On February 26, 2011, the New York Times reported that the act of “hydraulic fracturing” for natural gas is even more hazardous to the environment than previously revealed, releasing volumes of radioactive and cancer-causing substances into the American river systems we irrigate and drink from. How did the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a corporate advocacy group for hydraulic fracturing, respond to the revelations? With wordplay, objecting to the phrase “hydraulic fracturing”:
NY Times Myth: “But the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.
Does The Times Read The Times? According to an NY Times fact-check, from last week: “The method of drilling is not called ‘hydraulic fracturing.’ Fracturing, or ‘fracking’ is a process that is one part of drilling a well and producing oil or gas. Fracturing has been used by drillers for around 60 years.” (New York Times, 2/24/11)
Silly New York Times! If it can’t get the name of the process right, how can we trust it on its other assertions? Right? Right?
Wrong, on three counts.
1. The piece to which the Marcellus Shale Coalition corporate group refers was not published in the New York Times newspaper, and indeed was not written by the New York Times. It was shared on a blog on the New York Times website, but written and copyrighted by the Greenwire division of Environment & Energy Publishing, an independent news service.
2. The Marcellus Shale Coalition truncates the quote from that Greenwire article, cutting off sentences which directly follow and which show that “high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing” is indeed a new technique:
But in recent years, the process has been ramped up with higher-volume “frack jobs” that involve more pressure to break apart concrete-like shales. These advances in technology have made it possible to retrieve gas from shale formations like the Marcellus under Pennsylvania.
3. The Marcellus Shale Coalition itself uses the term “hydraulic fracturing” to refer to the process in more than 80 pages on its own website, including this web page specifically dedicated to favorably describing the “new technologies” involved in the drilling process. The title of the page? “Hydraulic Fracturing.”
Does The Marcellus Shale Coalition read The Marcellus Shale Coalition?
I’m going to a meeting of my Town Board about this issue tonight, as I live atop the northern reaches of the Marcellus Shale. People in our town are rising up against the frackers who are trying to bring their industrialized landscape to our area, and our Town Board is considering legislation that would prevent the natural gas drilling procedure from being conducted here.