Ritchie, Alex

English

University of New Mexico

1-28-2013 
Fracking surrounded by misinformation 
Alex Ritchie 
University of New Mexico - School of Law 
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 Part of the Environmental Law Commons, Natural Resources Law Commons, and the Oil, Gas, and 
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Recommended Citation 
Alex Ritchie, Fracking surrounded by misinformation, Albuquerque Journal (2013). 
Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/law_facultyscholarship/323 
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https://www.abqjournal.com/163942/fracking-surrounded-by-misinformation.html  
 
Fracking surrounded by misinformation 
By Alex Ritchie 
 
Albuquerque Journal 
Monday, January 28th, 2013 at 12:05am 
Updated: Sunday, January 27th, 2013 at 11:15pm 
 
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — By now most New Mexicans have heard at least something 
about “fracking,” the process of injecting water, sand and chemicals into an oil or gas 
well at high pressures to create or widen fractures in formations deep underground. 
 
Fracking also is the focus of the new movie “Promised Land,” starring and produced 
by well-known movie and television stars, Matt Damon and John Krasinski. While a 
work of fiction, “Promised Land” holds the potential to misinform the public and 
encourage unwise and unwarranted county and city regulations. 
 
In “Promised Land,” Damon plays Steve Butler, the pitchman for a natural gas 
company that desires to drill new wells in a small farming town, and Krasinski plays 
environmental activist Dustin Noble, who comes to town to stop Butler and convince 
the town to vote down fracking in their community. 
 
Contrary to the bulk of evidence, “Promised Land” suggests in disturbing scenes that 
fracking is highly dangerous for local communities. In the film, a retired MIT-educated 
engineer-turned-high-school science teacher urges town residents to vote against 
fracking because it pollutes groundwater and scorches farmland, leaving dead cows 
in its wake. In another scene, environmental activist Noble illustrates fracking to a 
class of young schoolchildren by punching holes in a plastic bag containing 
household chemicals, spilling the chemicals over a cardboard farm and then setting 
the farm on fire. 
 
In reality, a fracked oil or gas well includes several layers of steel pipe and cement, 
with the fracking itself confined to formations that are hundreds or thousands of feet 
below any shallow freshwater aquifers. The Environmental Protection Agency has 
attempted to connect fracking to groundwater pollution with little success. EPA’s 
most recent findings relating to Pavillion, Wyo., conflicted sharply with findings of 
the U.S. Geological Survey that were conducted alongside the related EPA tests. 
Many in industry argue that fracking has never been credibly tied to groundwater 
contamination. 
 
As to air pollution, extensive EPA regulations just became effective in October to 
control emissions from oil and gas operations, including during the completion of 
hydraulically fractured wells. 
 
This is not to say that fracking is without any risks at all, but the attendant risks are 
controlled and minimized by both existing regulations and technological advances in 
drilling. 
 
The viewing public may not be aware that the film is little more than sensationalist 
fiction, the implication of which is that oil and gas companies are evil and that 
fracking kills people. Indeed, as several of the scenes in “Promised Land” played out, I 
could hear the gasps around the theater. 
 
As I exited the theater, a moviegoer said out loud to a man who seemed to be her 
spouse, “I can’t believe they can just kill people to get natural gas.” 
 
Such impressions are dangerous in the sense that they can infect policymaking 
related to fracking in particular and oil and gas in general, an industry that 
contributed $2.4 billion in New Mexico state and local revenues in 2011 alone. 
 
By combining fracking with horizontal drilling technologies, the oil and gas industry 
is poised to propel the U.S. to a net exporter of natural gas and, according to recent 
estimates of the International Energy Agency, the world’s largest producer of oil by 
2020. 
 
As reported in the Journal, state legislators have advanced an amendment to the 
state Constitution passed by voters in 1986 prohibiting local governments from 
passing gun bans in order to avoid a hodgepodge of local laws passed in an 
“emotional state.” State legislators should consider similar action to make clear that 
the New Mexico Oil and Gas Act preempts local regulation, or be prepared for future 
legal battles and the potential impact on all New Mexicans of decreased oil and gas 
revenues and related impacts on education and essential services. 
 
Copyright © 2016, Albuquerque Journal | Albuquerque, N.M. 
 


Fracking surrounded by misinformation

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