(part 3 of 3)
[Part 1: Lackawanna
College, a two-year college in Scranton, Pa., accepted a $2.5 million endowment
from Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. to strengthen that college’s programs and ties
to the oil and gas industry. Part 2: Problems
with academic integrity in other Pennsylvania colleges.]
Among the mission statements of the University of
North Dakota Department of Geology and Geological Engineering is that it “strives
to develop in its engineering graduates keen insight and abilities to design an
environmentally sound and sustainable future for humanity.”
Like most college mission statements, it’s a broad and vague goal, one
that may not reflect reality. The Department is one of the better ones in the
country, especially in training students to work in areas of gas and oil
exploration and processing. However, their training—and research by the
faculty—may be tainted by an industry bias, fueled by a $14 million gift.
The Department is now the Harold Hamm School of Geology and Geological
Science. Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, the ninth largest oil producer in the United States,
provided $5 million to the renamed School; his company provided an additional
$5. The other $4 million came from the Industrial Commission/Oil and Gas
Research Program, a merger of the state of North Dakota and several gas and oil
corporations.
Continental Resources, which had revenue of $3.65 billion and a
net profit of $764.2 million in
2013, had opened up the oil shale in North Dakota, site of the Bakken Shale, and
is currently the top producer of oil production in the country. Continental,
which uses the controversial practice of high volume hydraulic horizontal
fracturing (known as fracking) to extract the oil, predicts to produce
62.5–65.5 million barrels of oil, an increase in production of 26-32 percent.
UND isn’t the only college
to benefit from the oil and gas industry.
In West Virginia, Bethany
College and West Liberty University signed mineral rights leases, claiming the money from royalties would help
improve programs and provide for new buildings. The University of Texas at
Arlington, sitting above the Barnett Shale, has 22 wells on a single pad site
at the edge of campus. At Indiana State University, president Dan Bradley, a
petroleum engineer who touts fracking
as “a freight train on steroids,” has permitted
wells and pipes on campus.
Against significant
student and community opposition, the University of Tennessee opened its 8,000
acre Cumberland Research Forest to the natural gas industry. The 20-year lease
includes a $300,000 a year payment plus at least 10 percent royalties. The
university stated it was entering into the agreement in order to “conduct unbiased, scientifically sound
research.” However, because the research is funded by the natural gas industry,
the ethical probability of a conflict of interest must be raised. If the
university makes money from the industry, and a portion of that money is
targeted for faculty research, how impartial can that research be?
Politicians
who take substantial contributions from the oil and gas lobbyists tend to be
the ones who vote against human services and education budget increases. By
dangling possible income from mineral rights leases, they blur the distinction
between professors and corporate shills.
Research
conducted by Drs. Charles G. Groat and Thomas W. Grimshaw and a team from the Energy
Institute at the University of Texas placed the primary problem of methane in
well water with the construction problems in both natural gas wells and
drinking water wells rather than the process itself. Dr. Groat’s study
supported the industry’s claims that fracking doesn’t cause health and
pollution problems.
However, the Public
Accountability Initiative revealed in
July 2012 that Dr. Groat was a member of the board of Plains Exploration and Production Co., which conducts fracking
operations. He received an annual fee for being a member of the Board. Since November
2007, when he became a member of the Board, Dr. Groat received about $1.6
million in stock from the company. The Initiative noted that
the research by Dr. Groat and his team was distinguished by “bold, definitive, industry-friendly claims highlighted in the press release
but not supported by the underlying report; evidence of poor scholarship
and industry bias; and dubious and inaccurate claims of peer review” that had
led the media to report there was no relationship
between fracking and health and pollution problems. In response, Dr. Groat said his role
“was to organize [the study], coordinate the
activities and report their conclusions.” He claimed he
did not “alter their conclusions” and his presence on the Pioneer board had “no bearing on the results of the study.”
An independent investigation initiated by the University of Texas found “failures and inadequacies in
several procedural areas,” and that the study “fell short of contemporary
standards for scientific work.”
A University of Texas study,
published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences in September 2013, concluded there were
minimal leaks of methane from fracked wells. However, Sharon Kelly, an
attorney, journalist, and long-time
environmentalist who analyzed the University of Texas study for DeSmogBlog, noted: “The vast majority of the wells studied used
leak-control technology that has yet to be adopted at many, if not most, oil
and gas wells, while others were wells that produced very little gas and
consequently even serious leaks would produce relatively small emissions.” Physicians
Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE) determined
the study was “fatally flawed.”
Horizontal fracking to extract shale gas “is a wonderful gift that has
arrived just in time,” say Dr. Richard Muller, professor of physics at the
University of California, and his daughter, Elizabeth Muller, executive
director of Berkeley Earth. The Mullers argue, “Environmentalists
should recognize the shale gas revolution as beneficial to society and lend
their full support to helping it advance.” The Mullers are principals of the China Shale Fund, which is trying to get China
to develop shale gas drilling; they would get financial compensation if China
moves from coal to shale gas technology.
The natural gas industry needs to “seek out academic studies and
champion with universities—because that again provides tremendous credibility
to the overall process,” said S.
Dennis Holbrook, an executive with Norse Energy and a member of the board of
directors of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York (IOGA). One of
the ways IOGA helped direct academic research is by its connection to SUNY’s
Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI), which sponsored lectures,
workshops, and professional studies. Among those research studies was one paper
where “[A]ll four co-authors had ties to the oil and gas industry, as did four
of five of its peer reviewers,” according to
Steve Horn of DeSmogBlog.
An
informal group of faculty, students, alumni and citizens stated that
the Institute and the research emanating from it were not only “fatally
compromised,” but that it represented “not the independent search for knowledge
proper to a university but a frantic and servile willingness to sell academic
legitimacy to a public relations campaign for the gas industry.” The Public
Accountability Project analyzed the SUNY/ Buffalo study and “identified a
number of problems that undermine its conclusion.” In
November 2012, six months after the Institute was created,
SUNY/Buffalo closed
it.
Several
other research studies conducted at American universities
and funded by either gas/oil companies or their front organizations allowed Barry Russell, president of
the Independent Petroleum Association of America, to falsely claim, “no
evidence directly connects injection of fracking fluid into shale with aquifer
contamination.”
It
makes little difference if the Community College of Philadelphia accepted
“only” $15,000, Lackawanna College accepted $2.5 million, or the University of
North Dakota accepted $14 million. We know what they have become—it’s just a
matter of deciding how much a tainted body of knowledge is worth.
[Dr. Brasch is an award-winning
journalist and professor emeritus of mass communications from the Pennsylvania
State System of Higher Education. He is author of 20 books, including Fracking
Pennsylvania, a critically-acclaimed in-depth investigation of the
process and effects of high volume hydraulic horizontal fracturing throughout
the country. He looks at the process, health and environmental effects, the
economics, and the collusion between politicians and the oil/gas lobby.]
