A bright future in oil, gas industry
As leaders of Oklahoma’s defining industry, individuals and companies from the oil and natural gas industry have often found themselves in the spotlight, serving as civic and social leaders for the better part of a century.
But today, the spotlight shines differently. Today the light is lit by industry detractors, fueled by environmental activists who believe the oil and natural gas industry is inherently destructive and outdated. And sometimes, the same spotlight shared by radical environmental activists shines from those within the industry. Such is the case with a recent op-ed in The Oklahoman by Mike Cantrell and the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance.
Cantrell makes unsubstantiated and exaggerated claims about the impact of horizontal drilling on vertical well producers. His tactics are the same as the environmental activists — make wild claims on an issue the general public has little knowledge about in hopes of building fear.
He says more than 400 oil and natural gas wells have been damaged in Kingfisher County by horizontal drilling. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission has record of less than a dozen such cases.
He says hundreds of families are losing their livelihoods. He doesn’t tell you that the majority of those well owners have reached agreements with the companies operating nearby, ensuring the income generated from those older, smaller wells is not hampered by new wells.
Twenty years ago, Cantrell and the members of the OEPA were leaders in the state’s oil and natural gas industry. Oklahoma then was dominated by marginal wells that produce 10 barrels of oil or less a day. Even 10 years ago, marginal production still accounted for 89 percent of Oklahoma’s oil output. Today, thanks to technology and massive capital investment by the state’s active oil and gas operators, production from new horizontal wells accounts for 90 percent of Oklahoma’s oil production.
The oil and natural gas industry has been revolutionized by technology, but not all of those in the industry have embraced it. They want the industry to remain the way it was when vertical wells were the norm and they had significant influence on the industry. In order to do that, they cast today’s industry in a negative light. They are Blockbuster executives in a Netflix world.
Legislation in 2017 gave oil and gas producers in Oklahoma the ability to expand the use of advancing technologies to drill and complete wells. The result has been increased exploration and development across the state, an increase in high-paying jobs for Oklahomans, increased value for the more than 250,000 royalty owners, and a significant increase in oil and gas production and resulting tax revenue.
Environmental groups have used fear to push an anti-oil and natural gas agenda that would slow development and eliminate jobs at a time when industry employment recovers after a historic decline in commodity prices. Now, oil producers of generations past are embracing the tactics of those radical environmentalists.
But fear should not be used to eliminate jobs of working Oklahomans or derail the economic engine that drives this state forward. We see a bright future led by technology and the ingenuity of the thousands of Oklahomans who work to power this critical industry.