Hydraulic Fracturing Meets the Walking Dead (And I'm not kidding...not even a little)

PPHB via Shale Forum ^ | January 7, 2014 | G. Allen Brooks

[thackney]

Energy has become mainstream if it means that Hollywood is fascinated with the topic. Most of us have assumed that actors and actresses only think about energy when confronted with the bill for firing up their private Lear Jet for a quick trip to Sun Valley or a Caribbean hide-away. The energy industry has been the target of two Gasland movies attempting to demonstrate the dangers of hydraulic fracturing of wells. Both of Josh Fox’s movies have been shown to employ sensationalism at the expense of honesty in explaining the issues surrounding damage to residents’ drinking water supplies from fracking a nearby natural gas well. The industry has made the claim, which has been substantiated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that there are no examples of water wells poisoned due to the fracking of close-by wells. Instead, virtually all of the water wells damaged that contribute to scenes of flaming water pouring from kitchen faucets is the result of poor cement jobs at neighboring wells.

While the two Gasland movies were interesting and appeared to be professionally done, they lacked honesty about the basic facts of drilling and, more importantly, completing gas shale wells. Those movies were created with the anti-shale gas agenda of the producer, who was determined to demonstrate that drilling and fracking shale formations was inherently risky and should be banned despite the fact that natural gas is a more environmentally-friendly hydrocarbon resource for powering the global economy. The petroleum industry attempted to counter Gasland with its own public relations program to show that shale gas drilling and completions were not risky. It is difficult convincing people that shale formations are hundreds, if not thousands, of feet below drinking water aquifers and that the rock layers separating the shale formations that were fracked and the shallow-water aquifers prevent formation water from contaminating their drinking water. Seeing people igniting flowing water from kitchen faucets is much more impressive.

Last year, Matt Damon released a movie he both produced and stared in called Promised Land, in which he was a landman for a natural gas outfit that was leasing acreage in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus formation. His idealism about fracking’s benefits for landowners is questioned when he sees water contamination and he ultimately switches from wearing a black hat to a white one as he quits the company because of its drilling and fracking practices. Unfortunately for Mr. Damon, this movie never generated the buzz needed to propel it to the Oscar stage and it eventually settled into obscurity.

Now, we are being treated to Hollywood’s next version of the badness of fracking. Zombie Killers: Elephant’s Graveyard is due this year and will star Billy Zane and Mischa Barton, star of television’s The O.C. The story line is that hydraulic fracturing causes a dead horde to come to life and attack a rural town. We are assuming the story line marries fracking with the earthquakes supposedly associated with injecting waste fluids into disposal wells as the stimulus for bringing the zombies to life. What lengths will Hollywood go to try to make money off popular concerns over water contamination due to hydraulic fracturing? We will skip this movie making Hollywood poorer without our $8 ticket.

[cripplecreek]

Yeah he brags about how he pays a living wage, covers his employees with full insurance, takes no tax dollars and doesn’t overcharge for his movies.

What he doesn’t mention is the fact that he takes HUD money to open the theaters, pays one in a dozen “employees”, and is facing multiple lawsuits from various production companies for showing bootleg copies of their movies without paying them.