Of Journalism, Irresponsible Editing and Opinions Masquerading as News
Istanbul, Turkey based freelance journalist Dimiter Kenarov has strong opinions on the impacts Marcellus Shale development is having on Pennsylvania’s working lands. However, a quick review shows that Mr. Kenarov’s thoughts are directly at odds with the facts as they actually exist.
The Beaver County Times recently published an article calling Marcellus Shale development a “dark shadow…creeping across the landscape.” The piece was filed by Istanbul, Turkey based freelance journalist Dimiter Kenarov who has a history of manufacturing ominous headlines about Marcellus Shale development’s impacts on farming lands. Of course, the full story – the one Kenarov conveniently forgot to tell – paints a much less alarming picture about natural gas development. In fact, even a quick review shows Kenarov’s narrative doesn’t quite comport with the facts as they actually exist, especially in Pennsylvania.
Marcellus Shale development has been a net positive experience for Pennsylvania’s farmers. Just this week the Associated Press noted that royalty payments are “transforming lives and livelihoods” as those payments provided $1.2 billion to Pennsylvania landowners last year. This adds to a USA TODAY report which showed oil and natural gas development is rapidly increasing personal income in small towns – reversing a decade’s long trend and shifting significant wealth toward rural areas of the country that certainly can use the boost.
Speaking with farmers quickly provides concrete examples of what this all means for everyday Pennsylvanians’ who have supported our state’s agricultural industry for decades. Take for example the story of Susquehanna County farmer Walter Brooks who stated last year, “The whole northeast was suffering because there wasn’t many jobs available. The gas companies came in made a lot of jobs for the people that were unemployed, saved a lot of farms around the community mine included. I owed a lot of money to the banks and the royalties helped me pay off the notes.”
Walter is not alone. Bradford County farmer Amy Lackey has a similar story to share. Natural gas development helped her family significantly expand their dairy farming operations. In an interview last year Lackey noted, “2009 was an extremely difficult year nationally for the dairy industry…the natural gas industry came to town and we had a great opportunity to expand our business as a result of the gas industry coming in and leasing land from a lot of the farmers in the community.” For Lackey, that expansion involved building a new barn and adding 150 cows to her family’s dairy herd.
Shawn Georgetti, a farmer from Avella, PA, in very succinct terms also described what income provided by the natural gas industry has done for his family:
“We used to have to put stuff on credit cards. It was basically living from paycheck to paycheck,’ said Shawn Georgetti, who runs a family dairy farm in Avella, about 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh….Before Range Resources drilled a well on the family property in 2012, Georgetti said, he was stuck using 30-year-old equipment, with no way to upgrade without going seriously into debt.
“‘You don’t have that problem anymore. It’s a lot more fun to farm,’ Georgetti said, since he has been able to buy newer equipment that’s bigger, faster and more fuel-efficient. The drilling hasn’t caused any problems for the farm, he said.”
These benefits were also noticed by members of Ohio’s Tuscarawas County Farm Bureau in a recent visit to Pennsylvania’s working land. Shortly after their visit the group’s president stated, “we saw farmers making improvements and updates to their properties,” and that most farmers they visited with had “positive [feelings] about the process.”
The fact that shale development is conducted safely each day is not a singular opinion, but rather is reflective of the opinions of state and federal regulators across the country. This includes USDA head Tom Vilsack who stated, “we should be doing everything we can to produce oil and gas.” It goes without saying the head of the USDA likely wouldn’t make such comments if he believed the process of fracing was unsafe for our nation’s family farms.
Of course, Mr. Kenarov’s research either never uncovered these facts or ignored them in attempting to craft a narrative that countered actual experience. Perhaps before penning his next inflammatory piece Kenarov should visit Pennsylvania to see the progress development has brought to our communities, or at the very least make a half-hearted attempt to examine the issue objectively. After all, the thousands of hard-working individuals toiling each day to provide American’s affordable energy and a sustainable food supply deserve as much. Regardless, moving forward we hope the Beaver County Times is more judicious in using the kind of attention to detail the public expects in vetting articles that attempt to malign an industry that is providing over 200,000 jobs and billions in economic activity across the Keystone State.
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$1.2 billion? Who provided that number for this websitevpost?
The Associated Press. Here is the link. http://articles.philly.com/2013-01-29/business/36637967_1_royalty-payments-royalty-owners-natural-gas
Thanks. Is that how you got the credit card quote? From the AP story?
Is NOT visiting the very areas Antis rant about typical? Here in New Brunswick we’ve invited them over and over again to go on “inside” tours of our natural gas wells/fields.
I read the link JD. The author has done what EID hates……..found a case in point of a family that did not have a good experience with HVHF. They, like a small % of folks who leased to the NG companies, had a well compromise, or a failure of containment and gas leaked. The “fix” was unsuccessful. This is a part of the risk anyone takes when they lease. Even the industry says leaks can happen and they do. The % of leaks is a disputed number but it does happen and the author has decided to focus on that unfortunate part of NG development and BTW, the other link or story was the same one, on a different new agency, so his “history” is minimal. Face it EID, there are some journalist who will write not so pretty pieces on NG development, focus on the “ accidents” but does that make them less credible? Maybe by adding some adjectives like this guy did “dark shadow…creeping across the landscape.” can give his readers the wrong impression of what NG development is, but, let’s be real here…….the subjects he interviewed, I’m sure, in their personal experience, just might view NG as just that, as do other unfortunate folks who experience similar mishaps on their property. We all know, both sides of this issue have been guilty of some embellishment of their stories, to spice up the reading and so both could be called “lazy and irresponsible” in a way. Of course there ARE the success stories, as EID loves to point out, but that is your job. One another note of leaks……..EID has some homework as NOAA along with other researchers have published a new study *(Feb 2012) on methane leaks % across the NG industry and the numbers will need some serious attacking by the EID staff, if you guys haven’t already. Looked for EID pieces on this, but could not find any, so please link me if you guys can…thanks as always.
