Guest Editorial: Venting and the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

Abstract

For more than a century, the oil industry magnificently improved the lives and health of humankind. That fact lies beyond debate. Our industry simultaneously expanded and made profits yet progressively protected water, land, people, and air from its potent products. Those gains help support a moral case to expand some use of fossil fuels but not to release them. Now it is time to lean in to solving the last step of our direct emissions. The oil industry has long lived and grown under tightening demands. In 1919, just a handful of months after Texas empowered its Railroad Commission (RRC) to regulate oil and gas, the agency promulgated its first well-spacing rule. Wells were to be spread apart not on principles of efficient recovery but on protection of groundwater and against fires. Four years later, the same state made it a crime to pollute surface water with oil. It even held corporate officers personally responsible for the pollution. As effects accumulated, so did protections of surface and subsurface—from oil down rivers to oil in dirt pits, in lined pits, in covered pits, and in closed tanks. At this point, any release of oil more than a couple of barrels requires public reporting in most jurisdictions. In Texas, for example, just half a barrel of oil released from an onshore storage tank mandates a public report, and US federal waters require reporting of any release that makes sheen on the water. By the 1950s, most US states required cementing casing through the fresh-water table, and modern plugging regulations date from the 1960s. Perhaps belatedly, the health and safety of workers became a buzz word and then a corporate imperative but now an easy habit. Notwithstanding the pandemic of “temporary” flaring in recent years, decades of both punitive and positive policies aimed to reduce air pollution. Our predecessors often did not welcome the new obligations, but they thrived even as they conformed, cajoled, and adapted. Generations ago, the first serious efforts by the RRC to impose basic regulation on the oil industry sparked an epic legal battle ostensibly and oddly over the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. It seems that all industry, not just oil, lives in strife with regulators. Still, our predecessors’ lack of initiative followed first by resistance then lackluster diligence contributed to public disdain over the decades. Their track record set up kneejerk and passionate distrust when the shale revolution began. Although controversy faded as fracturing contracted, more than 60% of Americans still believe that fracking harms the environment. Among 25 industries tracked by Gallup, the oil industry enjoys the fourth-highest disapproval rating among Americans, down from the number one slot a handful of years ago. College enrollment in fossil fuel programs has plummeted as, among other reasons, the youngest generation eschews our reputation ironically as we have become the cleanest version of ourselves yet. We improved protections for every-thing our products could pollute. Now, our communities’ standards ask us to address the last, smallest, and least visible of our direct releases, namely fugitive natural gas. And there is no reason not to do it aggressively. Venting offers no righteous credit.