It is a well-known fact that the latest technology enables us to extract oil with virtually no environmental damage. — The American Thinker.
Oh really? Mr. Kohlmayer, the author of that offending sentence, desperately needs to come spend some time in Alberta. Perhaps he could sit down and have a coffee with my good friend Larrie Thomson who has to truck in water and use an outhouse after Esso destroyed the well on his acreage. A problem that Esso has yet to deal with or compensate Larrie for.
Maybe he could sit down for tea with Jen’s Uncle Brien who lives just up the road from us. Brien has to haul water out to his cattle each day after a local oil company had an ‘oopsie’ that spewed hydrocarbons all over his land and befouled the dugout he used to water his herd. He finally got the oil company to agree to fix their mess (they haven’t yet, by the way), but they only agreed to do so if they could drill even more wells on his property. They wasted no time on drilling their new wells but there’s no sign of the replacement dugout.
Maybe Mr. Kohlmayer could talk to my old neighbors from Grant Way in Edmonton. I know of at least four who moved because they got sick every time the oil boys flared the stack by the pump jack that was at the end of our street. Everyone up and down the block would get pretty sick and congested with each flaring episode.
Maybe he should come out and look at my father-in-law’s scarred cattle pasture where an alarming amount of prairie wool has been destroyed by all of this non-invasive environmentally friendly drilling. It’s going to take a hundred years for the prairie wool to come back, if it ever does.
Or maybe he could talk to my father-in-law about the old well he had that produced safe water until a seismic crew came through and blasted the holy bejeezus out of the local strata while they were hunting for oil. A well that used to be safe suddenly turned toxic and John was out thousands of dollars after having a new, deeper well put in. This was while he was flat ass broke and trying to raise two small children who needed healthy drinking water.
I know, he could talk to all of the residents of a certain Indian Reserve on the outskirts of Edmonton who had to be evacuated when a nearby gas well blew up and then burned for a month. I bet they could tell him a thing or two about how safe natural resource extraction is these days.
Finally, perhaps he should drive up the road and take a look at the ’sweet gas’ well a few klicks from our yard site. There used to be a sign warning people away from it as it was a sour gas well, but the old sign mysteriously disappeared when the new owners acquired it. The funny thing is, we have a regularly calibrated H2S meter and we are continuously able to read low levels of H2S in the area, readings which are always strongest around the ’sweet gas’ well which produces ‘absolutely no hydrogen sulphide’ (according to its new owners who looked panicked when they realized we were monitoring H2S levels in the area).
Yeah, sure.
Look, most of us living out here accept that the world economy is powered by hydrocarbons and will be for some time. We accept that we need to keep pumping this stuff out of the ground to keep everything going. But those of us who live in the communities where the oil and gas is being produced would appreciate it if people stopped bullshitting us about how safe we are. We see the damaged fields and pastures. We get sick every time the wind blows in from nearby flare stacks. We see the crap that gets spilled on the roads and in the ditches. We know better.
Extracting oil is not a safe practice, at least, not in practice. In theory, sure, but in the real world where not so many of the local oil patch employees have a high school diploma and the ability to show up for work sober, well, shit happens. Bad shit. Shit that Vasko Kohlmayer doesn’t have a clue about.