Publicity:

If conniving TV oil baron JR Ewing stepped out onto the porch of Southfork and surveyed a sprawl of fine suburban housing intermingled with oil and gas plants you’d be sure that characteristic big wide winners’ grin would break out across the Dallas bad guy’s dial. Surely this is a triumphant picture of industry at harmony with residential life. An American dreamland.

But this isn’t Southfork, Dallas it’s Southlake, Dallas and many residents aren’t so taken with the idea of drilling rigs pressing up against their backyard fences.

‘There is no amount of money that will convince me that we should have this in the middle of our neighbourhoods. I’m not going to put a price tag on the health and safety and well being of my family.’ DIANE HARRIS Southlake resident

Spreading beneath Southlake and a chain of communities fanning out from the big Texan centre is an oil and gas rich Eldorado called the Barnett Shale field and developers are stampeding for a piece of the action. It’s all part of an accelerated quest within the United States for energy independence, to loosen the reliance on the Middle East and shoot for home grown solutions to energy demand.

But to liberate the bounty below calls for a controversial process called ‘fracking’.

Fracking involves injected huge quantities of water and chemicals into a subterranean setting shattering the shale and releasing gas and oil.

‘A lot of things that are generated during this process are known to be harmful to human beings. But it’s similar in my mind to how we found out about cigarette smoking and cancer. It wasn’t that we did a study and found out oh no look cigarettes cause cancer, it was 40, 50 years of ah... exposure.’ DR GORDON AALUND Emergency Doctor and Southlake Resident

In this revealing journey through America’s suburban heartland and onto where fracking is taking place on a panoramic scale in hitherto moribund states like North Dakota, North America Correspondent Michael Brissenden hears very conflicting views about the pros and cons of fracking.

There’s the young urban gas jock making a bundle on a rig outside Fort Worth.

‘Every day, probably to the end of this world, we’ll keep drillin’. There will be holes in the ground and we will be there.’ TAYLOR HINKLE, Rig worker

There’s the North Dakota county development chief watching the boom go kaboom! and dramatically transforming his state.

‘A boom beyond - I think it’s safe to say - anything that anybody has really seen in this country since probably the land rushes in the early 1900’s.’ GENE VEEDER Watford City, McKenzie County

And there’s the small Dakota landholder who says her pristine creek has been tainted by underground leaks generated by fracking such that it doesn’t freeze over, even in the depths of a bitter North Dakota winter. Jacki Schilke is also blaming fracking for her failing health.

‘They’re here to rape this land, make as much money as they can and get the hell out of here. They could give a crap less what they are doing here. They will come on your property look you straight in the eye and lie to you. And they will leave without a second thought and they don’t care’JACKI SCHILKE, North Dakota farmer

As the fracking question gathers momentum– are we glimpsing the future?

Dallas freeways

Music

00:00

BRISSENDEN: It’s not bigger than Texas – it is Texas. Downtown Dallas, what the locals call the high five. There’s a strange twisted beauty here. It’s more than just a complex multi-layered web of inter-connecting freeways – it’s a monument to America’s energy paradox. In a car dependent nation, dependent on others for fuel, the high five loops and rolls out over some of the richest shale fields in the Lone Star State.

00:12

American and Texan flags flying/Drilling rigs

And that means the new neighbour moving into the suburbs around here may well be a drilling rig.

00:47

Music

00:52

Aalund

DR GORDON AALUND: “I know people who tried everything they possibly could

00:59

and they still have drilling right next to their houses and they’re very unhappy about it”.

01:02

Freeway at sunset

BRISSENDEN: You don’t have to travel far to witness a collision between community and commerce, family and industry.

DR GORDON AALUND: “We all take risks every day, driving to work, you know,

01:06

Aalund

but there’s risks that you have to take and risks that you don’t have to take, and to me it just doesn’t make sense to put a heavy industrial process right next to somebody’s house”.

01:19

Southlake general views

Music

01:29

BRISSENDEN: This is Southlake – a prosperous community on the outskirts of Dallas. A few years ago Forbes magazine named this the most affluent neighbourhood in the United States – a place where usually money talks. But right now the talk’s all about the riches of the Barnett shale field underneath suburbs like Southlake, home to Dr Gordon Aalund and his family.

