The Oregon House voted 32-26 on Tuesday to put a 10-year moratorium on fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, a risky style of natural gas extraction that has led to minor earthquakes and contaminated water in other states.
“It’s not a vilification of an industry or a vilification of a particular way to extract natural gas,” said Rep. Ken Helm, D-Beaverton, the chief sponsor of House Bill 2711, who added he simply wanted to give Oregon time to develop more thorough regulations, along the lines of Pennsylvania, where the consequences of fracking have prompted greater government oversight.
“Groundwater started to be contaminated. They said, ‘Woah-woah, we want to do this right,’” said Helm, who noted that Pennsylvania still allows fracking for natural gas, but with stricter rules in place.
Helm said that Oregon was “caught flat-footed” over another environmental issue -- suction dredge mining in streams by gold prospectors. California banned the practice, and Oregon had not developed adequate regulations to protect waterways, leaving the state exposed to environmental degradation when a deluge of suction-dredge miners flooded Oregon from the Golden State.
HB 2711 defines hydraulic fracturing as the drilling technique of expanding existing rock fractures or creating new fractures in rock by injecting water, with or without chemicals, sand or other substances, into or underneath the surface of the rock for stimulating oil or gas production.
There is no fracking for natural gas in Oregon currently, but the bill is a win for environmentalists and also would leave the state prepared were the oil and gas to industry develop more of an interest.
Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, led all Republicans to join him in opposition to HB 2711, arguing that Department of Geology and Mineral Industries is capable of regulating fracking under current law, as it has done with a handful of natural gas wells in Coos County.
Both sides agreed that the fracking in Coos County was discontinued primarily because of a lack of economic viability.
Bentz said he was also concerned that the bill’s fracking moratorium was not defined narrowly enough to protect conventional natural gas extraction in the Snake River Basin, where Ontario lies.
“We use an enormous amount of natural gas in Oregon, 250 million cubic feet. Because of natural gas, we’ve enjoyed a large reduction in CO2,” he said, referencing the greenhouse gas most responsible for climate change. “Why would we continue to import billions of cubic feet of natural gas when we could produce that here?”
Bentz noted that the Mist Gas Field in Columbia County has produced $125 million’s worth of natural gas, some 65 billion cubic feet, since 1979. The state applies a 6 percent severance tax on this natural resource, and in those 38 years, it has netted about $7.5 million for the state school fund, in inflation-adjusted 2017 dollars.
He said Idaho has already drilled conventional natural gas wells across the border from his district, and he wants to see Malheur County get in on that action.
Sierra Club lobbyist Rhett Lawrence said he was OK with amending the bill to make it crystal clear that it applies only to fracking and not more conventional methods of extracting natural gas. “It’s not intended to address those other forms of natural gas extraction,” he said.
The Sierra Club would resist lifting the bill’s moratorium, however, particularly in the current regulatory environment.
Lawrence said Pennsylvania’s regulations are more than 100 pages long, while Oregon’s are just a couple pages.
Helm wanted the state to adopt regulations similar to Pennsylvania, but Lawrence and the Sierra Club doubt that fracking is ever totally safe: “We don’t believe it can be done.”
Bentz disagreed, telling The Lund Report that some fracking occurs as much as a mile below the surface -- while groundwater can only be found for about the first 1,000 feet. He said geologists know how to use hydraulic fracturing deep below the surface without affecting the groundwater further up. He conceded that seismic activity may be more of a risk than groundwater contamination.
Two Democrats opposed the bill -- Rep. Caddy McKeown of Coos Bay and Rep. Brad Witt of Clatskanie. Both represent districts with natural gas reserves. Lawrence thought he had a Republican supporter after the initial vote, but he said Rep. John Huffman, a moderate Republican from The Dalles, had inadvertently hit the wrong button and later changed his vote.
Lawrence conceded HB 2711 will have a tougher road through the Senate, as advocates would need to win over a moderate Republican or win the support of moderate Democrats such as Sen. Betsy Johnson of Scappoose and Sen. Arnie Roblan of Coos Bay, who represent the same areas as Witt and McKeown.
Reach Chris Gray at [email protected].
