Did you read that actress Daryl Hannah got arrested in front of the White House, protesting the Keystone XL pipeline?
Ugh.
Although a few years have passed since Hannah was thought of as an American Sweetheart, she still holds that spot for many a mermaid lover. Lately she's been kicking up some negative dust around the Keystone XL pipeline.
Proposed by TransCanada (NYSE:TRP) (TSX:TRP) in 2008, the Keystone XL pipeline will transport up to 830,000 barrels of oil a day from Canada to markets in the US, all the way to the Texas Gulf Coast. The $7 billion pipeline project is expected to create some 20,000 American jobs, as well as offer the US much-needed energy security.
Nonetheless, people like Daryl Hannah oppose the pipeline because the source of the energy independence is Canada's oil sands.
Asia, on the other hand, does not have the same aversion to Canada's black gold, and has commercially supported Enbridge's (NYSE:ENB) (TSX:ENB) proposed $5.5 billion Northern Gateway Pipelines, which are also slated to export Canada's oil -- but this time to Asia.
Poor shale also can't seem to get a fair shake. A documentary comes out, and everyone believes it. Now, with drilling and development reaching new highs, shale gas and oil are expected to become the life-saver for growing demand in the country.
Again, negative PR comes in to ruin the day. Instead of news agencies heralding the new technologies that are allowing operators to produce ever-increasing amounts of unconventional natural gas, condensate and oil, they continue to focus on a misrepresentation of the truth.
I even saw that CSI did an episode on hydraulic fracturing. Really?
Where's the Hollywood endorsement for oil and gas? Who's going to step up and support the thousands upon thousands of Americans who earn their livelihoods from the upstream, downstream and midstream segments?
No, oil and gas is not necessarily pretty. It takes hard work, dedication, sweat and risk to develop our nation's natural resources. We've been doing it successfully for more than a century.
Thinking about it: Maybe the industry doesn't need a movie star to publicly support oil and gas -- we've got hard-working Americans, quietly toiling to ensure that US families can afford gasoline, electricity and heat.
Thank you.
............................................
Phaedra
Friend Troy is the content director for PennEnergy.com, an all-energy website that
provides oil and gas, power and infrastructure news, analysis, reports and more.
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I have been saying the same thing for several years! Why do we "let" the media portray us when they do it so poorly? Why are we not proactively educating the public about o&g and what it is we really do for our country?
ReplyDeleteGreat article!
Allow me to play the violin for people like me: The industry seems to prefer to spend millions on conventional PR for unconventional gas. Those methods simply aren't cost effective. As shale moves out into new markets this is even more evident. Using US PR techniques which have been none too successful at home is truly pointless internationally.
ReplyDeleteShale antis world wide were impacted by the US failure to engage properly and sadly mistakes are being replicated, not successes.
On the other side, what happens globally can impact the US too. How many times do we hear in the US that France has banned shale gas for example? Yet in France, they use the old techniques of thousands of euros a day going to big name PR groups who are spectacularly unproductive.
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