Earl Pomeroy Not Being Honest About Fracking Restrictions
All year Rep. Earl Pomeroy has been scrambling to distance himself from his fellow Democrats nationally on issues like spending, cap and trade and the health care bil…oops.
Pomeroy voted for that last one despite overwhelming opposition to it from North Dakotans. But I digress.
Another area Pomeroy is attempting to look independent is energy issues. Specifically those related to North Dakota’s oil boom. Now, according to Pomeroy, legislation being pushed forward by Democrats in Congress won’t restrict the practice of fracking which is the key to the North Dakota oil boom. By Pomeroy’s own admission, if fracking is banned North Dakota’s oil production will go off like a light.
But there’s a problem. Pomeroy’s fellow Democrats are, absolutely, looking to regulate the practice out of existence. In the Senate, Harry Reid is pushing an energy bill has new regulations on fracking:
Senate Republicans and small oil and gas producers are crying foul over a provision in Majority Leader Harry Reid ’s energy bill that would impose new chemical disclosure requirements on a controversial onshore drilling technique.
The language, included in Reid’s energy bill released Tuesday night, would force companies to publicly disclose the chemicals involved in hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from shale deposits. The widely used process, also called “fracking,” involves injecting water, sand and chemicals deep underground to force the gas to the surface.
Energy In Depth explains why this is a bad idea:
The entire universe of additives used in the fracturing process is known to regulators and the public, as is mandated as such under federal rules enforced by OSHA. The problem with this provision is that it has the potential to create a series of legal responsibilities that operators, and even service companies, might not be able to fulfill, especially under a scenario where folks are asked to post information that doesn’t even belong to them. The amazing thing is this provision appears to be moving ahead even as EPA and Congress continue to study the issue. It raises the question of why they’re doing the study in the first place if policymakers don’t appear to be all that interested in learning anything from it.
Maybe Earl Pomeroy should spend less time trying to deceive his constituents and a little more time actually fighting his own party to protect the interests of those constituents.
Tags: Earl Pomeroy, election 2010, fracking, harry reid, North Dakota News, oil
