The political back and forth over the proposed petition to keep fracking out of Bowling Green
is familiar territory to Bowling Green State University professor Dr. Andy Kear.Kear, who teaches in the
departments of political science and environment and sustainability, studies the public policy debates
surrounding the oil and gas industry.With a doctorate in political science from Colorado State and a
master’s in geology from Ohio University, he’s well positioned to survey the territory surrounding hydraulic
fracturing.The process, more commonly known as fracking, uses a chemical brine to release natural gas
trapped in rocks 6,000 feet or more below the surface.The technique, though dating back several decades, has
prompted a natural gas boom, bolstering the nation’s energy independence and providing jobs and generating
economic activity. It has also sparked a backlash as environmentalists raise concerns about its safety.Those
battles, he said, have typically been played out at the state level, and increasingly at the local level as
citizens take action to try to prevent the environmental and health damage they say the technique
brings.State and federal laws and regulations, Kear said, “has enabled the expeditious development of our
mineral estate. … Industry has had a significant hand in writing the rules and regulations on the state
and to a certain degree federal level.”The idea is more “to fully develop those resources rather than look
at the environmental and human costs,” he said.When the federal government approved an energy policy in 2005
it contained what Kear called the “Halliburton loophole,” after the global energy services company, that
exempted oil and gas exploration from some environmental regulations.Regulation of the industry has tended
to fall to the states. Industry likes it that way, Kear said, since they find state regulators more
flexible.“All states are hurting for money,” he said, “so the argument you hear from both states and
industry is it’s revenues, it’s jobs.”That flexibility includes not having to reveal all the chemicals
included in their proprietary formulas used in fracking, not even to emergency medical technicians or
doctors. And even in instances when they do, medical personnel are limited in what they can share with
others.The efficacy of local campaigns like the one now underway in Bowling Green are in question, Kear
said. State regulations trump those of localities. Still, he said, he’s interested in seeing how the courts
rule if such local initiatives are challenged.That’s not to say that such initiatives are worthless. If
enough municipalities start saying they want control and transparency, state government “may adjust their
regulations to be more accommodating to cities.”Hydraulic fracturing is just making its way to Ohio along
the Marcellus and Utica shale plays. Industry reports between 300 to 400 wells have been drilled.Kear who
witnessed the extensive exploration in the west is not impressed that’s not a boom yet. “That in itself does
not constitute a boom,” he said. More may be coming, but not to Wood County.The Utica shale play does not
extend this far west, he said. But the area could be used to dispose of the waste water generated by the
process.Fracking takes an enormous amount of water millions of gallons for each frack job, Kear said. In the
water-starved west companies pay top dollar for water.Once the water has been used getting all the heavy
metals and volatile chemicals out is extremely expensive.Companies would prefer to create closed loop
systems where the water can be reused. Or it can be stored in deep wells as far as 10,000 feet below the
surface.As with hydraulic fracturing itself, the storage spark fears that the chemical brine could migrate
into the drinking supply.The aquifer for drinking water is several hundred feet below the surface while
fracking occurs at 6,000 feet down, and the waste brine is stored thousands of feet lower, Kear said.He said
he is not concerned about imminent contamination, though he wonders what happens decades down the line if
the cement containment structures prove not to be as well constructed as advertised. Or there could be
contamination from water stored above ground.The deep well storage of brine has been connected to another
geological problem, earthquakes.Brine from a deep water well “lubricated” a fault and caused an earthquake
in Akron.“I’ve never heard of any frack job causing an earthquake, it’s storing the waste water” that’s the
problem, Kear said.Industry officials have blamed the outdated construction of that eastern Ohio well, and
claim construction is better now.Kear, however, believes that the emphasis on water problems may be
distracting attention from a more immediate problem. “One thing that has not received much attention are the
air issues associated with natural gas,” Kear said.While natural gas is touted as a “cleaner” fuel than
coal, Kear is not convinced. “The primary compound of natural gas is methane,” he said, and methane “is a
significant greenhouse gas.”Some methane escapes in the drilling process, he said, though it is in
industry’s interest to try to capture as much of that.And other volatile compounds are also released. Factor
in the leakage from pump stations and the particulates generated by transporting the gas by diesel trucks
and “its footprint may be equal to or worse than coal in the short term.”While the politics are fierce, they
are not partisan. In the west opposition to fracking has united environmentalists and some ranchers. The
ranchers, he said, are concerned about private property rights. A landowner may own surface property rights,
but not mineral rights. In Ohio landowners have to do deed searches to determine what rights they actually
own.“The Obama Administration has been promoting oil and natural gas,” he said.When an earlier EPA study
found a link between drinking water contamination and hydraulic fracturing, the study was rescinded and
turned over to the state of Wyoming to do, funded by an energy company.“One thing is certain,” Kear said.
“They haven’t done enough studies to find out the deleterious and not deleterious effects of natural gas
development. … There haven’t been enough peer-reviewed, verifiable, replicable studies.”But given our
current demand for energy “We need fossil fuel. … We’re all part of the problem.”“The low hanging fruit”
in energy policy is conservation, he said. “We should look at this debate from a demand side. How can we
reduce demand?”“I wish we could get beyond the coal vs. natural gas debate and look at how we can consume
more wisely, so we don’t have to drill more wells, so we don’t have to put up another wind farm.”