Fidel Castro has raised his revolutionary voice against a well-completion method revolutionizing production of oil and gas.
The former dictator of Cuba speaks with authority common to people who portray hydraulic fracturing as a grave threat to human welfare; that is, he knows little about the subject.
In a column for the state-run media, the 85-year-old tyrant said the world finds itself on an “inexorable march toward the abyss” because of threats from nuclear war, climate change, and shale gas.
According to a Jan. 6 report by Reuters, Castro wrote that he only recently had heard about shale gas.
But he said he learned enough to forgo New Year’s activities to write his column, calling shale gas a topic “no political cadre or sensible person could ignore.”
Why? “It is sufficient,” he argued, “to point out that among the numerous chemical substances injected with the water to extract this gas is found benzene and toluene, which are substances terribly carcinogenic.”
The man has his facts wrong. At that, he differs little from other mongers of hysteria.
Benzene and toluene aren’t injected with frac water except, perhaps, as constituents of other substances. They often do occur among produced hydrocarbons.
To the safety of hydraulic fracing, the difference between injected and produced fluids is more than marginally relevant. Castro doesn’t see it.
And his statement about terrible carcinogenicity is only half right. Benzene is a carcinogen. Toluene, although toxic, is not.
With mistakes like these Castro makes hydraulic fracturing sound like the deliberate introduction of cancer-causing substances into drinking water.
The tactic is familiar. The case against hydraulic fracing everywhere draws its energy from panic born of ignorance and exaggeration.
Castro, of course, has a reason to take this view: The old communist opposes anything good for his capitalist neighbor, such as the sudden expansion of domestic, affordable energy supply.
About motives of like-minded but better-placed opponents to fracing, arguing from comparable misapprehension of the subject, a person can only wonder.
(Online Jan. 6, 2012; author’s e-mail: [email protected])