Welcome to the Business Journal Archives
Search for articles below, or continue to the all new BusinessJournalDaily.com now.
Search
Shale Lobbyists Present Case for Drilling
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Combating disinformation, misinformation and half-truths is a key role representatives of the oil and gas industry say they play in Ohio.
Thanks to the shale oil, “Lo and behold, a couple of years ago I wake up and find out we’re now an upstream state. Oil and gas production is going to hit Ohio big,” predicts Terry Fleming, executive director of the Ohio Petroleum Council.
“Anytime something like this happens, you’re going to get a lot of opposition. So our job is to get out to counties, cities, townships, chambers of commerce and editorial boards to get our message out, to talk about how we’re producing this, talk about the regulations that are in place to dispel some of the mistruths and some of the concerns that people have,” he elaborates. “And that’s what we’re attempting to do.”
Fleming, Rebecca Heimlich of the American Petroleum Institute and Mike Chadsey of Energy In Depth – The Ohio Project, met separately with Mahoning Valley news organizations Sept. 6 and 7, telling reporters and editors their points of view. They met with The Business Journal Sept. 6 at the Youngstown Ohio Utica & Natural Gas 2012 Conference & Expo.
Heimlich described educating the general public and public officials as a primary mission. She is campaign manager for external motivation for the American Petroleum Institute, assigned here because of the shale play.
“My role is to reach out into communities and make sure that citizens, elected officials and community leaders get their questions answered about shale exploration and production, what it can mean for Ohio, how it’s going to power our economy and jobs, and also explain to people how it is that we’re protecting the environment,” she says.
Like his colleagues, Chadsey says the focus of Energy In Depth – The Ohio Project is educational outreach. “We’re a grassroots initiative that’s responsible for making sure the messages about responsible natural gas development get communicated to the community in the Utica shale play in eastern Ohio,” he says.
The two biggest misperceptions Fleming says he encounters are concerns about groundwater contamination resulting from hydraulic fracturing, and disclosure of the chemicals used in the process. Oil and gas companies have been fracking wells in Ohio since the 1940s, he notes.
“This isn’t anything new. What’s new is horizontal drilling,” Fleming says. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has yet to report one instance of water contaminated as a result of fracking anywhere in the United States, although opponents of the procedure argue otherwise, he says.
As for the second issue, disclosure of the chemicals used, Ohio Senate Bill 315 requires that the identity of any chemicals that go into the ground be released “to any medical personnel or anyone else that asks,” he says. “In fact, you can go to the website called FracFocus.org and you can find out what’s being put in,” he adds.
The law does allow an exception for some proprietary information, Fleming acknowledges. “However, if someone claimed that they were exposed and they were sick, all the information would be provided to the medical community,” he adds. To opponents, “what sells is fear and the fear of groundwater contamination is what people worry about,” he says.
“The question people ask most is about their water – How are you going to make sure that our water is protected? – because it’s a good question,” Heimlich interjects.
“Water is a resource that we can’t live without” so it makes sense that people would ask about it, she concedes. However, Ohio has some of the strongest regulations in the country, she adds.
“My organization is also a standards organization and the key to protecting water is drilling the well and cementing the well and casing the well properly,” Heimlich continues. “Not only does Ohio have standards for how you do that but our industry has standards that are worldwide to make sure that we protect our water.”
A key challenge in each community is identifying the community groups and elected leaders whom people listen to, “who it is that we need to reach out to, to make sure that the information gets out where it needs to go,” she says.
“There’s a lot of misinformation or lack of information,” Chadsey says. “Folks want to know about air quality and water quantity, so our issues are anything that anybody would be concerned about who lives and works and plays in this area. So those are some of the key issues we talk about.” Other key issues discussed include protection of roads and investments in jobs.
“I’m pleasantly surprised that a lot of community leaders and elected officials have done a good job of educating themselves and they’ve done a good job of taking information people have given them and getting it out to the community,” Heimlich says. Still, more than 11.5 million people live in Ohio and “it’s hard to reach all of them,” she says.
The three organizations also are among the groups that comprise the Ohio Energy Resource Alliance, which is designed to provide Ohioans with information about the oil and natural gas industry.
All of the participating organizations – which include the Ohio Oil and Gas Association and the Buckeye Energy Forum – have different focuses and are doing good work, she says, “but we’ve come together in this alliance just to make sure that we get Ohioans’ questions answered.” All told, the alliance makes presentations at five or six events each week, sometimes more.
“We’re out and about all the time,” Heimlich remarks. “People are generally very happy to get the information.”
The Ohio Energy Resource Alliance is focusing on areas where the shale drilling is taking place, Cincinnati and Youngstown in particular, she says.
“Cincinnati City Council members seem to have a misunderstanding, which makes sense,” Heimlich observes. “I’m from southwest Ohio … the industry hasn’t been down there so they don’t understand it.”
In Youngstown, she continues, there is a “very vocal group of protesters” that has been talking to many elected officials. “We don’t want it to be one-sided, that you always hear from the other side and not hear from us.”
The oil and gas advocates find themselves contending for attention against the upcoming presidential election, Chadsey says. “But there are a lot of folks that are dialed into this issue and it’s our responsibility [to be at every public forum],” he says.
“The idea is to make sure that we fully explain and go through the history and the background and some of the technology involved in this industry, so people understand this is a very old industry,” he says.
In any meeting of 100 people, 20 are likely to work for or otherwise benefit from the industry, and another 20 will be opposed regardless of what is said, Fleming, Heimlich and Chadsey agree.
“It’s “the other 60 that we’re trying to reach,” Fleming says.
“They’re starved for information because this is an entirely new thing for the state of Ohio.”
EDITOR's NOTE: This story was first published in the MidSeptember edition of The Business Journal. CLICK HERE to subscribe.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.