Colorado Oil and Gas Association CEO Describes PR Strategies to Deal with "Nuts"

COGA's Tisha Conoly-SchullerThe President and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, Tisha Conoly Schuller, told attendees at a drilling industry conference in Denver, Colorado, that attention drawn to the practice of fracking by films like Gasland have caused "a heightened public awareness about hydraulic fracturing and an increase in active opposition" to the practice. She credited Gasland with changing the public conversation about fracking. While still denying that fracking contributes to contamination of drinking water, Conoly-Schuller told the audience that the industry needs to change its messaging around fracking. She outlined a list of recommendations for the industry to improve public perception of its practices, including use of more credible third-party messengers -- like university professors -- to convey positive messages about the industry to the public, making the drilling industry "hipper" so it  appeals to young people and reframing the debate about hydraulic fracturing in economic terms, for example by calling energy the "building block of the economy" -- all PR techniques first used by the tobacco industry to bolster public perception and delay regulation of their products. Commenting on environmental advocates and people who claim they have been physically sickened by exposure to drilling chemicals and practices, Conoly-Schuller said, "These nuts make up about 90 percent of our population, so we can't really call them nuts any more. They're the mainstream."

Comments

I'm against fracking in general, but in fairness to your post, it should be pointed out that the extent to which the oil and gas industry has one to to avoid disclosure to the public on the chemicals used in fracking, the total lack of oversight by regulators and congress - zero accountability to the public or those that might be at risk from the fracking process drives the anti-fracking sentiment.

The public might well be inclined to accept that in return for thousands of jobs, a few hundred wells may be contaminated and several people will develop debilitating illnesses and premature death as a result - hey, it worked for the tobacco industry...

And I have no vested interests or financial stakes in alternative energy sources - just an average citizen that cares about the health of his fellow countrymen and women...

Typical cognitive-dissonance addled doublethink. Which fossil fuel company is paying you to troll Internet message boards anyway?

Have you done any research about the current headlines into the risks of fracking?

Every day there is a new headline about something else that's gone wrong somewhere in the country where fracking is occurring.

Water quality, air quality, spills, earthquakes, illness, radioactive waste (Marcellus is a particularly 'dirty' shale play, by the way), lack of regulation, gas companies buying silence with gag orders after settling with people who've had disasters, boom/bust economy issues, explosions of drug abuse and sexual assault with transient populations that come into drill, toxic chemicals in fracking fluids, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Even as the gas companies are setting up pipelines to export into Canada and applying to export to China.
Even as the new figures for the projected amount of extractable gas is down by 805 of the figures and the DOE have used (projections by the USGS).

Even as the projected numbers of wells will turn rural areas into industrialized mazes of machinery, noise, pipelines, and traffic. In NYS, they're projected a 3-5 acre well pad EVERY SQUARE MILE in what has been forest and farmland. Thousands of trucks driving our roads daily -- thousands.

My business will fold if they frack where I live -- we are supported by the tourists who come here for quiet, for rural beauty, for clean air and water. Our economy will tank within months.

If you think people who are concerned about fracking are just posturing, you are truly not paying attention.

