OKLAHOMA CITY – State Representative Zack Taylor (R-Seminole) is proposing House Bill 1379, which is legislation that would hold horizontal frackers responsible for the damage caused by their horizontal frack jobs. The bill will be heard on Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. in the House Judiciary Committee.
“Hundreds of Oklahoma’s vertical wells are being destroyed by massive horizontal frack jobs,” stated Richard Parrish, OEPA’s Oklahoma City Attorney and
Regulatory Affairs director. “At least 47 of these “frack hits” have been documented by the Corporation Commission as causing pollution. The Corporation Commission currently holds the owner of the vertical well responsible for the pollution being caused by the horizontal frack jobs done by others.”
The Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance supports House Bill 1379 and is calling this piece of legislation the “Art and Yvonne Platt” bill. Art and Yvonne are lifelong Oklahomans whose forefathers participated in the Oklahoma Land Rush. They have now lost everything they have as a result of a horizontal frack job that destroyed their wells.
“I’m 80 years old, and we were depending on this lease for our retirement,” said Art Platt. “We’ve spent every cent we had trying to fix the damage the horizontal fracker caused when they fracked into our well.”
Now Art and Yvonne have been forced to leave Oklahoma and move in with their children in Texas.
“We applaud Representative Taylor for addressing this issue,” said Dewey Bartlett, OEPA Chairman. “And hope that this legislation will help bring the big oil group, OIPA-OKOGA to the table to hopefully find common ground on this problem. Horizontal frack jobs are costing small business oil and gas producers their livelihood and endangering Oklahoma’s environment in the process.”
About OEPA
The Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance is a group of Oklahoma oil and gas companies concerned with protecting our rights as conventional vertical producers and royalty owners at the State Capitol and the Corporation Commission. For more information, visit www.okenergyproducers.org.
