Rex W. Tillerson, a resident of
Bartonville, Texas, like many of his neighbors was upset with his city council.
That’s not unusual. Many residents get upset at their local governing boards.
And so they went to a city council meeting to express their concerns that the
council was about to award a construction permit.
The residents were upset that the Cross
Timbers Water Supply Corp. planned to build a 160-foot tall water tower. That
tower would be adjacent to an 83-acre horse farm Tillerson and his wife owned,
and not far from their residence. The residents protested, and then filed suit
to stop construction. The tower would store water to be sold to companies that
needed it for high-volume horizontal fracturing of oil and gas wells, the
process known as fracking. Each well requires three to nine million gallons of
water, up to 10,000 tons of silica sand, and 100,000 gallons of toxic, often
carcinogen, chemicals. The process of horizontal fracking, about a decade old,
to extract oil and gas from the earth presents severe health and environmental
problems; although it is touted as “clean energy,” it still contributes to
global warming.
But, the residents of Bartonville weren’t
concerned about the health or environmental impact, or that the protective casings
that surround the pipes that go more than a mile underground have a documented
failure rate of more than six percent. They weren’t concerned that the pressure
of the toxic water that fractures the underground shale can cause earthquakes.
They didn’t seem to be concerned that the fluids then brought up from deep in
the earth contain radioactive elements, that the storage of these fluids in
open-air pits can itself lead to ground and air pollution. They didn’t care
that trucks that carry the toxic waste fluids can leak, or that there have been
increased derailments, with explosions and fires, in the past year of trains
that carry crude oil and natural gas from the fields to processing plants.
The residents, all of whom are in the
visual distance to the water tower, said that construction of the water tower
would impact their views. They argued that during construction and after the
tower was built, there would be excessive traffic and noise. Michael
Whitten, who represents Tillerson, told the Wall
Street Journal his client was primarily concerned about the impact the
tower would have upon property values.
Rex
W. Tillerson isn’t your typical resident. He’s the CEO and the chairman of the
board of ExxonMobil, the third largest corporation in the world, and the
company that leads all others in exploring, drilling, extracting, and selling
oil and gas. It’s also a company that has had more than its share of political,
social, and environmental problems. Tillerson was an engineer when the Exxon
Valdez fouled the western shore of the United States in 1989. By 2004, he was
the company’s president.
In
2012, Tillerson earned $40.3 million in compensation, including salary, bonus,
and stock options, according to Bloomberg News. His company that year had $453
billion in revenue, and a net income of about $45 billion, according to
Bloomberg.
When
you have that much money, every million or so dollars matters, especially if a
large ugly tower impacts not just your view but your quality of life and the
value of your property.
Large
ugly rigs, the kind that go up when ExxonMobil and other companies begin
fracking the earth, also affect the people. The well pads average about eight
acres, all of which have to be cut mostly from forests and agricultural areas.
Access roads, some of which upset or destroy the ecological balance of nature,
need to be built. Other roads receive heavier-than-anticipated damage because
of the number of trucks, often more than 200 a day, that travel to each well
site. As early as 2010, a PennDOT official told the Pennsylvania state legislature
that the cost, at that time, to fix the roads was over $260 million. Increased
diesel emissions, concentrated in agricultural areas, also affect the health
and safety of the people.
The
noise from the traffic and from around-the-clock drilling affect the people,
causing stress and numerous health issues, according to psychologists Diane
Siegmund and Kathryn Vennie, both of whom live in the Marcellus Shale part of
Pennsylvania.
When
the rigs go up, property values decrease. Banks and mortgage companies are
refusing to lend money to families who wish to take out second mortgages or who
wish to buy property that has wells on it or is even near a well pad. Insurance
companies are not writing policies, even if the homeowner opposes drilling but
whose home is near those well pads.
In 2012, Rex W. Tillerson said that
opponents of fracking are manufacturing fear, and then laid out a corporate
truth when he said that his company has in place “risk mitigation and risk
management practices . . . to ensure [oil and gas development] can be developed
in a way that mitigates risk—it doesn’t eliminate it, but when you put it into
the risk versus benefit balance, it comes back into a balance that most
reasonable people in society would say, ‘I can live with that.’”
Thus, the energy industry is telling the
people there will be accidents. There will
be deaths. There will be health and environmental consequences. But,
they are acceptable because “mitigation” allows a corporation to accept errors,
injuries, illnesses, environmental destruction, and even death if they believe
there is a “greater [financial] good” that outweighs those risks. It is the
same argument that Ford used in the 1970s when it decided not to recall and
repair the Pinto because it estimated the cost to pay compensation for injuries
and deaths from faulty construction would be significantly less than the cost
of a recall.
There is something more about Rex W.
Tillerson. He’s proud of his association with the Boy Scouts. He’s a former
Eagle Scout and was president of the national Boy Scouts of America. (Both the
Boy Scouts and ExxonMobil have their headquarters in Irving, Texas.) Part of
the Scout Oath is to “do your duty to God and your country.” A partial
interpretation of that is “by
working for your country's good and obeying its laws, you do your duty to your
country.” Within the past six months, ExxonMobil has paid more than $5 million
in fines and penalties for not obeying the country’s laws.
The 12th part of the
Scout Law is to be reverent. A widely-accepted interpretation of that law,
according to Scouting Trail, is: “As a Scout experiences the wonders of the
outdoors, stormy weather and calm blue skies, pounding surf and trickling
streams, bitter cold and stifling heat, towering trees and barren desert, he
experiences the work of God. . . . We need to play the role of steward rather
than king—tending and caring for our world instead of taking all we can for our
own comfort.”
Protesting the
construction of a water tower because it might lower property values, even for
selfish purposes, is Tillerson’s right as a citizen. But, destroying God’s
world to maximize your profits is not his right.
[Dr. Brasch, an
Eagle Scout and an award-winning journalist, is the author of 20 books. His
latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania,
an in-depth investigation of the economic, political, environmental, and health
effects of fracking.]
Thank you. Very impressive article. Kaye Kiker
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