Energy companies spending to sway university research on fracking

Courtesy Penn State University

Drillers are increasingly funding university studies that find little danger in fracking, Bloomberg reports.

Energy companies that want to drill into the underground shale formations to mine oil and natural gas are bankrolling university research that finds conclusions that downplay critics? concerns, Bloomberg reports.

American Association of University Professors President Cary Nelson compared the research funding to the tobacco industry, which spent decades funding academic research that downplayed the dangers of smoking. Ohio State University Professor Mark Partridge told Bloomberg that professors at cash-strapped universities are under pressure to raise research funding and that industry-funded research is a growing problem.

Bloomberg pointed to studies by Penn State University, the University of Texas and the State University of New York at Buffalo as those that have been funded by the industry or conducted by professors who have close ties to natural gas producers.

Critics of drilling in the shale formations point to the potential for negative environmental effects from hydraulic fracturing ? also known as ?fracking? ? in which chemical-laced water is blasted into the rock to release oil and natural gas. Environmentalists have raised concerns about water contamination, and the wells where the chemical brine is disposed of have come under fire in Ohio after one was connected to earthquakes in the Youngstown area.

A Penn State study that was funded by the industry found that drillers would leave Pennsylvania if new taxes on the industry were passed, Bloomberg reports. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich?s plan to increase taxes on the resources drillers extract from the Utica shale formation and use it to fund an income tax cut was shelved by state lawmakers.

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