Attending a community meeting about the Plains Exploration & Production Co., is a different social experience from a theatre or sports outing.
Everybody in a PXP audience, no exceptions, holds a strong and typically informed opinion. Hardly anyone admits, “I don’t know.”
That assessment, however, is not unanimous.
Take thoughtful Barry Silver.
He was in the audience in Ladera Heights on Monday evening when PXP was explaining to 250 skeptics (or worse) how its one-year study found that fracking is not a threat to human beings or the ground into which it is drilling.
“There is no question being there was worth my time,” said Mr. Silver, a relative newcomer to the ongoing controversy over PXP and fracking in the Inglewood Oil Field.
“This was part of the evolutionary process, and I am very committed to being involved in the process. It is just one step along the way, though.
The Right Question
“To me, the question is, What went on? On one level, it was a sad situation – the uninformed, untrained public up against The Machine.
“The Machine consisted of an extremely well qualified scientist, another one who was the peer reviewer, and the company spokesman, John Martini, who was surprisingly articulate. Obviously, he was very familiar with the business.”
The other side, their audience, said Mr. Silver, was comprised of “just ordinary people. Like me. Most of us don’t have time to get an education on this subject, which takes years of study to really understand, to be able to criticize what is presented.
“So you have, the way I saw it, person after person coming to the microphone, trying to find a chink in the armor. Most of them were rebuffed. They just don’t know what questions to ask.”
The PXP study was ordered as a condition of an elaborate settlement agreement reached 15 months ago with a bench full of litigants.
In that regard, Mr. Silver is vexed by the peer reviewer selected by PXP who found that fracking, as applied by PXP in the Inglewood Oil Field, is faultless.
“The hiring of the peer reviewer was set up, I would think, in an attempt to bring some balance to the analysis,” Mr. Silver said. “It utterly failed, in my opinion, because there was no one there, or hardly anywhere, who is speaking up for the public.
“The public is concerned, rationally or irrationally. Everybody, including PXP, would agree to that.
“But they are not able to put forward their concerns in a way that makes an impact on the process because of their lack of technical expertise.”
(To be continued)