01:34

Southlake residential from car

DR GORDON AALUND: “There are so many things we don’t know about this process and that’s really what became most frightening is the things that are being generated during through the fracking process we know have the potential to cause harm. Things like

02:04

Aalund

naphthene and benzene which we know are linked to leukaemia, we know are linked to cancers and other types of neurologic disorders”.

02:16

Families at Southlake restaurant

BRISSENDEN: The emergency room doctor and his band of suburban activists often gather here at the local Mexican restaurant with their children to discuss the perils of a process they may not have even heard of a few years ago even in oil savvy Texas – fracking.

02:27

Brissenden and Aalund at proposed fracking site

“And so this is where they were going to put it yeah?”

DR GORDON AALUND: “Correct, yeah, just past that second fence line there, it would’ve been about 16-1700 feet from my front door and within about 1100 feet of some of my neighbours”.

02:46

Diane and family at restaurant

BRISSENDEN: Neighbours like Diane Harris and her family.

03:00

DIANE HARRIS: “I’m not going to put a price tag on the health and safety and well-being of my family. There is

03:05

Diane Harris

no amount of money that will convince me that we should have this in the middle of our neighbourhoods

03:11

Brissenden and Aalund at proposed fracking site

DR GORDON AALUND: “It’s similar in my mind to how we found out about cigarette smoking and cancer.

03:17

It wasn’t that we did a study and found out oh no look, cigarettes cause cancer! It was 40, 50 years of exposure”.

03:24

Drilling rig

BRISSENDEN: The process that so worries the doctor is hailed by the industry as the key to energy independence. The drill holes can go three kilometres down and then push out horizontally for kilometres as well. A cocktail of more than five hundred chemicals, millions of litres of water and truckloads of sand is then used to break up the shale and release gas and oil. The process has transformed the energy business in a few short years. But the jury’s out on its impact on the environment and people’s health.

03:33

DR GORDON AALUND: “Really this is a new frontier. Nobody’s done this. Nobody’s done drilling in an urban setting and studied the long term effects of what’s going to happen. And so

04:17

Brissenden and Aalund on residential street

again it comes back to my health, clean air, clean water. Those are things that we can’t live without. We could all live without gas royalties”.

04:26

View of fracking facility

DIANE HARRIS: “You know, a few dollars to have an industrial, toxic chemical laden facility literally in your backyards. It’s not worth it. The risks are not worth the reward.

04:35

Diane

I knew that if I didn’t act and if gas drilling occurred near my home and one of my children got sick I would never forgive myself”.

04:50

Excerpt ‘Gasland’ showing fracking process

05:01

Super:
Gasland Palace Films
(with cigarette lighter near running tap, water ignites in sink)

BRISSENDEN: As many Southlakers school themselves up on the fracking process, this documentary has been proving popular at the local Blockbuster. It’s called ‘Gasland’ and this is its most famous scene.

JOSH FOX: “So I went out west and found people who could light their water on fire. Many, many families,

05:06

Josh Fox

and people started to realise oh my water’s turning black, my water’s bubbling, something smells funny, my kids are getting sick. They’re all comparing information and then they discover lo and behold that they can light their water on fire right out of the tap”.

05:31

Clip from ‘Gasland’ water ignites in sink

BRISSENDEN: Josh Fox is the Gasland guru. It’s hard to overestimate the impact of his heartfelt, homespun yet very powerful documentary. Josh Fox has become the anti-fracking pin up, an inspiration for those fighting big oil, and a serious challenge to the industry.

JOSH FOX: “There is a system here that is corrupt.

05:43

Josh Fox. Super:
Josh Fox
Director Gasland

Oil and gas pushes people around. It’s bullying, it’s aggressive, it gets its way. It’s about time we’re done with that way of doing business, with the culture of that, because it is literally toxic in every aspect. It is toxic to the environment and it is toxic to our political process”.

06:12

Cattle shots

Music

06:33

Rodeo

BRISSENDEN: Here in Texas they’re used to big oil. For generations oil and cattle have forged the formidable Texas character.

