No Merit Badge for This Scout
by Walter Brasch
Rex W. Tillerson, a resident of Bartonville, Texas, like many of his neighbors was upset with his city council. That’s
not unusual. Many residents get upset at their local governing boards. And so they went to a city council meeting to
express their concerns that the council was about to award a construction permit.
The residents were upset that the Cross Timbers Water Supply Corp. planned to build a 160-foot tall water tower. That
tower would be adjacent to an 83-acre horse farm Tillerson and his wife owned, and not far from their residence. The
residents protested, and then filed suit to stop construction. The tower would store water to be sold to companies that
needed it for high-volume horizontal fracturing of oil and gas wells, the process known as fracking. Each well requires
three to nine million gallons of water, up to 10,000 tons of silica sand, and 100,000 gallons of toxic, often
carcinogen, chemicals. The process of horizontal fracking, about a decade old, to extract oil and gas from the earth
presents severe health and environmental problems; although it is touted as “clean energy,” it still contributes to
global warming.
But, the residents of Bartonville weren’t concerned about the health or environmental impact, or that the protective
casings that surround the pipes that go more than a mile underground have a documented failure rate of more than six
percent. They weren’t concerned that the pressure of the toxic water that fractures the underground shale can cause
earthquakes. They didn’t seem to be concerned that the fluids then brought up from deep in the earth contain radioactive
elements, that the storage of these fluids in open-air pits can itself lead to ground and air pollution. They didn’t
care that trucks that carry the toxic waste fluids can leak, or that there have been increased derailments, with
explosions and fires, in the past year of trains that carry crude oil and natural gas from the fields to processing
plants.
The residents, all of whom are in the visual distance to the water tower, said that construction of the water tower
would impact their views. They argued that during construction and after the tower was built, there would be excessive
traffic and noise. Michael Whitten, who represents Tillerson, told the Wall Street Journal his client was primarily
concerned about the impact the tower would have upon property values.
Rex W. Tillerson isn’t your typical resident. He’s the CEO and the chairman of the board of ExxonMobil, the third
largest corporation in the world, and the company that leads all others in exploring, drilling, extracting, and selling
oil and gas. It’s also a company that has had more than its share of political, social, and environmental problems.
Tillerson was an engineer when the Exxon Valdez fouled the western shore of the United States in 1989. By 2004, he was
the company’s president.
In 2012, Tillerson earned $40.3 million in compensation, including salary, bonus, and stock options, according to
Bloomberg News. His company that year had $453 billion in revenue, and a net income of about $45 billion, according to
Bloomberg.
When you have that much money, every million or so dollars matters, especially if a large ugly tower impacts not just
your view but your quality of life and the value of your property.
Large ugly rigs, the kind that go up when ExxonMobil and other companies begin fracking the earth, also affect the
people. The well pads average about eight acres, all of which have to be cut mostly from forests and agricultural areas.
Access roads, some of which upset or destroy the ecological balance of nature, need to be built. Other roads receive
heavier-than-anticipated damage because of the number of trucks, often more than 200 a day, that travel to each well
site. As early as 2010, a PennDOT official told the Pennsylvania state legislature that the cost, at that time, to fix
the roads was over $260 million. Increased diesel emissions, concentrated in agricultural areas, also affect the health
and safety of the people.
The noise from the traffic and from around-the-clock drilling affect the people, causing stress and numerous health
issues, according to psychologists Diane Siegmund and Kathryn Vennie, both of whom live in the Marcellus Shale part of
Pennsylvania.
When the rigs go up, property values decrease. Banks and mortgage companies are refusing to lend money to families who
wish to take out second mortgages or who wish to buy property that has wells on it or is even near a well pad. Insurance
companies are not writing policies, even if the homeowner opposes drilling but whose home is near those well pads.
In 2012, Rex W. Tillerson said that opponents of fracking are manufacturing fear, and then laid out a corporate truth
when he said that his company has in place “risk mitigation and risk management practices . . . to ensure [oil and gas
development] can be developed in a way that mitigates risk—it doesn’t eliminate it, but when you put it into the risk
versus benefit balance, it comes back into a balance that most reasonable people in society would say, ‘I can live with
that.’”
Thus, the energy industry is telling the people there will be accidents. There will be deaths. There will be health and
environmental consequences. But, they are acceptable because “mitigation” allows a corporation to accept errors,
injuries, illnesses, environmental destruction, and even death if they believe there is a “greater [financial] good”
that outweighs those risks. It is the same argument that Ford used in the 1970s when it decided not to recall and repair
the Pinto because it estimated the cost to pay compensation for injuries and deaths from faulty construction would be
significantly less than the cost of a recall.
There is something more about Rex W. Tillerson. He’s proud of his association with the Boy Scouts. He’s a former Eagle
Scout and was president of the national Boy Scouts of America. (Both the Boy Scouts and ExxonMobil have their
headquarters in Irving, Texas.) Part of the Scout Oath is to “do your duty to God and your country.” A partial
interpretation of that is “by working for your country's good and obeying its laws, you do your duty to your country.”
Within the past six months, ExxonMobil has paid more than $5 million in fines and penalties for not obeying the
country’s laws.
The 12th part of the Scout Law is to be reverent. A widely-accepted interpretation of that law, according to Scouting
Trail, is: “As a Scout experiences the wonders of the outdoors, stormy weather and calm blue skies, pounding surf and
trickling streams, bitter cold and stifling heat, towering trees and barren desert, he experiences the work of God. . .
. We need to play the role of steward rather than king—tending and caring for our world instead of taking all we can for
our own comfort.”
Protesting the construction of a water tower because it might lower property values, even for selfish purposes, is
Tillerson’s right as a citizen. But, destroying God’s world to maximize your profits is not his right.
[Dr. Brasch, an Eagle Scout and an award-winning journalist, is the author of 20 books. His latest book is Fracking
Pennsylvania, an in-depth investigation of the economic, political, environmental, and health effects of fracking.]
Ends