New Study: Bans won’t break oil and gas industry

Todd Staples: 87 square miles cripples mighty oil and gas industry

If you listen to Todd Staples, the Denton fracking ban could take down the whole, entire oil and gas industry and the Texas economy.

“An unwieldy regulatory scheme can cripple the Texas economy,” he said. “There is a role for the city to play and a role for the state to play.” Source: Dallas Morning News

Staples, who was rejected by Texas voters in his bid to be the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, is now a lobbyist for the Texas Oil and Gas Association. His claims about regulation are ridiculous for several reasons:

1. There is a new study (see below) that shows local ordinances and bans won’t break the oil and gas industry.
2. In a state where everything is bigger, Denton is only 87 square miles. How big is your town?
   
3. Regulation hasn’t killed other industries–even the tobacco industry thrives.
4. How pathetic would it be if the State of Texas went broke because residents want to protect private property and their families’ safety?
5. Basing the entire economic well-being of a state on an industry known to follow a boom and bust cycle is deeply flawed policy.
6. If the state had played a roll other than industry lapdog, there would be no ban in Texas and I wouldn’t be typing this blog post.

New Study: Local ordinances and bans won’t break oil and gas industry.

Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy “ranks 9th among university-affiliated think tanks worldwide,” and “fourth among energy resource think tanks.” A new Baker Institute study found that local ordinances and bans won’t break the oil and gas industry as lobbyists and some legislators lead us to believe. In fact, the study found that these ordinances and even bans are “irrelevant.”

“Perhaps the single most important result from this study is that the efficiency of the U.S. natural gas market — owing to deep market liquidity, robust existing natural gas infrastructure, relative ease of infrastructure development and significant connections to Canada — renders local policies largely irrelevant to the broader U.S. natural-gas market,” said Kenneth Medlock, the James A. Baker III and Susan Baker Fellow in Energy and Resource Economics at the Baker Institute and senior director of the institute’s Center for Energy Studies. Medlock co-authored the paper with Peter Hartley, the George and Cynthia Mitchell Chair in Sustainable Development and Environmental Economics and professor of economics at Rice. Hartley is also a Baker Institute Rice Scholar. – Source

Sore losers

About Sharon Wilson

Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.

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