06:49

RADIO ANNOUNCER: (at rodeo) “If you say Fort Worth and you talk about the energy business you need to say XTO, XTO Energy, 25 years in North Texas and they’re now a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil”.

06:58

Music

07:16

BRISSENDEN: And here, not far from Southlake, at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo the crowd loves their cowboys and the big oil operators that bring jobs and prosperity.

07:18

RADIO ANNOUNCER: “One of the leading producers of natural gas in the United States, 1300 employees in North Texas and they take care of our kids. God bless XTO, thanks a bunch”.

07:30

Music

07:45

Shopping mall with drilling rig in background

BRISSENDEN: But the pace of the fracking frenzy makes a wild bucking bronco seem sedate. In just a few years, drilling rigs have sprouted up through the Texas suburbs like towering Hill’s Hoists

07:50

– across from shopping centres, close to schools – otherwise residential neighbourhoods have become industrial zones.

08:02

Fracking facility

When the fracking starts, trucks gather round the well. The sand, water and chemical mix is pushed deep underground at extremely high pressure. Escaping vapour drifts in the wind.

08:13

Taylor Hinkle

TAYLOR HINKLE: “It’s pretty dangerous. I see a lot of injuries. I’ve seen somebody actually get blown all the way back from a blow out. I’ve seen one guy die on a blow out”.

08:30

Taylor at fracking facility

Music

08:37

BRISSENDEN: Dangerous, even deadly, but lucrative. Fracking is now underway in 34 states in the US. And urban cowboy Taylor Hinkle is just one of those cashing in on the new energy boom on a Fort Worth rig.

08:39

TAYLOR HINKLE: “It’s great money. Like I said it is a lifestyle. Once you decide to do it, once you get into the full force with it you ain’t got no choice but to follow it around because you don’t know nothing else. When I was

09:03

Taylor. Super:
Taylor Hinkle
Rigger

younger I always said it would never happen to me, but once you get a taste of that money it’s addictive”.

09:12

Taylor at fracking facility/Plane taking off

BRISSENDEN: Taylor Hinkle is working on a drilling rig just a few miles from the Dallas Fort Worth Airport and just a stone’s throw from new housing developments.

09:20

Fracking facility

TAYLOR HINKLE: “Any kind of leaks or anything like that are a big hazard especially at the airport. If there was

09:32

Taylor

a problem on this location, say somebody like sparked a lighter in the wrong place or, you know, like a spark was discharged from a piece of equipment, you know. If this well was to blow up, who’s to say that that gas is not going to ignite underneath the ground and blow twenty different ones up around the airport”.

09:37

Fracking facility

BRISSENDEN: And that’s the rub. There’s a lot about what’s happening under there that has people worried and has the oil companies on the defensive.

09:56

DAVID MILLER (AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE): “Certainly the API’s best practices and operational standards that we encourage the industry to use are very important and

10:06

Miller. Super:
David Miller
American Petroleum Institute

how industry goes about doing its business to make sure that they are operating safely, environmentally sound and respectful of the neighbours and the stakeholders.

10:15

Fracking facility

So there are lots of things that go into these standards that I think address a lot of the issues that people have been raising”.

10:23

JOSH FOX: “It’s literally like a chemistry detective novel. One of the issues is chemical injection. The other issue is

10:31

Josh. Super:
Josh Fox
Director Gasland

simply connecting the layers between these zones which are toxic to ground water, very far under the ground where you have gas, oil, volatile organic compounds, benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene – normally occurring radioactive material. And what you’ve just done is you have created a connecting straw between layers that nature separated out millions of years ago with the ground water”.

10:40

Fracking facility

BRISSENDEN: The fracking process was invented by Halliburton, a company later run by Dick Cheney for some years before he became George W Bush’s vice president. In 2005, the Bush administration passed an act exempting fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

11:04

JOSH FOX: “That means they don’t have to apply for a permit for chemical injection, and you’re creating a

11:24

Josh

highway of gas and oil that’s going through the aquifer protected by a one inch cement casing. And you ask the industry do casings fail? And they say of course -- 50% of them fail over the life of the well. 50% of them fail over the life of the well which means that in 20 and 30 years you’ve got a water contamination situation that’s potentially catastrophic”.

