I’ve learned a lot about this industry over the past couple years. And even though I’m reading and writing about it and talking to industry professionals on a daily basis, I still have plenty to learn. I’ll still have plenty to learn 10 years from now, so it makes me wonder how people with no ties to the industry form their opinions on everything from fracking to pipeline construction.
This month’s Bakken Extra feature, Touring the Oilfields, provides good insight into the perceptions outsiders have on the industry.
“What you hear and what it really is are two different things,” says Jake Kubela, who owns World Class Tours of Wahpeton, N.D., with his wife, Dawn. “There are so many preconceived notions about what the oilfields are like. People think it’s the wild west out there, they think that it’s just anarchy and that nothing is organized, but when you get them out there, very seldom is it what they thought it was.”
On the company’s first excursion, they took a mix of business owners and investors and general curiosity seekers for a three-day tour of western North Dakota’s oilfields. Kubela says the people who took the tour had their eyes opened to what it’s really like out there.
Speakers, ranging from industry professionals to officials from cities within the Bakken, were able to answer questions and share the real stories of oilfield work and life.
One of the main topics on the tour was fracking and the issues surrounding it, including contamination of water sources. That’s a topic I read and hear about frequently, and it gets more press – or at least more attention – than just about anything else related to the industry.
We have a short article, 5 Fracking Myths Debunked, at GOMCmag.com. The article is in reference to a book – Just the Fracks, Ma’am – by author Greg Kozera. The fact such a book is even necessary speaks volumes to the level of speculation and misinformation that surrounds hydraulic fracturing.
Kozera takes on several topics, including the notions that fracking is explosive, contaminates groundwater and causes earthquakes. Frankly, it would be easy to pick up a large daily newspaper on any given day, or do a quick Google search, and come to the same conclusions.
In fact, the top search result for “fracking issues” is dangersoffracking.com, a website that shows up prevalently in most searches related to the subject. The three in-depth articles listed under a much more benign search of “hydraulic fracturing,” from the New York Times, Vanity Fair and Scientific American, all paint a very bleak picture of the process and its effects. The top 10 results for “fracking” include five sites and one story with varying levels of anti-fracking slant, two impartial informational sites and two industry-related sites.
That’s a pretty brief and unscientific survey, but it demonstrates the volume of the collective anti-fracking voice. Oil companies touting the value of the process are never going to alleviate the fears of skeptics, but maybe good reporting, greater transparency about fracking fluid mixtures and other processes, and more impartial studies on the effects – or lack thereof – of fracking will help lead the industry forward with greater consensus.
That’s something everyone could benefit from.
Enjoy this month’s issue.
