Dateline: 21 February 2012
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| Jack Showers, Talisman Energy |
The Sempronius town board meeting for February 2012 was, without a doubt, the most remarkable board meeting I have ever attended. It was around three hours long and full of surprises. I’m going to report on this meeting in parts because three hours of surprises is just too much typing all at once.
The first surprise of the night was that three gas industry advocates gave a presentation. I was never officially informed of the presentation and there were no newspaper notices to let town residents know. But a lot of folks who were in favor of hydrofracking in Sempronius somehow knew all about it.
Before the meeting began, as I was sitting at the front table, a man came up to me holding one of the postcards I had sent to town residents inviting them to visit this web site, DoWeFrackSempronius?. He held it out in front of me and tore it up and threw the pieces down on the table in front of me and said, “Take me off your mailing list!” and walked away. That was a surprise.
Then, a few moments later, another man came and did the exact same thing. I thought maybe I was in for more of that, but probably the other people hadn’t saved their postcards.
I’d just like to say that I don’t think what those two men did was inappropriate in any way. It was an effective way to communicate their feelings about me and this web site. I got the message.
The main speaker of the evening was Jack Showers of Talisman Energy. Mr. Showers didn’t mention his credentials for speaking about hydrofracking. When I’ve gone to other presentations like This One I reported on in Moravia, the speaker's credentials were clearly stated (one was an environmental attorney, one a was a physicist, and the other was health director of Cortland County).
A person on our town board, who is clearly in favor of hydrofracking in Sempronius, commented that the anti-fracking speakers at the Moravia meeting were not qualified to speak about hydrofracking. “What do they know?”
So I expected that Mr. Showers must surely be a geologist or an engineer, or something like that, and maybe he is, but he didn’t say. It could be that he’s just humble about his qualifications. Anyway, afterwards, when he gave me his business card, I discovered that Mr. Showers is a “Senior Stakeholder Relations Advisor” for Talisman Energy. And when I went to the internet I found out that in 2011 Mr. Showers worked for East Resources/Royal Dutch Shell as a “community relations liaison.”
I soon discovered that, as a community relations person, Jack Showers is very well qualified, and did a fine job. To his credit, he assured the audience right from the beginning that he would answer any and all questions from people in attendance. That impressed me a lot.
Jack’s powerpoint presentation focused on things like Talisman’s commitment to being a “good neighbor.” With that in mind the company has a “Good Neighbor Hotline.” If you got a problem, any problem at all, just call the hotline and you will get immediate attention and satisfaction.
Jack showed a screen shot of an example report made out for a call that had come into the hotline. It was from someone who had a problem with their royalty payment.
As another example of how the hotline worked, Jack told us all the story of a call that came from someone who got sick drinking water at their hunting cabin. They were concerned that the drilling company had ruined their water. Jack personally went to the cabin to investigate. He drank some of the water himself! And he said he ended up with stomach cramps later on. It turned out that the water source was just down from the septic system and that’s how it got contaminated. So Talisman did NOT ruin the water. And, obviously, Jack Showers takes his job very seriously, which is certainly commendable.
Mr. Showers made a point of saying that Talisman recycles 99.9% of its fracking water. That’s good to hear. And they absolutely do not make a secret of the fracking fluid recipe they use. The public relations man showed a poster to explain what he was saying and a powerpoint picture explaining that most of the fluid was water with sand and hydrochloric acid (as a descaler) and then only a few gallons of chemicals, but I can’t recall what they were (or if they were actually mentioned). So that was commendable too!
Talisman is real concerned about damage to roads. Jack showed three views of the same road in Pennsylvania—before, during and after. The during picture showed a road that was totally devastated. But then Talisman fixed it up better than it was before. Jack’s company spends a lot of millions of dollars fixing up the roads they ruin. Any town board, faced with such devastation of town roads is surely going to be reassured by that information.
One thing I thought was kind of funny was a picture Jack showed of a bank of crumbly broken shale, just like I’ve seen along Glen Haven Road. Jack was saying how the shale under the ground is as solid and impermeable as concrete, and I was looking at the picture of crumbly aboveground shale.
Many years ago, I worked on a dairy farm on Glen Haven road, outside of New Hope, and when there wasn’t much to do (which is a very rare occurrence on a dairy farm) I would take the pickup truck down to that shale bank and shovel on a load of the broken shale pieces that had fallen in a heap at the bottom. I used it to fill in holes in the barnyard driveway.
So that picture just didn’t go with what the man was saying and, Jack, if you happen to read this, you might want to change the picture. An actual core sample from way down in the shale formation would make your point a lot better. I spent some time looking at core samples from various layers of deep strata one day and I’ll vouch for what you said about that deep shale being solid, but I’m no geologist.
A great deal of Jack’s presentation centered around various community support and outreach efforts. Talisman gives money to the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and I think the Boy Scouts were on the list too. It was a big list. And they really like to help with ag programs that involve the youth, like 4H.
After hearing Jack Showers’s presentation I couldn’t help but think that he is a real tribute to the public relations profession.
Later in the evening, as I asked him some questions, Jack even invited me to come down to a well pad and see for myself what they are doing. That was downright nice but I declined because, frankly, I wouldn’t know what I was looking at, but I’m sure Jack would be a good host and explaine everything real well. Thanks for the offer, Jack.
In retrospect, I don’t recall that Jack had anything negative to say about Talisman Energy company, and hydrofracking technology. Jack was such a positive and sincere guy that I almost considered not asking him any of the questions I was really concerned about (he hadn’t addressed any of them in his presentation). I mean... the way Jack made it sound, hydrofracking was all good, and all good is what we all want, right?.........
( stay tuned for part 2)