The state ‘s economy got a lift when last
year Poland’s state-owned gas company agreed for the next five years to buy
liquified natural gas shipped out of Cameron Parish. Tired of having Vladimir
Putin use its gas supply to their country as a foreign policy cudgel, last
summer the Poles began importing LNG from Louisiana. From its facility Cheniere
Energy began exporting to 18 countries last year that could bring into the
state hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
This bonanza comes courtesy of greater domestic
gas supply derived from hydraulic fracturing. Most of Poland’s nearby neighbors
with gas deposits have
outlawed this process that pries open subterranean gas seams, as have two
states with ocean-going ports, New York and Maryland, and several counties in
California. Removal of these potentially lower-cost suppliers from the
marketplace allowed Louisiana to scoop up Poland’s business.
Long comfortable with energy exploration and production, and blessed with fossil fuel resources, Louisiana’s familiarity with the industry generally discourages feeling trepidation towards “fracking.” Yet as fracking has become common over the past decade, in other parts of the country or world a combination of politicization of science and ignorance has produced opposition to it often bordering on the hysterical.
Even Louisiana can’t escape entirely such unwarranted
handwringing. In St. Tammany Parish, a group unsuccessfully sued to prevent planned
fracking of a well, which the explorer eventually deferred anyway for economicreasons.
Fracking opponents claim the process allegedly
causes harmful earthquakes and health complications from pollution. Stripping
away the hype, history shows that, when drillers
follow proper regulations, neither happens.
In a study of the increased seismic activity
surrounding areas with extensive drilling activity, the U.S. Geological Survey
concluded fracking causes earthquakes, but of such small magnitude as to do no
harm. Any significant
tremors measured with fracking involved came not from the process itself
but from disposal of wastewater, its byproduct. Stringent storage or recycling
requirements negate this problem.
And in seven decades of fracking, not one case has
appeared where fracking fluid – which is
99 percent sand and water with the remaining cocktail of chemicals found in
products typically stored under the kitchen sink – provably has seeped into
drinking water. The most
recent such study in West Virginia showed no contamination from fracking.
This follows an Environmental Protection Agency
report last year that declared it found no evidence that fracking polluted
water, although that could happen “under some circumstances” – such as
injecting “hydraulic fracturing fluids directly into groundwater resources” – but
noted it could not completely rule out the more general possibility without
more research. Even a report often cited by fracking opponents (and disputed by
the state) that attempted to link shallow fracking to toxic chemicals in
Wyoming aquifers cannot show it as the cause.
Nor has any study concluded that air pollution
associated with fracking significantly contributes to developing disease. The most
recent effort in this regard estimates that maximum exposure to the process
gives odds of one in 25 million to contract cancer.
Fortunately, Louisiana elected officials and
regulators have taken a measured, scientific approach to the issue that has
promoted safe and plentiful extraction. The resulting abundance led to
Cheniere’s LNG facility and the economic benefits it bestows on the state: jobs
and tax revenues badly needed as well as lower energy bills.
And, it puts the state
in the forefront of the country’s surge to become the world’s largest energy
producer. With the state
fighting an image of being one of, if not one of the worst, states in which to
live in the U.S., this development only can be positive.
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