Fracking and sex

When I think of extracting natural gas from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, I don’t think of sex, sexually transmitted disease or chlamydia.

When it comes to hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking, the only question springing to mind is: When will I be able to ditch heating oil for gas so I don’t go broke each winter? Daydreaming follows about the dough I’d save with cheap natural gas. I am in a top hat and spats, lighting cigars with $100 bills aboard my yacht, The Moneybags.

 

It never occurred to me that drilling in the Marcellus would result in an alarming rise in STDs. But it does — according to the Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative, whose representatives told a sparse audience in Bensalem that fracking and diseased sex go together like Madonna and Botox.

Blame randy shale workers from “out of state,” according to the Research Collaborative.

For further explanation, I called the organization, which put me in touch with Mark Price of the Keystone Research Center, which is spreading alarm about drill workers spreading STDs.

Price was a rushing gust of info, all delivered nonstop at 60 mph. Really, after I got off the phone, my hair was blown straight back. He explained the fracking/STDs connection, as I jotted along: “Boomtown effect … feature of the human condition … with fracking there are increases in crime, drug activity, STDs … construction and drilling (work) is disproportionately male … fracking brings jobs but also brings costs … communities should begin to prepare and plan for the costs…”

When he finished, I asked, “So, the more drilling, the more chlamydia?”

“It’s a boomtown effect,” he repeated.

He said the report is based on “anecdotal” information gathered from hospitals near fracking camps that identify out-of-state workers as causing disease. “Case study interviews,” he said.

Suspicious, I followed the money to see who’s funding the Collaborative. Among them: the Park Foundation in Ithaca, New York, a fracking foe. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle examined Park’s tax records and detailed millions sent to anti-fracking groups. Park also provided $175,000 to produce the anti-fracking indie flick, “Gasland.”

“Since 2009, the Park Foundation has spread around more than $3 million to dozens of advocacy groups and other institutions that oppose hydrofracking or to those that have produced research on the technique,” the newspaper reported.

It has only been a decade since Pennsylvania came from a minor player in the U.S. natural gas industry to America’s second largest producer. By 2014, hundreds of millions in fracking fees had gone to municipalities, according to a report in the National Journal.

I called the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a natural gas industry consortium, and spoke to Erica Wright about the fracking/STDs allegation.

“What? I can think of reasons why that’s happening — but it has nothing to do with fracking,” she said, laughing.

She told me each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties has received money from the nearly $1 billion collected since the fracking impact tax was enacted in 2008. Bucks County has received about $1.7 million; Montgomery County has gotten about $2.1 million. Fracking has produced 243,000 jobs in Pennsylvania, with an “average core industry wage” of $93,000 a year, Wright told me.

“All counties get funding from the impact tax, whether or not there is fracking within their borders,” she said.

I doubt this will appease the “Gasland” believers. Fracking, we’re told, also causes earthquakes and poisons water. Now, it causes STDs. Good grief.

This reminds me of a faxed press release received in the newsroom from an environmental group decrying the Falls trash-to-steam plant. It described the horrific effects the plant would have on the people of Fairless Hills, but in its haste to send it, the group left out what these horrors would be. Instead, in parentheses it said, “INSERT APOCALYPTIC LANGUAGE HERE.”

Fracking leads to sexual disease. Right. Insert prophylactic language here.

the intel