Range Resources, a Texas company,
bullied the federal government into dropping a scientific report
on environmental contamination caused by fracking, a new investigation by
the Associated Press has just revealed. This comes on the heels of two major
pro-fracking academic reports that had to be withdrawn in 2012.
Fracking,
or horizontal hydraulic fracturing, is not new. Since the 1940s engineers have
known about the gas and oil reserves that lie deep under subterranean layers of
earth – enough to power the U.S. for decades, some experts say. Developments
made to drilling technology during the 1980s led to today's
fracking boom across more than 31 states. Nine out of ten oil
wells now employ the
controversial technique, which involves drilling a mile into the
earth and then pumping in millions of gallons of water, sand and hazardous
chemicals to fracture rock and extract gas contained inside.
In 2007,
when oil companies began aggressively drilling in the Marcellus Shale that
underlies Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio, fracking became a
national issue.
Gasland, a 2010 documentary on how fracking has changed life
for residents who live near drilling sites, brought to national attention the
now
iconic image of a man in his home, lighting contaminated tap water
on fire.
Something remarkably similar happened to Steve Lipsky who
lives in Fort Worth, Texas, when
his family's drinking water began "bubbling" like champagne
back in 2010. Lipsky was able to get the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) to issue an emergency order against Range Resources which was drilling in
the area. An independent study determined “that the gas in the drinking water
could have originated from Range Resources' nearby drilling
operation.”
Then the EPA “changed course” – according to the Associated
Press - when Range Resources told them that “so long as the agency continued to
pursue a ‘scientifically baseless’ action” it would withdraw from an ongoing
national study on fracking and “would not allow government scientists onto its
drilling sites.”
The EPA also recently backed away from reports on the
environmental impact of fracking by EnCana Oil & Gas USA in
the town of Pavilion, Wyoming, after industry attacks.
But the
fracking industry is not content to just challenge the EPA in small towns – it
is now spreading money around to pay academics to publish favorable studies on
the controversial drilling practice. In the last year two major studies
published by so-called “frackademics” that gained widespread publicity were
shown to have ties to oil companies.
University of
TexasIn December 2012, Raymond Orbach, head of the Energy
Institute at the University of Texas, was forced to
resign from his post following revelations that a report
titled “
Fact-Based Regulation for Environmental Protection in the Shale
Gas Development” published earlier in the year by the institute was based on
an investigation led by Charles “Chip” Groat, a director of Plains Exploration
& Production Company, a Houston-based oil and gas company that operates
fracking and deepwater drilling sites in Texas, the Gulf Coast, and
California.
Groat was identified as a University of Texas professor and
former assistant director of the Energy Institute, but the report failed to
acknowledge that he also
held a position on the Plains Exploration board since 2007, owned
$1.6 million in company stock, and is paid $58,500 a year.
“
Shale gas has lots of stories to tell," Groat told the press
at the February 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science in
Vancouver, British Columbia, where the report was unveiled. "It’s a great
resource for this country and many other parts of the world. It's a game-changer
in terms of the energy balance."
The report said that many of the
problems attributed to fracking were common to all oil and gas drilling
operations and were due to mismanagement, not the practice itself. It claimed
that an assessment of media representations of fracking nationally found that
coverage was “uniformly about two-thirds negative,” while a survey of 1,500
Texas residents found a “generally positive attitude toward hydraulic
fracturing”
“Negative perceptions and political consequences have led to
the prohibition of shale gas development in a number of instances, at least
temporarily,” the report stated.
The university widely publicized the
study last February. Many news outlets trumpeted its industry-friendly findings
at the time.
“It is
straight down the middle - done without industry funding and
with the participation of the Environmental Defense Fund, a well-known watchdog
organization,” the Houston Chronicle editorialized. “In a world where clashes
between advocates for industry and the environment are frequently bitter and
deeply rooted, such an approach is doubly welcome.”
The tide turned
against Groat when the Public Accountability Institute (PAI), a New York-based
investigative research organization, released a report in May 2012 that
criticized the study.
“Its central claim– that fracking does not cause
groundwater contamination –
relies on a highly-specific and misleading definition of
fracking,” PAI stated. “The university’s press push around the report
significantly mischaracterizes and oversimplifies its findings.”
The PAI
study prompted the University of Texas to commission an
independent review of the study, conducted by a three-person panel
of scientists and administrators from industry. The reviewers were not
charged with assessing the scientific merits of the study but rather to review
the university's process of producing and publicizing the report.
