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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

API on WILK

The American Petroleum Institute (API) has been advertising quite regularly on WILK -- NEPA's talk radio blowtorch. And their frequent ads encourage listeners to visit Energy Tomorrow.org.

A hard-to-read excerpt from their "Who We Are" page: We speak for the petroleum industry to the public, Congress and the Executive Branch, state governments and the media. We negotiate with regulatory agencies, represent the industry in legal proceedings, participate in coalitions and work in partnership with other associations to achieve our members public policy goals.

In other words, they are the people who will make hydro fracturing happen in our back yards no matter how much the silly locals doth protest. They are here advertising on WILK for one overriding reason: to change the unknowing public's perception of natural gas drilling.
 
They look nice, they sound nice and they hand out free yo-yos, too. What's not to like?
 
As far as I'm concerned, the API is spending it's member's money here because far too many of those silly locals have been protesting and protesting too much. I think the API believes it has a growing problem that's in need of a systematic, but still timely fix. And I also think that we--the undaunted and unafraid folks--need to make even more noise than ever before. 
 
And rather than wandering around in small tribes, I think the anti-frack tribes need to unify under one banner and make the new governor clearly understand that if he wants to be a one-term governor, we'll leap at the chance to help him achieve as much.
 
Check this hard-to-read excerpt I snagged from Energy Tomorrow: - Chemicals - Get this: 99.51 percent of the solution used in fracking is water and sand. The chemical content in the fracking "cocktail," as opponents like to say, is less than a half of a percent.
 
Okay, so let's take a shot at the math, since these gas drillers are withdrawing millions upon millions of gallons of water from our tributaries every single day. What is .49 percent of untold billions of gallons of applied fracking fluids? What say you, Mr. Gas Rigger?
 
Uh, well, eh, did you get a yo-yo?
 
I handle and apply dangerous materials for a living. So I'm quite adept at calculating mixing percentages and application rates, as well as how they relate to depths, square and linear footages. Just today I applied a termiticide that my industry recognizes as the best available product since the EPA banned Chlordane in 1988.
 
Ready for this? The percentage of active ingredient after the product has been agitated and is ready for application comes in at a whopping .06 percent. And the remainder of the solution is comprised completely of inert ingredients.
 
So when some gas whore tries to tell you that .49 percent is nothing to be concerned about, tell them to jam the yo-yos where the sun doesn't shine. Namely, up their brains.
 
Anyway, the heavy-hitters are in town.
 
Later

4 comments:

Forty Ghosts said...

Heavy hitters? They're scared sh*tl*ss of us.

D.B. Echo said...

I heard somebody making similar statements about some chemical mixture being 95% water. I thought of how pure that would seem if you made the remaining 5% something nice and natural like arsenic, castor bean extract, or poop. Even a 0.5% or 0.05% solution of any of these natural substances sounds a bit high. But, hey, if a gas company executive would be willing to drink such a mixture...

zorcong said...

Exactly!

D.B. Echo said...

One of the few positive outcomes of the It's-Everybody's-Fault-But-Ours blowout in the Gulf last year was the fact that the API propaganda ads went off of heavy rotation on CNN for about six months. But I remember right after the blowout I thought, "This is the American Petroleum Institute's time to shine! Show that their not just a propaganda front for Big Oil! Let's see how they bring their resources to bear on solving this problem, and mitigating the environmental effects!" So I went to their site, and they seemed to be recommending a two-pronged aproach:

- Pray, and
- Let nature take its course

Way to go, American Petroleum Institute!