Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?
Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who made his fortune in the oil and gas industry, was the featured guest at a Southern Republican Leadership Conference event this week in Oklahoma City and he made several jaw-dropping statements that would have been laughable had the topic not been so serious.
Among them:
“Wastewater wells and fracking have nothing to do with — they’re not even earthquakes,” he told KFOR news anchor Kevin Ogle, who interviewed the oilman from Holdenville before a crowd of 300 guests at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.
Let's stop there for a moment to offer clarification. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey most
definitely believe there is a connection. Now, back to T. Boone Pickens and his response when asked about the wastewater injection-earthquake connection:
“What’s happened is that we’re monitoring (seismic activity) closer,” Pickens said. “Until a few years ago, we were monitored out of St. Louis, Missouri. And that’s where we got the triggers. Now we come in with the monitors and low and behold we have got all of these ‘Oh my God; we’re having another earthquake’ — the earth is moving all the time, that’s not unusual.”
A-ha!
Pickens claimed that the epicenters of the state’s earthquakes are 25,000 feet down. (The average depth is about 17,000 feet.)
“You’re injecting water in those wells at something like four or five thousand feet. And you’re fracking at about 10,000 feet. Now Texas has decided that they have a problem. Most of their tremors are coming from Denton.”
He said Oklahomans should “relax you cousins.”
So, there you have it. Man who has made billions off the industry that is causing hundreds of earthquakes each in Oklahoma says "Chill, bro! Nothing to see here!"