11:29

Southlake city building

ZENA RUCKER: “It has definitely divided the town. It has

11:54

Zena Rucker

not brought harmony to Southlake, let’s put it that way”.

12:01

Fracking protest signs

BRISSENDEN: In Southlake the fracking furore has provoked argument and insult.

ZENA RUCKER: “There’s just something about this town - it’s called not in my backyard, you know?

12:05

Zena

If I can’t have it you can’t have it either. A lot of that is happening.

12:18

Proposed fracking site

It’s not just the people in Southlake, Americans are just afraid of their shadows”.

12:23

Zena driving

BRISSENDEN: The suburb is split between angry opponents and fervent supporters like, oddly enough, lifelong Democrat Zena Rucker.

12:28

ZENA RUCKER: “When I first became Democratic precinct chair for this district everybody in this town was a Democrat. And little by little as the

12:37

Zena at home with Brissenden

yuppies, then the dot com-ers came into town, we used to say they get a little money in their pocket and they change”.

12:48

Zena shows Brissenden back yard

BRISSENDEN: Zena Rucker is one of the original land holders here. She considers herself a dedicated environmentalist and a conscientious conserver.

12:57

ZENA RUCKER: “I am a true environmentalist. I drive a Prius. I never take anything to the garbage. It either gets in the compost or it gets recycled”.

13:09

Zena’s land

BRISSENDEN: She owns 75 acres, pretty countryside that’s worth a bomb on paper. A while ago gas companies approached her with offers for the mineral rights on the property. The cheques were too big to resist, even for a Prius driver.

ZENA RUCKER: “There was one that was pretty close to $300,000 - the last one.

13:18

Zena

I cashed some of them already but the leases ran out so anyway this last one however they took back and decided they just weren’t going to do it.

13:39

Zena’s land

But they led me to believe that had they drilled I could easily make $30,000 a month”.

BRISSENDEN: But her bonanza’s hit a wall. The local council has now sided with the fracking opponents and imposed a moratorium on development.

13:52

Aalund and Brissenden by fence

For the moment Gordon Aalund and his supporters have won out.

14:08

Aalund’s daughter

DR GORDON AALUND: “My daughter is still in a developmental phase, right? She’s four years old and

14:15

Aalund and Brissenden

no one can tell me what the long term effects on things like hormone production and ovaries and whatnot.

14:19

Fracking facility

You can’t protect yourself from something you can’t see and you can’t smell”.

BRISSENDEN: But while suburbs battle with worrying new residents,

14:24

Time lapse. Plains

the frackers are descending upon a vast swathe of North America and in one case almost an entire state -

14:32

Plains. North Dakota. Abandoned buildings

the remote, sweeping plains and rugged rural landscapes of North Dakota. It’s pretty inhospitable country – particularly in the grip of a freezing winter when we arrive. Not so long ago North Dakota was struggling to keep its population but that, as they say, is so yesterday.

MIKE KEANE: “With the way things are going on

14:41

Mike Keane

the oil fields right now it’s just mayhem. This is where the work is. It’s big.

15:23

Keane drives

These roads are not made for this kind of traffic.

15:34

The amount of trucks that are around here you could only explain it like flies around a cow shit. There are just trucks everywhere”.

15:37

Keane’s truck over bridge

BRISSENDEN; Mike Keane’s got the pedal to the metal and the icy road to the low grey horizon ahead might as well be paved with gold.

MIKE KEANE: “The average driver, on a normal week would probably make somewhere between

15:50

Keane drives

four and seven thousand dollars a week. Just a driver.

From the grocery stores to the parts stores to the hardware stores to the truck drivers, everybody is doing well. And if they

16:09

Keane. Super:
Mike Keane
Trucker

tell you they’re not doing well, they’re either not very good business people or they are lying. It’s a simple fact they’re not up here for anything other than the almighty dollar”.

