CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“FRACKING: POTENTIAL MIRACLE AND BIG CHALLENGE”
Starting with the day in January 1848
when gold flakes and nuggets first turned up at Sutter’s Mill northeast of
Sacramento, California has seen plenty of economic miracles, each focused in a
different part of the state.
The Gold Rush brought more than
300,000 people to the state, previously a sleepy outpost. The movie industry
was the next big miracle, bringing international attention to Southern
California for the first time.
The dot.com phenomenon of the 1990s
put the spotlight on Silicon Valley south of San Francisco.
Each boom brought the state out of a
slump, but sometimes there were also negative consequences.
Now the Monterey Shale formation much
further south and southeast of San Francisco promises the next potential
miracle, containing two-thirds of all known shale oil deposits in the United
States, a possible 15.4 billion barrels of oil, enough to power every aspect of
the entire nation for three full years.
But there could also be a price, one
that might last many decades, just as the original 49ers and their Gold Rush
hydraulic strip mining techniques left tons of mercury in Mother Lode streams.
A century and a half later, levels of toxic mercury in fish and amphibians
caught there remain significant.
The gold mining of the 19th
Century created jobs and made fortunes for bankers, clothiers and many others.
Similarly, hydraulic fracking of shale oil and natural gas in North Dakota, to
name just one area, has spurred a boom.
But fracking – which sees a
combination of water and chemicals injected into the ground to loosen oil and
gas previously locked in rock formations – has also created problems with
ground water supplies in West Virginia and Wyoming.
Nature magazine reported last October
that “A range of hydrocarbons showed up in the deep (Wyoming) wells, as did
some synthetic organic chemicals associated with fracking fluids and drilling
activities. The (federal) Environmental Protection Agency also … analyzed the
evolution of the pollution plume to determine that groundwater seems to be
migrating upward, suggesting that the source of contamination came from the gas
production zone...”
Encana Corp., a Canadian energy
producer operating wells near Pavillion, Wyo., maintains there is no proof
drilling operations are to blame, but offers no other explanation for the
contamination.
The conflict simmering there could
preview what’s to come in California. In fact, fracking could turn into a
classic economy vs. environment struggle, with the oil lobby and conservative
activists already pushing for large-scale shale oil and gas development. Not that
fracking is new to California. In locations as diverse as Long Beach,
Inglewood, Santa Barbara and Kern County, it has been used for decades with
little regulation and few incidents. But never on the scale now in sight.
"Californians have a choice,” opined
the conservative California Political News and Views blog the other day. “We
can raise taxes, kill jobs and force government into higher deficits. Or we can
drill for oil, using fracking, have a miracle and save the state.”
For sure, fracking brings massive
potential upsides, starting with the fact that the Monterey Shale deposits
could bring instant properity to towns in the west San Joaquin Valley now best
known for their ultra-high unemployment rates. That happened in North Dakota,
and there are no reports yet of contaminated drinking water there.
Said a mid-March study from the
University of Southern California, “Drilling in the Monterey Shale formation
may add as much as $24.6 billion in state and local tax revenue and as many as
2.8 million jobs by 2020…significant migration of skilled workers into
California would occur. More job gains can be captured by Californians with
appropriate education and training.” That study was partially funded by the oil
industry.
Exploiting the Monterey formation also
could lessen pressure for oil drilling along the coast, where the ongoing
moratorium on new wells is periodically threatened. It could also assure a
long-term supply of natural gas.
On the other hand, there’s that precedent from the Gold Rush. No
one is sure how long pollutants from fracking might stay in underground
aquifers, nor how far they might travel.
So Democratic state Sen. Fran Pavley
of Agoura Hills, who authored the landmark 2006 greenhouse gas reduction law
behind the state’s new cap-and-trade program for fighting climate change, now
wants a comprehensive state study of fracking to be completed by 2015. A bill
she’s pushing would also require drillers to inform nearby property owners a
month ahead of any fracking operation, as well as telling the state about all
chemicals to be used.
Those proposals make sense, as they
don’t halt or even put a short moratorium on any fracking plans. But they do
serve notice that California wants to protect its drinking water and promote a
new economic miracle free of Gold Rush-style harm.
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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The
Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the
Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover
fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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