The Fracking Truth by Chris Faulkner

Author:Chris Faulkner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780985070397
Publisher: Platform Press

Hollywood and the Misinformation Machine

Every country has a stake in how the energy boom unfolds, and each knows it. About a third of my time is spent traveling around the world researching and speaking about the fracking revolution. In great cities such as Beijing, Singapore, Istanbul, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Rio de Janeiro and in emerging economies such as Thailand and Myanmar, audiences are eager to learn everything they can about fracking, how to do it, and what it means for their culture, economy, and environment.

Reducing high energy costs, securing a reliable supply of home-grown fuel, and dealing with pollution are life-and-death issues that all the wind and solar farms in the world won’t be able to solve for a long time.

We now know that we live on top of a supply of hydrocarbons that by some estimates could sustain us for centuries, and in exploiting it we are among the most vigilant protectors of the environment. The Wild West of sacrificing environmental quality for economic progress isn’t in America anymore. It’s in exploding economies such as China and India, where oversight and regulation take a back seat to finding enough power and raw materials to keep billions of people fed, housed, and employed.

In the US, every aspect of oil and gas production is closely watched, hotly debated, and highly regulated. We have a free and open press that is capable of sorting fact from fiction. Yet it’s here at home, in the cradle of freedom and opportunity, that some of the most ridiculous ideas, myths, and misguided fears about the technology have been born and propagated. Unfortunately, as I found in my travels abroad, such misinformation has proven to be a successful export.

I was on my way to a conference in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, when the cab driver who picked me up at the airport asked me the purpose of my visit. This is roughly how the conversation went:

“It’s an oil and gas conference.”

I saw in the rearview mirror that his eyes narrowed.

“Do you know what fracking is?” he asked.

“Sure, I do.”

“Do you do fracking?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Where?”

“Texas, and all over the country.”

“Well, I have a really big bone to pick with you.”

Oh, great, I thought. Here we go again. In my field, a lot of people want to pick bones with me. This was not long after the big earthquake and tsunami in Japan that killed nearly 16,000 people and caused the Fukushima nuclear power plant catastrophe.

“You know,” the driver began, “I cannot believe how you could continue to do this fracking. You guys down there in Texas caused that earthquake in Japan and killed all those people.”

He continued his tirade all the way to my hotel. Nothing I said could change his mind.

Fracking practices do occasionally cause microseismic events immediately around active wells, and fracking has been linked to—but not proven conclusively to be the cause of—a few minor tremors in Oklahoma, England, and British Columbia. But it’s just delusional to think that some pinpricks in the ground in North America could cause a massive shift in tectonic plates half a world away.

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