Fracking Surges Ahead of Clean Energy Regulation

Recently, some California state legislators have pressed for severe limits on a technology that they say could cause seismic shifts and the fouling of groundwater. The race between regulation and drilling has added speed in Illinois. According to the AP:

State records indicate that high-volume oil drilling already has begun in Illinois, where lawmakers and others are scrambling to pass a bill to establish regulations for a practice that has generated intense national debate as energy companies push into new territory.

Although it is not a hard-and-fast rule, the energy industry is not beyond moving energy production out of one region and into another, if the result of that decision is a heightened ability to make money. Fracking is no exception, so states need to decide if they can strike a balance between environmental safety and concerns about the process. The vast availability of shale puts strict regulation at an economic disadvantage. State legislatures will need to decide whether they want to improve their economies or err on the side of what appears to be safety.

Strict state regulation of fracking ignores the industry’s financial benefits of cleaning up its own messes, which causes a revenue advantage, if they can be called that. NOLA.com reported on the boon to waste disposal industry:

The explosive expansion of drilling of natural gas and oil wells in shale deposits in the United States and Canada using a directional drilling method dubbed “fracking” may have spawned a $30 billion per year expansion of the waste disposal business, waste and investment industry executives were told

However, the oil and gas industries have a poor record of policing their own polluting byproducts. This may change with fracking because of the huge amount of public and government scrutiny it has caused. However, some amount of legislation about the practice will be set at both the state and federal level. At issue, again, is the extent to which this makes the use of fracking difficult or unprofitable. This kind of difficulty will prompt the industry to look to places like shale-rich and rule-poor North Dakota.

If states do not set fracking rules that allow the industry a reasonable chance to make money, those states will find themselves without the economic benefit of the practice.