Expect the Fed to Regulate Fracking, Says Tulsa Energy Consultant

• Joe Wertz
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  Joe Wertz was a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma from 2011-2019. He reported on energy and environment issues for national NPR audiences and other national outlets. He previously worked as a managing editor, assistant editor and staff reporter at several major Oklahoma newspapers and studied journalism at the University of Central Oklahoma.

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Heads up, Oklahoma energy industry: The federal government is poised to start regulating hydraulic fracturing, a petroleum energy consultant warned Tuesday.

“You just know when regulation hits our industry bad things are going to happen,” said the consultant, Richard Spears of Tulsa-based Spears and Associates, reports The Oklahoman’s Jay F. Marks.

Spears said hydraulic fracturing detractors ignore logic, history and science in opposition to a “new technology” that has been used since the ’40s, the paper reports.

Last month, well-known Oklahoma oil and gasman and billionaire energy investor T. Boone Pickens told StateImpact that drillers in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas have hydraulically fractured about 800,000 wells since the early 1950s.

“My concern is we’re being regulated by people who don’t understand our industry,” said chapter chairwoman Joyce Ryel of Enid-based Complete Production Services, according to the Oklahoman.