http://innovationtrail.org/post/fracking-wells-could-be-leaking-9-gas-says-recent-research (Jan. 2013)
http://eenews.net/public/energywire/2012/11/28/1 (Nov 2012)
http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html
Thanks for the comment. This report ignores every positive aspect of natural gas development and it does so on purpose. As a member of the media there is a responsibility to present evidence in an unbiased fashion to allow readers to form an opinion. This article falls well short of that responsibility.
It’s a point piece JD……and was clearly written as a point piece. It focused on one family’s personal experience with NG development on their little chunk of property which was not good. This kind of experience happens. His only mistake was calling the industry a dark shadow. But that was setting up the reader for the main part of the story, which was a negative, but small, comparably part of NG development. No one can dispute that accidents and faulty wells occur. Maybe the author was being dramatic in his statement, but drama sells, we all know that. Balance was never the authors intention, that is also clear. EID has written pieces leaving out the negatives many times over and focuses on attack pieces, which is what one can expect from a pro-gas organization, so why fluff over a writer who focused primarily on a land owner’s bad experience? That’s all I’m trying to say here.
Fred, that’s your opinion on our blog and whether or not the author made any errors. Mine happens to differ of course. Regardless, you can’t compare EID-M to a paper like the Beaver County Times. We get our funding from industry so our stead is to call out fallacies levied by opponents. A paper is not supposed to have an agenda, they are merely supposed to report the facts as they exist. To your credit, you hit the nail on the head on the problem with some outlets these days. Namely, “drama sells” and that seems to be some outlets main goal these days.
JD, it’s not an opinion, I read your link to the piece. The author did a interview with some folks who had some problems (which happen) it’s not some mystery. Well casing can leak. EID picked one statement the author made and is it a “fallacy” or are there land owners who feel like he does? EID thinks by calling out, as you put it, any accidents, that they are all made up and did not happen and by calling them “out” they didn’t happen? How about striving to make sure accidents don’t happen, instead of “calling out” the unfortunate few who are not so lucky to have a safe working well on their land? Actually EID………..by bringing up any negative press over and over again, you are highlighting the negatives and their cumulative effects. So……the response is, bury them in a flurry of positive stories. Unfortunately, that does not make the negative stories go away, as you bring them up in the first place. After a while it’s a game of whack-a-mole and with more drilling on the horizon, the odds of more accidents and leaks will increase, unless of course, the NG industry improves the safety and technology, which we ALL hope will happen and as we are seeing, is happening. That is the goal of anyone, for or against NG development. NG is NOT going away, it’s the problems associated with it, that EID has been tasked with repairing, that need to go away and in turn, put the EID staff out of work. If we all get a safe extraction process, we all win.
It’s better every day but already has a tremendous record, a fact you seem reluctant to accept. Also, why are you using a fake e-mail? Come on, Fred, come clean. Man up.
You crack me up Tom. Send me a message and I’ll reply…….not sure why you are playing this game. Besides, who cares. At least I’m using a name instead of some foggy user name like some folks here. Would you rather debate or play who’s who’ on EID?
If you’re going to make substantial comments on this site, people ought to know who you are and you should take credit for them and others should be able to evaluate your credibility. That’s an honest debate. You told me “Fred Jones” is a real person and now you’re equivocating. I was going to send you some population stuff most of our readers are probably not that interested in, but I find out when I try to do so that the e-mail is not real, so why should anyone think “Fred Jones” is real? We offer pretty free rein here but not when you try to deceive us. Come on, man up, Fred or whoever you are. At least send me an e-mail with your real name and e-mail address.
So, you are real after all!! Great! Glad to know it!
Thanks Tom. I get this all the time……….look in any phone book my friend……see how many Jone’s and Smith’s are in there.
And I in fact mention the GOOD things the industry is doing and you slam me? Now that was uncalled for Tom.
This “lazy journalism” is more rampant than not here in NB.
And this from the most eminent of “researchers” re:frackademia :
“Frackademia
Adding to this obstacle of adequate scientific study is the “frackademia” phenomenon. The O&G industry has been funding researchers on a number of campuses, leading to questions about the integrity of the research. In particular the Shale Gas Institute at the University of Buffalo was recently shut down by the President due to researchers having failed to disclose their ties to industry. (On a related note, you will find no ‘research’ from Energy in Depth (EID) here. EID is an industry-funded site and attempts to debunk good science by enlisting industry ‘experts’ to comment negatively on the studies. This is not the scientific process. See Doubt is Their Product.)
There have also been charges of ‘Frackademia” at University of Texas, where the author of a study has financial interests in O&G. On Dec. 7th, 2012 the head of the institute out of which these finding came resigned. See: Fracking-Study Conflicts Prompt Head of Institute to Quit. See also: Contaminated Inquiry How a University of Texas Fracking Study Led by a Gas Industry Insider Spun the Facts and Misled the Public.
And at Penn State University academics are refusing to put their names on a study that claims large economic benefits of shale gas. As it turns out, this study was funded by the Marcellus Shale Coalition.”