• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Venango County Tea Party Patriots

A non-partisan, non-profit, non-member, association dedicated to educating the public and promoting the principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free market economics, and all other lawful activities.

  • Home
  • Events
  • Alerts
  • Resources
    • Resources – National
    • Resources – Pennsylvania
    • Resources – Venango County
    • Election Voter Registration Resources for Churches
    • Voter Resources
    • Resources – Other Organizations
  • Voter Registration Tools
  • Get Email Alerts
  • Contact Us

Jane Richey / July 16, 2012

Energy Industry Film A Rebuttal to “Gasland”

The movie’s premise is sim­ple: a Susque­hanna County mom, con­cerned about the dan­gers of hydraulic frac­tur­ing, goes on a cross-country jour­ney to deter­mine whether the warn­ings raised by Josh Fox’s “Gasland” are legitimate.

Except…it’s a bit more com­pli­cated than that. Dur­ing a Har­ris­burg screen­ing of  “Truth­land,” star Shelly Depue admit­ted she was approached by the energy indus­try – and not the other way around – to pro­duce the film. They booked the inter­views she con­ducted, and set the agenda. And while Depue wasn’t paid for her par­tic­i­pa­tion, the Inde­pen­dent Petro­leum Asso­ci­a­tion of Penn­syl­va­nia and Energy In Depth picked up her travel tab.

The energy indus­try is aggres­sively mar­ket­ing the 34-minute movie this sum­mer, sched­ul­ing screen­ings and panel dis­cus­sions across Penn­syl­va­nia. And while “Truth­land” is get­ting neg­a­tive pro­duc­tion reviews – the Patriot News’ Don­ald Gilliland called it a mix of bad art and cor­po­rate mes­sag­ing – sev­eral of the facts it high­lights are well-established:

  • Methane migra­tion has been a prob­lem in north­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia for decades, and isn’t always directly tied to nat­ural gas drilling. (That’s cer­tainly not to say it’s never tied to drilling. The Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion says faulty well cas­ing caused Dimock’s well-documented migra­tion prob­lems, and DEP is cur­rently prob­ing the role nearby drilling played in a 30-foot Tioga County methane geyser.)
  • There’s yet to be a case where hydraulic frac­tur­ing fluid con­clu­sively con­t­a­m­i­nated drink­ing water. (The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency thinks frack­ing may have led to ground­wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in Wyoming, but that inves­ti­ga­tion is…complicated.)

Read more.

Share this:

  • Telegram
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pocket
  • WhatsApp
  • Print
  • Email

Filed Under: Constitutionally Limited Goverment, Free Markets Tagged With: energy industry, Gasland, hydraulic fracturing, Truthland

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Scott Cannon says

    July 17, 2012 at 11:10 am

    What is wrong with Truthland?
    The gas industry and Energy in Depth’s reason for making this movie is to debunk what it says are false claims made by Josh Fox in the Oscar nominated film “Gasland”, that taps can’t be lit on fire because of gas drilling causing methane migration, because the methane has always been there. No one is denying that there is naturally occurring methane in Pennsylvania and other parts of the country. The industry itself does not deny that drilling causes methane migration into aquifers, just Energy in Depth, the lobby group who produced the movie. I personally have videotaped a tap lighting on fire because of drilling in a woman’s backyard with newspaper reporters standing right next to me in this video. http://youtu.be/4LBjSXWQRV8
    The whole premise of this video is that Shelly DePue watched “Gasland” with her family and decided to go across country to look for the truth. This is made up. She admits this at 8:10 in this video. http://youtu.be/jUfjWxpxORY The gas industry found her through a land owners group and asked her to be in the video, not how it is portrayed in the film. Nothing like accusing someone of making stuff up by making stuff up. It negates the whole point.
    The second glaring problem is that the woman in the video goes around the country talking to experts that tell her that the well casings in gas drilling are safe and do not leak. What is not mentioned in the video is that after filming, one of the 10 wells on her property was found leaking and bubbling methane. Here is the link to the Inspection Report on that well. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4345401762886.2178381.1522786448&type=3&l=02a7b68d57
    The third problem is that in the family makes a list of questions for Shelly to ask the experts including: “Do the gas companies follow the rules?” Apparently not. There was a 10 barrel oil based mud spill at the families well pad that WPX did not report. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4345401762886.2178381.1522786448&type=3&l=02a7b68d57
    The forth issue is that Dr. Engleder implies that dish detergent is the only other substance in frack fluid besides water. Hmmm. Then says Josh’s Gasland is full of innuendo. Hmmm. I don’t recall hydrochloric acid in my dish detergent. See link http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/07/05/4700-gallons-of-acid-spill-at-bradford-county-drilling-site/
    He goes on to imply there has never been any problems with wells drilled in the last 50 years. What about all the abandoned and old wells in PA I see on YouTube with the bubbling methane? http://www.youtube.com/user/GeoguyNEPA/videos

    Also, the company WXP Energy, who drilled the well, is being sued by a neighbor for possible water contamination. An investigation is under way. Here is a video about the neighbors. http://youtu.be/iPM64kseP30

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • So, what’s VCTPP doing to bring Election Integrity back?
  • April 23, 2022 – VCTPP Monthly Meeting
  • VCTPP Meeting – July 22, 2021

Archives

Footer

Contact Us

Venango County Tea Party Patriots
155 Summit Drive
Franklin, PA 16323

Phone
814-671-7110

Email
jane@vctpp.org

Frequently Searched Terms

Agenda 21 Barack Obama Ben Bernanke budget climate change Congress Congressional Budget Office debt deficit Department of Energy Department of Health and Human Services economy environment Environmental Protection Agency EPA Federal Reserve fiscal cliff food stamps fracking gas prices global warming Government Accountability Office Governor Corbett green energy Internal Revenue Service IRS Keystone Pipeline marcellus shale Medicaid Medicare natural gas Obamacare President Obama recession regulations sequestration small businesses Social Security spending cuts stimulus taxes TEA Party unemployment United Nations voter ID

Facebook has been “fact-checking,” blocking and removing conservative posts. Follow us on Telegram.org for unedited access.

Click Here

Follow Us

Follow Us

Copyright © 2022 Venango County Tea Party Patriots · Web Design by OptimusMedia.com · Log in