Drilling opposition spouts lies and exaggerations

Spectrum, by Paul Nichols

I have observed the conflagration caused by the blathering of anti-progressives and the media over the last several months. The non-issue of coal-bed methane extraction has been made into a daily witch hunt by a small band of writers who rant off the same complaint sheet with the full encouragement of media management. The evidence is the daily barrage of full blown editorials and regular daily letters to the editor shot through with fear and exaggeration which amounts to lies and then, the real lies.

To begin with the only way man can live on earth is to "exploit" the resources that are available. In order to have cars, computers, food, steel buildings, glasses, artificial hearts, jet airplanes, color TVs and the arts, we must use the guts of the earth. We have to mine it, grow food on it, pull oil from it and manage waste on it. If we stop any of these acts, we will starve. Therefore doing these things is a good thing, a thing to be pleased about, an act of production. The use of the earth is a morally wonderful thing.

But the socialistic anti-progressives, the people who regard an oil derrick as a symbol of evil, the people who, while enjoying the fruits of industry, want to regulate it out of "my" neighborhood, to them, "exploiting" the earth is sheer evil. This ugly notion steams out of their words day after day.

One writer thought that "rows of potatoes [would] be interrupted with pipelines and gravel roads." Look carefully at this assertion. It assumes that within the Mat-Su Borough's total acreage (as big as the state of West Virginia), potato fields will give way to pipelines! Does he actually believe that all the methane is underneath only these fields and not under unoccupied areas where no one lives at all?

Evergreen has leased only 300,000 acres, a tiny dot compared to the whole borough. In areas where methane is found in commercial quantities, Evergreen buries its pipes!

Or to the charge that tourists will not come to the Valley because of those same pipes! It reminds me of the claim by like-minded ecological extremists, that the oil pipeline from the North Slope would "devastate" moose. The very first time I ever saw the pipeline was near Fairbanks. As I rounded the bend in the road there was this gleaming, 48-inch diameter pipe, held above the ground on stilts. A giant bull moose was rubbing its antlers on the struts of the pipe. So much for moose "devastation."

The same writer would not accept a "pittance" for CBM operations on his property. I am a barber. The vast bulk of my customers would indeed accept money if Evergreen wanted to use a part of their property. In fact this is the main real complaint that surfaces in discussions on the subject. People are not being compensated for subsurface riches the way other people in the Lower 48 are. You change the laws (The Alaska Constitution and the Statehood Act) so that people would automatically own the subsurface rights to minerals and liquids and there would be a stampede of people demanding that Evergreen come and "exploit" some methane from their property, for a decent royalty of course!

And lastly the biggest lie of them all is that there is "no regulation" of CBM. Occasionally you will see the lie surface when one writer will admit that the regulations are not sufficient to do so-and-so. The plain truth is that Alaska regulates all oil and methane extraction with a plethora of rules. That is what Rep. Vic Kohring's House Bill 69 was all about, relief from redundant orders, conditions and fees paid to every borough bureaucrat in sight. The plain truth is that their statements that there are no regulations over CBM is a blatant lie. What they are really saying is that existing regulations do not sufficiently strangle all business out of existence, the way many extremists would have it if they could.

They picture a Valley where all the beauty is gone because of compressors, gravel pads and pipelines. The different writers use the same phrases, in the same order, because they are getting their official fears off an organizational, written page!

The fact is that if Evergreen finds enough methane to start collecting it, they would have, at most, four or five compressors per square mile. Those gravel pads would occupy the space of four very small homes in that same square mile. When you see how this would look in reality, you see how the complaints of anti-growth fear-mongers are really huge lies.

They repeat this string of lies, evasions and exaggerations so often that they hope you will believe them. By 4-year-olds perhaps, not by cerebral adults who can actually think.

Bring on Evergreen and treat them with trust and thankfulness for the jobs and money they will create. Bring on the future. My kids need a real economy, not government handouts.

Paul E. Nichols is a Palmer resident.