs, and contributed over $220 million in federal, state and local tax revenue, and $939 million in value added to the state’s economy.⁴

According to the study, over the next decade, development of the Marcellus shale could generate nearly 300,000 new jobs, over $6 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue, and nearly $25 billion in value added to the economy by 2020.

Some might forgive Shumlin if this were just a misguided effort to protect the citizens of Vermont. But, let’s not be that naive. The Vermont Public Interest Research Group’s executive director, Paul Burns, who spoke at the bill’s signing, traveled to a rally in Albany, New York, the day preceding the signing, to carry the news to critics of hydraulic fracturing in that state. That, at a time when New York  is trying to come to grips with whether they want to extend the moratorium on fracturing. It’s one thing to ban fracturing in a state where it probably will never happen anyway, but quite another to attempt to export that stance to a state that could sorely use the resources recovered from fracturing, not to mention the immense economic benefits that accompany their development.

If Shumlin truly believes Vermont, and adjacent states, can live without oil and gas, as our ancestors did for thousands of years, maybe they should ban oil and gas completely. I am for that. As a resident of the largest oil- and gas-producing state in the U.S., I resent Shumlin’s stance. It is, I have to conclude, okay with Shumlin for us Texans, and residents of other producing states, to be put in harm’s way to supply the Northeast with oil and gas, but heaven forbid that residents of that charmed section of the country be subjected to any danger, even if it is imagined, to contribute to their own supply. In my opinion, the Vermont ban requires the reissue of a popular bumper sticker from about 25 years ago, when Easterners were supporting a ban on drilling off the East Coast. Perhaps your remember it. It read, “Let the bastards freeze in the dark.”   

1. http://online.wsj.com/article/AP10b999dedb2646d2a752df3cd2d176f2.html
2. http://www.api.org/~/media/Files/Policy/Exploration/HYDRAULIC_FRACTURING_PRIMER.ashx
3. Considine, Timothy J., Robert Watson and Seth Blumsack, “The Economic Impacts of the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Play: An Update,” Pennsylvania State University, May 24, 2010.
4. Timothy J. Considine, “The Economic Impacts of the Marcellus Shale: Implications for New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia,” Natural Resources Economics, Inc., July 14, 2010.