Ridge: Shale Drilling Makes America Safe

Scott Detrow / StateIm­pact Pennsylvania

For­mer Gov­er­nor Tom Ridge speaks to reporters at the Mar­cel­lus Shale Coalition’s “Shale Gas Insight” conference

For­mer Home­land Secu­rity Direc­tor Tom Ridge kicked off the Mar­cel­lus Shale Coali­tion’s “Shale Gas Insight” con­fer­ence with a blunt mes­sage: the more nat­ural gas the United States extracts from shale rock, the safer the coun­try will be.

How’s that work? The Repub­li­can began his morn­ing speech with the well-worn argu­ment that the U.S.  imports way too much oil from for­eign coun­ties. He called fed­eral energy inde­pen­dence plans “a mirage,” adding, “In 2010, our bill for for­eign oil was a quar­ter tril­lion dollars.…we still have no national energy policy

“We now import 3.5 bil­lion bar­rels [of oil] annu­ally,” he said, “com­pared with roughly a third of that in 1973.  …It’s one thing to get oil from coun­ties like Canada…. But we also import from coun­ties who aren’t such good friends. Nations such as Alge­ria and Iraq and Saudi Ara­bia and Syria and Nige­ria and Venezuela and Chad. All of those coun­tries are on the State Department’s travel warn­ing list. Now think about this pic­ture and ask your­self what’s wrong…we travel, in this coun­try, on their oil. But it’s not safe for us to travel in their coun­try.” Ridge went on to call the United States’ rela­tion­ship with these coun­tries “toxic, both lit­er­ally and figuratively.”

“We need a national all-in energy pol­icy that’s real­is­tic and prac­ti­cal, not rhetor­i­cal and illu­sory.” And pre­dictably, given the fact we’re here at a con­fer­ence about nat­ural gas drilling, Ridge said hydraulic frac­tur­ing and shale gas should be the cor­ner­stone of that new pol­icy. “We are truly an energy-rich coun­try,” he said. “And nat­ural gas should be at the fore­front of the energy rev­o­lu­tion.”  The more energy the United States extracts from within its bor­ders, Ridge argued, the less it will need from the Mid­dle East. “Made in Amer­ica, when it comes to energy, is in my mind just a syn­onym for national security.”

Ridge spent about a year lob­by­ing for the Mar­cel­lus Shale Coali­tion, and clearly believes in the indus­try group’s prod­uct. “When gas is taken from the ground by hydraulic frac­tur­ing, it pro­vides the least envi­ron­men­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion of any cur­rent base load fuel,” he said. “And when it is used, it has only half the car­bon emis­sions of coal, and vir­tu­ally zero par­tic­u­late emis­sions.” A sub­stan­tial num­ber of peo­ple – many of whom are protest­ing out­side the con­ven­tion cen­ter – are con­cerned about hydraulic fracturing’s safety. They’re wor­ried the chem­i­cals used in the process will con­t­a­m­i­nate drink­ing water. Ridge dis­missed the worry as “phony hysteria.”

Ridge promised gas extrac­tion will improve the econ­omy, too. “Jobs that arise from clean energy are not just for those in the energy indus­try, but for those in vir­tu­ally every indus­trial activ­ity,” he argued. “Trans­porta­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing, con­struc­tion, power gen­er­a­tion, and even more bene­fac­tors. And they flow to schools, com­mu­nity devel­op­ment, recre­ation and cul­ture activities.”

Ridge dinged the fed­eral gov­ern­ment for not invest­ing more money in “there’s not much dis­cus­sion within the polit­i­cal class about nat­ural gas. It seems at times to be about every­thing but nat­ural gas.” He called sub­si­dies for renew­able energy efforts “baf­fling,” adding, “most renew­ables are very costly, and will take awhile to become reli­able, sus­tain­able regional and eco­nomic sources of energy. I’m not say­ing we should stop pur­su­ing them…but clean ener­gies still cost vastly more than fos­sil fuels.”

Toward the end of his speech, the for­mer gov­er­nor tried to tie nat­ural gas to the country’s long his­tory of energy extrac­tion. “We must decide whether we will lead the trans­for­ma­tion, or be led by oth­ers. I pre­fer the for­mer.” He tied nat­ural gas into the country’s long his­tory of extrac­tion. “Coal pow­ered Amer­ica into the indus­trial age in the 19^th Cen­tury. Oil pro­pelled Amer­i­can cit­i­zens into the trans­porta­tion age of the 20^th Cen­tury. Nat­ural gas should lead the energy rev­o­lu­tion, and be the foun­da­tion fuel, of the 21^st Cen­tury.” Of course, both the oil and coal boom dev­as­tated Pennsylvania’s nat­ural resources. Ridge said gas drillers have learned the lessons from those extrac­tion cycles.

Ridge is the first of three Penn­syl­va­nia gov­er­nors to address the con­ven­tion. Demo­c­rat Ed Ren­dell will speak this evening, and incum­bent Tom Cor­bett, a Repub­li­can, will deliver a speech tomor­row. We’ll have full cov­er­age of both upcom­ing speeches.