Anti-Drillers Now Trashing LPG Fracking

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When the announcement that a group of landowners in Tioga County, NY are about to sign sign leases with eCORP to allow drilling on 135,000 acres using waterless LPG fracking, MDN cautioned against euphoria that pro-drillers finally have a method of extracting natural gas that even anti-drillers can’t complain about. We predicted something eminently predictable: They will find things to object to in LPG fracking because, there is not other way to put this, they hate fossil fuels (see this MDN story).

MDN previously said this:

“So MDN asks, what will the enviro-left do when all of their stated reasons for opposing fracking are gone? That’s right, they’ll invent new reasons to continue covering the ugly fact that they are prejudiced against fossil fuels and that anything not “sustainable” and “alternative” is not acceptable in their worldview. It will be fascinating to watch how this develops.”

The letter writing campaign against LPG fracking has only just begun. There’s a “guest viewpoint” published in today’s Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin that perfectly illustrates all of MDN’s points. The letter writer is Ruth S. Young, a Horseheads, NY resident. She claims LPG fracking is no better than water-based fracking because: LPG fracking uses “large quantities of additional chemicals” that are present in return fluids; the process uses a compressor which runs 24/7 and is “loud and smelly with toxic fumes, and they use a lot of fuel to run”; explosion hazards are high; it uses many truckloads of LPG fluid, meaning traffic issues and hauling of hazardous materials on “rural roads”; there won’t be enough LPG to frack all of the wells (over 10,000) that are projected to be fracked…you get the idea. Cockamamie, made-up “facts” that are not facts at all but baseless scare tactics.

Here’s the crème de la crème, the final two sentences:

Let’s start a worker-owned corporation that helps every household in the Southern Tier that does contracting for energy conservation and energy efficiency and that builds renewable energy products now.

Fossil fuels are just so dangerously yesterday.*

Did you catch that? The letter writer worships at the feet of “renewables” and eschews fossil fuels—hates them really. MDN wonders, how does Ms. Young heat her home? Even if it’s using electricity, that electricity is more than likely produced by a fossil fuel. And how does she get around town? Horse and buggy? Does she drive a car, or ride on a bus? Don’t look now, but a nasty fossil fuel is in the tank of that vehicle.

One of her arguments is that just one company, Canadian company GASFRAC, holds the patent and the information on the LPG fracking process—and that’s bad because there’s no “independent analysis” of their claims. Only thing is, she spelled it GasFrack. If she can’t even spell the company’s name right, what else in her litany of allegations is also inaccurate?

The thing that’s truly “dangerously yesterday” is Ms. Young’s hatred of fossil fuels.

*Binghamton (NY) Press & Sun-Bulletin (Apr 12, 2012) – Guest Viewpoint: LPG fracking has many problems, too

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