Oklahoma set to overturn local drilling controls as backlash brews

[n2doc]

Facing a backlash over the side effects of its oil and gas boom, Oklahoma is poised to overturn an 80-year-old statute that allows cities and towns to ban drilling operations within their borders.

The legislation, now being finalised, would help insulate energy companies from local movements that have grown in response to the rapid expansion of oil and gas drilling and a dramatic spike in earthquakes across the central state.

Oklahoma now sees 600 times more tremors than it did before 2008, a surge seismologists say is linked to vast amounts of wastewater injected into the ground as a result of drilling for oil and from hydraulic fracturing - a process to extract natural gas that is also known as fracking.

The bill was championed by energy companies, which contend that local interference in drilling practices would endanger the production bonanza that has boosted their profits and brought the United States within sight of energy independence.

more

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/20/us-usa-oklahoma-earthquakes-idUSKBN0O50BE20150520

[NYC_SKP]

1. "local interference in drilling practices would endanger the production bonanza"

Damn citizens interfering with corporate bonanzas. How dare they?

[kimbutgar]

2. You get what you voted for Oklahoma....

You watched and listened to right wing media you voted in republicans in 2014. When people voted republican in 2014 they lost the right to complain anyone who went outside the right wing bubble learned that republicans are not into them. I feel sorry for those who warned the people but were drowned out by the millionaires.

Enjoy your earthquakes and poisoned water all because they told you to hate the black man in the whitehouse and you lost the ability to think for yourself.

[avebury]

3. And it was voted on by the same Republicans who would

scream bloody murder if they thought that the Federal Government tried to tell them how to run their state. They are the do as we say not as we do State Legislature.

[DhhD]

4. Same for Denton Texas as the county and city went Red (again) with voting in, George P. Bush

as the new Texas Land Commissioner, who took office (Jan. 2015), and then immediately sued the City of Denton on behalf of the Oil and Gas Industry.

Proud Republican voters, who have voted Republican all their conservative lives, will cover the overhead cost of repairs on their homes so Oil companies, like the Bush's own, or invest in, can reap more and more of the profits. Apparently they do not mind drinking toxic water and breathing in fumes, while they repair their own houses over and over again. How much longer can they expect an insurance company to provide coverage?