DENVER—Drilling and fracking in Utah’s Uintah Basin is “responsible for the majority of NOx and VOC emissions” in the area according to a new scientific study funded partly by the petroleum industry. Oil and gas organizations, confronted with a report conducted by state, federal and academic experts, were quick to shift the blame to the “weather” as the chief cause for poisonous ozone levels in the Basin. “Blaming Old Man Winter for causing poisonous levels of ozone in an area with massive industrial drilling and fracking is laughable,” said Center for Western Priorities’ Trevor Kincaid. “Ignoring scientific data and objecting to action that would fix the root cause is both irresponsible and dangerous.”
The American Lung Association points to ozone as the cause for a number of health problems, including asthma and respiratory infections. More recent studies show that ozone can cause “premature death” and may be responsible for worse health problems than we previously thought.Since the multi-agency study came out, oil and gas has worked to minimize the results found in the study and shift the blame. According to the Platt’s Energy Wire, oil and gas was unsurprised and unconcerned. An industry representative said, “We knew all along that oil and gas was the major source of emissions in the basin.” The article pointed out that the representative would only express the need for more studies.
Energy InDepth, a petroleum industry project that works with the Western Energy Alliance, went so far to argue in a blog titled, “Utah Air Quality Has a Lot to Do with the Weather” that weather patterns were the cause for ground-level ozone. However, ozone at such dangerous levels is not created naturally in the environment. It is only created when manmade pollutants are introduced.
Read more on the Uintah Basin air pollution study.
(Feature photo: Tony Frates, Flickr)