The
panelists declared in late November that the lack of disclosure by the
university about Groat's ties to the oil company constituted a “clear conflict
of interest.” The university says it has since updated its disclosure policies,
and Groat has since agreed that he should have mentioned his industry
connections in the report although he defended his role. “I had no
responsibility to either review the report or comment on their findings or
influence them in any way,” Groat told the New Orleans City Business
newspaper.
The review committee disagreed.
“In studies of
controversial topics, such as the impact on public health and the environment
potentially stemming from shale gas hydraulic fracturing, credibility hinges
upon full disclosure of any potential conflicts of interest by all participants
and upon rigorous, independent reviews of findings.
This study failed in both regards,” the independent panelists
stated in their review.
The panelists also criticized the relationship of
the Energy Institute and the University of Texas to the oil and gas industry and
took issue with the fracking report's title.
“It should be stressed that
the term 'fact-based' would not apply to such an analysis in the sense
characterizing scientific research since there were relatively little scientific
data presented or, according to the authors, available to be presented,” they
added.
The committee lambasted the Energy Institute's “inappropriately
selective” use of material that “seemed to suggest that public concerns were
without scientific basis and largely resulted from media bias—hence requiring no
significant modification in the current regulatory and enforcement
regimes.”
At the independent panel's recommendation, the University of
Texas agreed to withdraw the study. It announced in a December 2012 press
release that former Energy Institute head
Orbach had resigned, and Groat had retired. Orbach has
remained a tenured faculty member at the University of
Texas.
State University of New YorkIn April 2012
the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) announced it was opening a
research institute to study hydraulic fracturing. "We're really
trying to provide fact-based, objective information," John P.
Martin, an energy consultant and director of the institute, said in a press
release. "We're guided by science."
Two months later the institute was
shut down amid scandal. It's first and only report, “
Environmental Impacts During Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling,”
was denounced by PAI as
“industry-friendly propaganda.” The institute's study
claimed that environmental violations declined from 58.2 percent to 30.5 percent
between the years 2008 and 2011 at hydrofracturing sites in
Pennsylvania.
“The Marcellus industry has cut its incidence of
environmental violations by more than half in three years, a rather notable
indicator of improvement by the industry and oversight by the regulators,” the
report stated. “In conclusion, this study demonstrates that the odds of
non-major environmental events and the much smaller odds of major environmental
events are being reduced even further by enhanced regulation and improved
industry practice. Moreover, the environmental impacts of most of these events
have been almost completely mitigated by remedial actions taken by the
companies.”
Forbes magazine ran with the results and wrote an article
titled:
“Fracking Safety Improves Dramatically, Says Independent Study.”
But according to data provided in the UB report, the number of
accidents actually increased by 36 percent during that period, said PAI. Nor was
the study independent. PAI criticized what they saw as strong industry ties
between the fledgling institute and the oil extraction industry, noting that the
institute had not yet publicized the sources of its funding. Although the
university told the media initially that the study was funded “with no industry
support,” a University at Buffalo spokesperson later said the study had been
funded by the University at Buffalo Foundation, which does not have to disclose
funding sources.
“The report contains a
number of significant errors and problems which seriously
undermine its central claim: that fracking is getting safer and causing
fewer environmental violations. While masquerading as independent, academic
research, the report’s errors all point in the direction of heavy pro-industry
bias and spin,” the nonprofit researchers wrote in their report, “The UB Shale
Play: Distorting the Facts about Fracking.”
PAI found that the entire
sections of the report seemed to be
copied
and pasted, without attribution, from an industry-funded, pro-fracking
report published in 2011 by the right-wing think tank, the Manhattan
Institute.
The Shale Resources and Society Institute also announced in
its press release that the report was peer reviewed when it had not been. The
university eventually
removed the “peer reviewed” designation from the
report.On November 19, 2012, after months of controversy and student
protest, Satish Tripathi, the president of UB, said he was
closing the institute because of ongoing questions over its
credibility and inconsistency in disclosing its funding.
“It is
imperative that our faculty members adhere to rigorous standards of academic
integrity, intellectual honesty, transparency and the highest ethical conduct in
their work,” Tripathi wrote in a letter to students and
faculty.
Watering down the ScienceNext year, the
EPA is due to publish the results of the now delayed national study on fracking.
Environmental groups are not holding their breath. "In its inability to find a
single company willing to test water quality before and after drilling and
fracking,
the EPA is being thwarted in perhaps the most important part of
its study of fracking's impacts," Earthworks spokesman Alan Septoff said in
a statement. "Computer simulations are not enough.”
Back in Texas, Lipsky
is still fighting a huge legal battle with Range Resources. He is also spending
$1,000 a month to pump clean water to his house. "This has been total hell,"
Lipsky told the Associated Press. "It's been taking a huge toll on my family and
on our life."
