Things are looking up for the fracking industry after years of attacks from the left and onerous rules and regulations by the Obama administration. A recent piece in the American Thinker details the positive developments for hydraulic fracturing (the official name of fracking). Those developments include a recent federal court ruling that tossed a massive jury verdict for alleged victims of fracking in Pennsylvania. The judge ruled the plaintiffs' suit was based on "questionable science." In addition, the Trump administration is reportedly planning to repeal the 2015 EPA rules that restricted and limited fracking activity on federal lands.
Baron Lukas, oil industry analyst with EnviroLogic Solutions, says fracking is emerging from a "misinformation campaign" pushed by its opponents for years. "Hydraulic fracturing has never, ever caused any contamination in the water supply, and hydraulic fracturing has never caused earthquakes," he tells KTRH. "Even water consumption for hydraulic fracturing, which has always been an issue, is a whole lot lower than water consumption from just watering our golf courses."
Texas has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the fracking boom in recent years, with the Eagle Ford Shale formation in South Texas and the Permian Basin formation in West Texas two of the largest sites. And with the Trump administration in place, Texas stands to gain even more from fracking in the years to come. "The Permian Basin area is about to be the highest producing oil shale field in the world," says Lukas.
As for protecting the environment, Lukas believes the oil and gas industry gets a bum rap. "They are good stewards of the environment," he says. "No matter what is said in public or by the media or by Hollywood, you'd be hard pressed to find a group of Americans who are more concerned with that than the American oil industry."