16:18

Keane and truck at fracking rig

BRISSENDEN: Like millions before him, Mike Keane came to America from Ireland. In the 20 years he’s been in the US he’s been a fisherman, a farmer and a horse breeder – now he’s a trucking magnate in the making – hauling water to the fracking rigs.

16:32

MIKE KEANE: “I’m doing good. I’m doing real good. I now have five trucks, five trailers, all paid for. There are

16:50

Keane

weeks here that I could make in excess of $50,000 from my truck in one week. The harder you work the more you make”.

16:57

Rig

GENE VEEDER: “There is more oil than we can get out right now and I’m not privy to what’s happening in Saudi Arabia or

17:11

Gene. Super:
Gene Veeder
McKenzie County

off the coast or up in Alaska but this is a big play that’s here for a long time. As long as the need’s there and as long the price stays where it’s going to be this looks real strong”.

17:18

North Dakota. Plains views

BRISSENDEN: Nowhere is fuelling American dreams of energy independence more than this place – the shale rich plains of North Dakota. Just the oil that’s here could help transform the world’s biggest oil consumer into the world’s biggest oil producer.

17:30

GENE VEEDER: “A boom is an inadequate description – a boom beyond I think it’s safe to say, anything that anybody has really seen in

17:47

Gene

this country since, probably, the land rushes in the early 1900s”.

17:53

Watford City

Music

17:59

BRISSENDEN: This is Watford City; a year and a half ago that in itself was a misnomer. This little town of just over a thousand people was following much of the rest of the state into a long slow decline. But in just 18 months, the population has grown from a little over a thousand to six and a half thousand people. There was a time

18:05

Gene walks along street

Gene Veeder knew everyone in town. He grew up here. Now the shops on main street are full of strangers and for the head of this county’s development authority that’s progress to be proud of.

18:31

GENE VEEDER; “So now we are frantically trying to get housing for all those people in an area that really hasn’t built much for the last 20 or 25 years.

18:46

Gene

Right now the challenges in this community are to get water and sewer in so that developers can build more permanent housing”.

18:53

Fracking rigs. Night

Music

19:00

BRISSENDEN: In a country where unemployment still hovers over 8% North Dakota’s jobless rate of 3% is the envy of the nation.

19:14

Town employment signage

Here in the shale oil belt, in towns like Watford City and Williston jobs go begging – Wal-Mart, McDonalds and even a local casino are among the many touting for workers.

19:24

For those lured by the lustre of the oil boom, finding somewhere to sleep can be harder than finding a job.

19:38

Worker accommodation camps

The lucky ones end up here,  in hastily erected prefab man camps – a bunk and full board in a shared dorm room costs as much as $140 a night. No one’s complaining.

BEN SANDERS: “I am a fracker. I work for a fracking crew. All we do basically is just pump water, gel, chemicals and sand down a hole and it helps the well produce oil more efficiently.

19:45

Ben Sanders

Last year I grossed about $85,000 and then this year I should gross a lot more”.

20:10

Mobile homes in car park

BRISSENDEN: Others not so lucky sleep where they can – car parks are overflowing with mobile homes and caravans – truck drivers sleep in their truck cabs, if they sleep much at all.
 

20:18

Sunset

Music

20:31

Riverbed

BRISSENDEN: You won’t be surprised to know that just like suburban Southlake Texas, not everyone’s happy.

JACKI SCHILKE: “Yeah last winter one day my husband came back here

20:40

Jacki and Brissenden walk through long grass to water

and found this open spot that should be frozen over and then we discovered all this water bubbling”.

BRISSENDEN: “And how cold does it get here?”

JACKI SCHILKE: “Oh gosh thirty below here last week”.

BRISSENDEN: “Thirty below? And this will still be like this?

JACKIE SCHILKE: “Yeah”.

BRISSENDEN: “Wow”.

20:49

Bubbling water patch

Jacki Schilke says her previously pristine spring fed creek started to bubble just a month after fracking on a neighbouring property.

21:06

JACKI SCHILKE: “And actually when I bought this property over six years this spring now, we were drinking out of this creek

21:16

Jacki and Brissenden beside creek

it was so clear”.

BRISSENDEN: “Really? You wouldn’t drink it now, would you?”

