Energy Policy Forum’s Deborah Rogers was profiled in a lengthy piece in the Village Voice titled Boom or Doom: This Environmental Disaster Is No Gold Rush.
Like most opponents, Deborah Rogers didn’t pay much attention to the boom until Chesapeake was about to drill a well just 100 feet from her property. After working in finance for years, she quit her job in 2003 to open an artisanal cheesemaking operation on land she’d inherited in Fort Worth.
Instead of signing away her property to one of the many landmen knocking on her door, she decided to attend a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, where Chesapeake CEO McClendon boasted of the economic benefits of fracking. “I went home and looked into it, and discovered that some of these companies had enormous amounts of debt,” Rogers says. “It was more likely that they were drilling to meet debt service rather than for profitability.”
Rogers describes fracking as a “drilling treadmill” based solely on hype. As soon as a geologist like Engelder reports a massive reserve, the industry immediately hypes what they call “a play,” with each advertised as bigger and better than the last, from the Barnett Shale in Texas to the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania.
Read the full article here.