Vigilance Schiste organized a trip to Pennsylvania to confirm the fears of anti natural gas activists were true.
It was big news in the media that the activists dutifully reported their fears were true.
According to media reports, they found that radiation sickness was being caused by gas wells, natural gas companies are poisoning people, industry representatives couldn’t answer all their questions in 25 minutes or less, people are being prevented from visiting sites on flimsy excuses like personal safety equipment, industry representatives don’t have the emissions of a compressor memorized, the oil and gas industry uses a lot of trucks and repairs the roads, facilities are gigantic (not barn gigantic or wind mill gigantic but gigantic nonetheless), trees are cut for pipelines, and more.
But they missed some things. Michael Sturla the Pennsylvania State representative for Lancaster County says the industry increases sexually transmitted diseases.
And what about hangnails. Ralph Schmeltz the President of the Pennsyvania Medical Society says ‘right now there’s so much mythology and angst about fracking that if you develop a hangnail and there’s a well within 20 miles, that well caused the hangnail.”
The activists of course are pleased to keep the mythology alive. It avoids serious and scientific based discussions.
I blogged last week that there is nothing for industry to be proud of in 26 incidents of local water impacts in almost 24,000 wells. A report was issued today on the impacts of a loss of well control one of the most serious incidents in our industry. You can see the article here. We share the concerns about the number of incidents in Pennsylvania but not the hysteria. In Western Canada we have had strict regulation on many of these issues for decades.
One thing the activists reported is that Quebec should have good regulation to improve on the Pennsylvania record.
We agree and asked the Government to introduce modern legislation and regulation in 2009.
Would anyone be interested to visit Western Canada to see how the natural gas industry is done in Canada?