One reason Oklahomans appreciate oil-gas industry
THE oil and gas industry in Oklahoma has been getting knocked around pretty good at the state Capitol. In calling for the industry to pay a higher gross production tax rate, the House Democratic leader, in particular, regularly pilloried oil and gas as “the wealthiest” and “the most powerful” industry “in the history of the world.”
It’s an effort to depict the industry as greedy and uncaring, one that looks out only for itself at all costs. This narrative is a favorite of liberals across the country, many of whom dream of windmills and solar panels supplying all the nation’s energy, and who demonize fossil fuels as “dirty” and the industry as harmful to the environment.
Our sense is that most Oklahomans reject these arguments, and appreciate what the oil and gas industry has meant to this state and what it continues to mean — tens of thousands of good-paying jobs at companies that in fiscal 2015 remitted about $2 billion in tax revenue to the state treasury.
Most Oklahomans also reject progressives’ notion that the industry doesn’t care about the land. No greater example of this exists than the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board’s now 24-year effort to clean up abandoned oil field sites.
These are locations scarred by exploration and development in Oklahoma, which began in the mid1880s (with the first commercially productive rig drilled in 1897, near Bartlesville). Certainly, none of the oil and gas operators in the state today had any hand in those early practices.
Yet in 1993, oil industry leaders and royalty owners worked with the Legislature to create the OERB (natural gas producers joined not long after). Using funds voluntarily contributed by producers and royalty owners, the OERB has restored about 15,300 orphaned and abandoned well sites.
Producers and royalty owners pay a small percentage assessment on oil and gas sales in the state. This provides a service that costs the landowner nothing, and costs taxpayers nothing.
All but seven of the state’s 77 counties have benefited. Since the program’s inception, the OERB says, it has spent about $100 million on well site cleanup. The number of cleanups ranges from one each in Texas, Johnston and Pushmataha counties, to 2,201 in Seminole County and 1,677 in Creek County.
Just last week, the OERB noted it had restored 1,000 sites in Osage County, with about 360 others identified. Estimates are that thousands more may remain in the county, which was a hotbed of the state’s early drilling activity.
The Oklahoman’s Adam Wilmoth spoke last week to landowners James Wright and Vicki Hayward, beneficiaries of the 1,000th cleanup in Osage County. Their 140 acres of land near Sperry included 25 acres littered with concrete remnants of an old oil field, and by an old saltwater dump. They didn’t have the wherewithal to remedy those problems on their own.
“It’s a dream come true,” Hayward said. “It’s beyond our expectations.”
Consider them two more residents who are grateful for the oil and gas industry in Oklahoma.