A conservative Texas town votes to kick out fracking

Residents of Denton, Texas, a town about 45 minutes north of Dallas, voted last week to ban the oil extraction process known as fracking. Short for hydraulic fracturing, fracking is one reason gasoline prices are falling. But in some places, fracking is not popular at all.

“Do we want our air poisoned with benzene from fracking operations in our city?” an activist shouted at rally in Denton a few weeks before the election as residents yelled back a resounding, “No!”

Opposition to fracking is typically associated with left-leaning environmentalists, who have blamed fracking for everything from earthquakes to poisoned drinking water. But Denton is a heavily conservative area, voting overwhelmingly Republican last week. And yet, the anti-fracking measure passed by a 17-point margin, suggesting concerns about hydraulic fracturing may be broader than commonly thought.

Conventional oil and gas drilling aims at highly porous reservoirs with lots of microscopic bubbles containing oil and natural gas. But most of the proven natural gas reserves in the United States are in rock that is 10,000 times less porous and has fewer natural fractures for the oil to travel through. So engineers inject large volumes of high-pressure, fresh water and sand into the rock formation, opening up tiny crevices, or fractures, in the rock. The sand is deposited in these crevices, propping them open and providing a pathway for the trapped hydrocarbons to make their way to the well bore. Operators extract the fracturing minus the sand, and recycle it.

Fracking, combined with developments in horizontal drilling, has boosted natural gas production so significantly that prices plummeted from almost $10 per thousand cubic feet to under $3 per thousand cubic feet.

Low natural gas prices have undermined efforts to make so-called “green” energy technologies such as wind and solar power economically viable, putting the oil and gas industry squarely in the sights of environmental organizations. They blame hydraulic fracturing for everything from contaminating drinking water with methane and other chemicals to causing earthquakes.

That’s hardly likely, since drinking water wells are fairly shallow at about 500-800 feet deep. An oil and gas well is fracked at depths between 5,000 and 10,000 feet.

Some of the particular complaints of the people of Denton were things above ground such as noise and air pollution. While the fracking process is quite noisy, it only lasts about five or so days. Bringing a well to completion takes only a couple of months. Once the wellhead is capped, the pump area occupies a space no bigger than a two-car garage. The surrounding environment is restored to its original condition, and the well can then produce oil and gas for 20 to 40 years. The local economy benefits and, in many cases, oil and gas revenue flows to the landowner because of leases.

Listen to Michael Cochrane discuss the city of Denton’s response to fracking on The World and Everything in It: