When did hydraulic fracturing become controversial? The oil and gas industry has applied the technique since 1947 in more than 1 million wells. Until recently, the procedure escaped popular notice. Now, hydraulic fracturing appears often in general news reports about booming shale plays, described as often as not as "controversial."
For an operation conducted so regularly and so long without harmful consequence, this is strange. Has hydraulic fracturing suddenly created calamity? Has it been found to have generated peril that somehow went unnoticed for six decades? No. In a technical joint venture with horizontal drilling, it has raised prospective supply of oil and gas, undermined assertions that petroleum exhaustion is imminent, and made the need to develop costly alternatives look less than urgent.
Promulgating fear
Hydraulic fracturing became controversial when interest groups opposing oil and gas drilling and consumption promulgated fear about the technique. The tactic is familiar. It's in full use in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline between the oil sands region of Alberta and refining centers on the Texas Gulf Coast. The targeted operations, disparate as well-completion and transportation are, even share an alleged risk: damage to subsurface drinking water. In both cases, the risk is minuscule and the fear, exaggerated.
But in both cases, the tactic has been effective. A pipeline that should be under construction by now still awaits approval by the US government, which, according to recent reports, might not make a decision until next year. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency, having once found little risk in hydraulic fracturing, now plans to regulate the procedure as though state oversight has been insufficient.
As a way to obstruct physical activity, fear works. And against an unpopular industry about which famously little is understood by outsiders, fear is easy to foment. When people think an activity might poison their drinking water, they naturally don't want it to occur. So groups opposed to the activity tell them it will poison their drinking water. They organize information campaigns. The fabricated conflict stirs the interest of news reporters who don't know a frac truck from a sideboom tractor. Presto! Hydraulic fracturing is controversial.
The oil and gas industry has performed admirably in its attempts to dispel fear through information, the rational antidote. Trade associations and individual companies have published fact sheets and purchased mass media advertisements proclaiming the safety of hydraulic fracturing and the rich economic potential of unconventional oil and gas resources. The Energy in Depth web site (www.energyindepth.org), maintained by a coalition of producers' groups, factually and effectively addresses the outbursts of antifracing lunacy that so frequently appear.
Important as they are, though, these efforts aren't enough. With appeals to jobs, growth, and energy security, they might, if they're able to capture enough attention, win over part of the large majority of Americans predisposed to neither aggressive oil and gas development nor a prompt halt to drilling. Other members of that decisive group will discount the benefits and hold out for risk-free activity, meaning no activity at all. Antidrilling groups will target their messages accordingly, aiming not to educate anyone but rather to frighten as many people as possible into rejecting all risk and taking obstructionist political action.
Two groups
In this political contest, the industry must understand that it confronts two very different groups. One group is simply fearful. That group needs facts and—dare anyone hope?—education. The other group is hostile. It includes extremists forever opposed to anything related to oil and gas, joined increasingly by individuals and groups with financial interests in alternative-energy projects jeopardized by new growth in supplies of cheap oil and gas.
To members of that latter group, information won't matter. For them, the only tactic with any hope for success is conflict, complete with questions about motive and disclosure of commercial interests. Conflict can be messy and uncomfortable. But, as opposition groups show, it gets a message into the news reports politicians heed.
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