JACKI SCHILKE: “Oh God no.

21:22

I won’t even walk in it let alone drink it. Yeah my daddy told me, he goes it kind of tastes a little beavery, but it’s good clean water, you know. But there’s a beaver dam down the way there. The beavers have all moved out”.

21:26

Jacki feeds animals

BRISSENDEN: Jacki Schilke blames fracking for the loss of five cows, two dogs and a number of chickens – and for the decline of her own health.

JACKI SCHILKE: “I was actually diagnosed with hydrocarbon exposure and I’ve got a lot of problems that come along with it.

21:40

Jacki

Well when you live 24 miles out in the middle of nowhere that shouldn’t be a problem. I should be breathing the cleanest air in the world”.

21:58

Ext. Jacki’s house

Music

22:05

Jacki walks across yard

BRISSENDEN: The industry admits its record isn’t perfect, but says safety standards are improving all the time and those who have been adversely impacted do have options.

DAVID MILLER: “There’s always issues. There’s nothing that we do in any industry, and energy is not unique, that’s completely risk free. You have

22:09

Miller. Super:
David Miller
American Petroleum Institute

the ability to go to your state regulators and raise issues and concerns as private landowners, depending on which state you’re in and what the state laws are you may have recourse in the legal system. So there are lots of ways you can seek relief on that”.

22:31

Jackie

JACKI SCHILKE: “They are god damn liars. They’re here to rape this land, make as much money as they can and get the hell out of here. They couldn’t give a crap less what they’re doing here. They will come on your property look you straight in the eye and lie to you. And they will leave without a second thought and they do not care”.

22:46

Fracking rigs on plains

BRISSENDEN: From North Dakota to Texas and a slew of states in between many now blame fracking for a range of ailments – headaches, nausea, dizziness, skin rashes and worse.

23:10

JANE LYNN: “When they came into my neighbourhood, I began having a lot of intense long term headaches

23:26

Jane Lynn

and extreme fatigue and dizziness. And now I’ve been diagnosed with anaemia… I never had anaemia”.

23:33

Jane with chickens

BRISSENDEN: Jane Lynn lives in Arlington Texas – a middle class suburb just a few miles from Southlake.

23:41

Fracking rig

The fracking activity here in the past two years has been feverish.

23:49

JANE LYNN: “This has been like, I guess my worst nightmare. It’s like a bad dream and I keep thinking okay

23:56

Jane

I’m going to wake up, it’s going to be back to normal and it’s not and it’s sad, it’s really sad”.

24:02

City Hall meeting

BRISSENDEN: Tonight at the Arlington City Hall Jane Lynn is one of a growing group of concerned residents hoping to block proposals for more wells in the neighbourhood.

24:10

The place is packed and it quickly becomes apparent not everyone is on her side.

MAN ADDRESSING MEETING: “It’s a good thing for everybody.

24:25

Man addressing meeting

These days it seems like the tail wags the dog and I think it’s time for the dog to stop that. Thank you”. (applause)

24:33

BRISSENDEN: Here too, money, development and perceptions of the national interest are dividing the residents.

24:44

Jane addresses meeting

Tonight, Jane Lynn and her activist friends won and lost. Council voted against one well site proposal but approved another.

24:51

JANE LYNN: “Everyone was so pro-drilling and this is the red white and blue American thing to do,

25:03

Jane

and I just never saw it that way and I was being personally affected by it. But now I’m seeing other people rise up who are feeling the same way. I think a lot of people now would like a do-over”.

25:10

Fracking rigs/ Rural views

Music

25:22

BRISSENDEN: In this car crazy nation with its reliance on prickly, often hostile and unstable Middle Eastern suppliers, it’s easy to see why the new energy rush within has gathered such momentum. But where it collides with the American heartland of family and future and where it threatens wild life and a way of life in America’s vast backyard, fracking is fast becoming a very dirty word. Like the process itself, the fractures and fault lines are exploding.

25:28

Music

26:05

Credits

Reporter – Michael Brissenden

Camera – Dan Sweetapple

Editor – Simon Brynjolffssen

Producer – Ian Altschwager

26:23