Doddridge Watershed Association
*** The Anxiety of Doddridge County People *** By: S. Tom Bond, October 20, 2012
Tom Pyle, president, Institute for Energy Research, published a letter to the editor, in the Charleston Gazette, which is shown below. His little spiel had to do with “activists congregated in Doddridge County.” Using a few of the industry’s oft-repeated phrases, he accuses West Virginians of “anxiety.” The crowd that day was almost entirely Doddridge folk. Having some knowledge of the event myself (I drove by it, and know several of the people involved) I decided to look up the man and his organization.
The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a far-right tax-free subsidiary for the petroleum industry, funded by tax deductible contributions. Exxon-Mobil is among them. IER doesn’t have academic connections. They are connected to the Cato Institute and the Koch brothers empire. Climate warming denial is a part of their agenda, along with deregulation of utilities and the claim that conventional energy sources are almost unlimited. Low-cost energy is their principal argument for using hydrocarbon energy.
Pyle was formerly Director of Public Relations Policy at Enron.
What these people don’t seem to realize is everywhere they go opposition is self-generating. If you love the earth we live on, you don’t want to see it destroyed. Evidence of the cost when drillers come in is just too overwhelming to ignore. Lacking money to throw at this problem, our time, work and our bodies are what we use.
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Here is the letter below by Pyles that Is discussed above:
Letter to the Editor, Charleston Gazette, October 19, 2012
Hydraulic fracturing no environmental threat
Anti-hydraulic fracturing activists congregated in Doddridge County to challenge the safety and environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing. The fact is: Hydraulic fracturing has been used safely for more than 60 years.
Recent advances in hydraulic fracturing technology have unlocked unprecedented amounts of natural gas. So abundant is natural gas on this continent that there’s enough to supply America’s electricity needs for the next 575 years at current usage, according to the Institute for Energy Research’s North American Energy Inventory. Production of these vast resources is expected to support as many as 6,000 direct jobs for West Virginians by 2014
The discredited film “Gasland” and flawed EPA groundwater studies — recanted by EPA administrator Lisa Jackson herself — have resulted in some confusion among the public. Far from an environmental threat, cleaner-burning natural gas was a major contributor to a drop in U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s June energy report.
Anxiety evoked by new technology is nothing new. Yet West Virginians should not allow unsubstantiated fear to reverse the train of progress.
Tom Pyle, president, Institute for Energy Research
Washington, D.C.
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