I am a vocal oppent to fracking. I am a single mother of four boys, and I oppose fracking anywhere and everywhere. I want my children and grandchildren to have forests they can hike through, and clean water to drink. I want the same for my neighbors, my fellow man. I want to shout it from the rooftops. Yet, I don't have the money backing me like many of my more VOCAL believers. So instead I talk about it at work, I talk about it in the grocery store. Where ever I am, I talk about it. Why? Because of basic science. Basic science tells us that dirt, sand, gravel, soil is a pourous material. That they will swell and absorb x amount of water before the water starts leaking out, (Hence plates under house plants.)Now when you frack you go UNDER THE WATER TABLE, your forcing millions of gallons of chemicals into the ground to fracture out the gas. Those chemicals don't stay nicely in the pipes, they get forced back up to the surface. This means they are filtering back up through the soil, into the water. HMMMMMMMMMMM basic science. And no I don't get paid a dime by Scott Bradshaw for promoting his solar roadway. He doesn't know I exist, but it's good Technology and really I LOVE the concept.I have a few ideas I'd love to talk to him about. I don't get paid a dime from windmill manufacturers, and I wholly support that concept as well. You don't read about an energy crisis in Holland do you? No, I don't recieve a dime from any of these people yet I am vocal in my support. If Josh Fox and other's like him receive financial compsation from the company's that are so valently working to find a solution that assist's every man, woman and child live healthier lives, and to really finally start reversing the damage we as a race have inflicted on this planet, so be it. Congressman get incentives from the oil and gas industry. Governors and Mayors as well. So why should environmentalists be excluded from accepting assistance in getting a message across. The message though is loud and clear. If we as a people do not rise up and GLOBALLY DISAPPROVE OF THIS PRACTICE IT WILL NOT STOP!
Because if we don't, you can put us at the top of the list of the list of soon to be extinct species. The only place we know that our carbon based life forms can exist and we are destroying it. I don't own anystocks in any company, but I do own stock in what happens to my children and theirs, and theirs, and theirs. If we don't clean up this planet they won't have one. We can't even consider space or colonizing mars because we have also started polluting the moon. (How do you think NASA found that water??)And the space around our atmosphere is already filling up with dead satillites where do you think they are going to go?
Eventually they'll come back down, basic science what goes up eventually must come down. Honestly it's not as if we don't have the technology to fix any of these problems, but now my question to you is what is wrong with wanting to preserve the planet? Whats wrong with wanting solar power (A FREE RESOURCE) instead of having to worry about nuclear meltdowns and poisoned water and soil? Why bitch about people being on welfare (money they use to pay water and utility bills)when you can give it to them for FREE!!!!!

MARKETING STRATEGIES TO MAKE FRACKING "HIPPER" (IF THAT IS EVEN A WORD!) WILL NEVER REPLACE THE NATURAL ECO SYSTEMS THAT HAVE BEEN FOREVER DESTROYED!
NO UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS WOULD LIE TO THE GENERAL POPULATION TO JUSTIFY YOUR MINING PRACTICES WITHOUT CONTRADICTING HIS OR HER DUTY OF CARE TO THE SCIENTIFIC TRUTH!
IT WILL NEVER BRING BACK THE HEALTH OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN DRINKING CONTAMINATED WATER, EATING CONTAMINATED CROPS!
IT WILL NEVER REPLACE THE HOMES AND LIVES THAT HAVE BEEN LOST!
IT WILL NEVER INSTIL FAITH IN THE CITIZENS WHO HAVE BEEN LIED TO CONSISTENTLY THROUGH OUT THIS RETARDED MINING TECHNIQUE! WE HAVE WOKEN UP AND NOW THERE IS NO TURNING BACK!
IT WILL NEVER RID THE WATER WAYS OR THE LAND OF 600 TOXIC CHEMICALS THAT WILL NEVER BREAK DOWN

WHAT IT HAS DONE IS SHOW THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD THAT IT IS OK FOR THESE MINING COMPANIES TO ABUSE AND LIE AND DESTROY IN THE NAME OF "BUSINESS" AND "PROGRESS" WITH NO THOUGHT FOR THE PEOPLE WHO'S LIVES WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN OR THE EARTH WHO WILL SPEND MILLENNIA RECOVERING FROM THE ACTIONS OF A FEW GREEDY IGNORANT CORRUPT FOOLS, DESPERATE TO SUCK WHAT EVER THEY CAN OUT OF MINING BEFORE FOSSIL FUELS ARE DEPLETED ALL TOGETHER

FRACK OFF TISHA! HOW CAN YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT KNOWING YOU ARE REPRESENTING AND SUPPORTING THIS DISGRACEFUL PRACTICE!

I assume that is the same 90 percent who demand cheap gasoline as if it is their constitutional right. Fracking is not bad; oil and gas production is not bad. Environmental wackos are bad. They do not care about this country and your freedoms or the environment. They simply want to control you and your surroundings.

when the industry drills an O&G well and then places a toxic spewing compressor station nearby your home, then and only then, let us all know how you feel about it, until then you're speakin' out yer bunghole....btw, you forgot to say that not only does frackin' upset an underground water table - but the initial drilling contaminates that water as well......but I digress, you're nothing more than a sleazeball hiding behind the name ANONYMOUS.....

btw, absolutely no one believes that it is their constitutional right to get cheap gas/oil.....this statement of yours only proves that you are delusional.......how about you get a life, bippy

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