Learning from fracking's (mis)fortunes
Dear folks,
It’s examination week at Uni and I’m stepping out of the grind to find some places where the grass looks greener. To not let y’all hanging, I prepared a short issue for this week about a topic I’m not likely to touch upon very often otherwise: the world of extractive technologies.
In particular, I’ll be looking at shale gas fracking in the US, which has taken great flight over the last two decades. (For context, check out what I wrote about fracking in the second ever issue of SLE.) The Census Bureau noted in 2014 that “mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction are now the fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy” (referenced in Filteau 2015: 432). (While coal is on its way out, US (shale) gas appears to keep pace with growth in renewables for the next few decades.)
“Boomtown USA”
Much of this growth is taking place in rural areas that had been in decline for decades, following deindustrialization and the decline of other natural-resource extraction sectors like forestry. Today’s research comes out of the exploitation of the Marcellus shale formation, a sizeable portion of which can be found in Pennsylvania. It’s big: “by the late 2000s estimates ranged as high as … the equivalent of about two decades of domestic natural gas demand” (Schafft et al 2018: 507). Exploitation of all that potential went apace and by 2013, “Pennsylvania trailed only Texas in total natural gas production” (442).
Getting all that gas up to the surface is the work of heavy industry and thus requires quite a bit of labour, resulting in the phenomenon of the “Boomtown”: a place that “experience[s] rapid economic growth and demographic change, most typically—although not always—as a consequence of natural resource extraction activities” (Schafft et al, 503f.). While a boom sounds like a boon [sorry], not all is well in the land.
Williston, North Dakota. (Picture by Andrew Cullen)
Social exclusion
Not everyone is able to profit from these changes. Far from it, in fact. In some ways, boomtown development might even exacerbate inequality. Three of the four counties that Schafft et al surveyed saw a rise in poverty. How come? First of all, fracking requires specific skills – skills that locals are likely to lack precisely because of the preceding deindustrialization. Instead you have transient labour picking up those (tough but well-paying) jobs. Those without directly relevant experiences are left with the kind of jobs with “wages that kept many within the status of the working poor” (516).
That’s only the beginning of the story though. All those newcomers need somewhere to live, with dramatic effects on the housing market. Even though companies constructed new dormitories, there simply weren’t enough places to stay, which, in inexorable economic logic, drove up prices. In addition though, these new workers were paid in wages “unprecedented” in these areas. Local homeowners understandably started seeing dollar signs, which put pressure on existing tenants. Almost half of Schafft et al’s 39 interviewees had in fact experienced some form of homelessness in the past few years.
Scrooge McMarcellus
Masculinity
Matthew Filteau looks at these processes from the perspective of what it means to be a man. Deindustrialization was already a story of the “rural male disadvantage” (436), a term coined by Jensen and Jensen. The decline of rural areas has predominantly been a loss of the kind of jobs occupied mostly by men. As we’ve seen, the new fracking industry doesn’t necessarily remedy that situation. What does the growing inequality therefore entail for what it means to “be a man”? (433) Filteau suggests that the situation might actually lead to a local masculinity crisis, citing survey values that show men are more ‘disturbed’ by fracking development than women.
In a different article (2014), he provides clues as to why that might be. He shows how stringent safety regulation in the oil and gas industry has changed ideas about masculinity there. Workers argue that older ideals of independence and physical strength (and a jostling culture premised on effeminizing ‘weakness’) have been replaced by values of cooperation and respectful interaction.
However, what hasn’t changed is the idea of the man as the provider for the family – staying safe is staying responsible for one’s loved ones. It is precisely this ability to provide for one’s family that was eroded for those on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. (see also Schafft et al 505) That frustration is likely all the more severe by seeing itinerant workers come in and perform the jobs that would have given them that ability. This leads us to the word of the week:
Gasholes: “out-of-state workers […] perceived to be taking jobs that rightfully should have gone to locals” (idem: 515).
Conclusion
Anything we can learn from this case-study? According to Schafft et al (2019), when policy-makers are thinking about, say, where to site energy infrastructure, they should look at “factors such as housing and social infrastructure, demographics, industrial legacies, and policy regimes”, because these factors “will directly shape the contours of risk and opportunity experienced by people and communities” (303). Furthermore, the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and class matters a whole lot for how individuals “experience the risks and benefits of development”. Policy-makers should therefore
“identify the specific risks, vulnerabilities and opportunities affecting residents … and develop mechanisms (such as workforce education, affordable housing programs, and legal and financial planning services) that would alleviate the impacts on vulnerable populations and allow for greater participation in economic benefits.” (303)
These points also hold for renewable energy tech. As we saw two weeks ago, wind parks tend to be sited in marginal rural areas as well and tend to result in very different opportunities for locals: landowners stand to land a handsome lease for their land, while others may at best be offered relatively insecure maintenance jobs. Similarly, at a non-local scale, there is a lot of job growth in the renewables sector, but those job opportunities are also unequally distributed. Developing policy to address that is a good idea, for the converse of rising inequality is true too: once investment has been made in preparing for and coping with new development, the experience, lessons learned, and institutional knowledge and structures are in place – and can be built upon. (2019: 298f)
Sources
Filteau, Matthew R. 2014. "Who Are Those Guys? Constructing the Oilfield’s New Dominant Masculinity". Men and Masculinities. 17 (4): 396-416. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X14544905
Filteau, Matthew R. 2015. "A Localized Masculine Crisis: Local Men's Subordination within the Marcellus Shale Region's Masculine Structure A Localized Masculine Crisis". Rural Sociology. 80 (4): 431-455. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12072
Schafft K.A., Burfoot-Rochford I., McHenry-Sorber E., and Hall D. 2018. "Busted amidst the Boom: The Creation of New Insecurities and Inequalities within Pennsylvania's Shale Gas Boomtowns". Rural Sociology. 83 (3): https://doi.org/503-531. 10.1111/ruso.12196
Schafft, Kai A., Kathryn Brasier, and Arielle Hesse. 2019. "Reconceptualizing rapid energy resource development and its impacts: Thinking regionally, spatially and intersectionally". Journal of Rural Studies. 68: 296-305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.12.007
PS: If you do not have the appropriate credentials to cross the paywall to these articles, maybe you can check out https://sci-hub.tw (just copy paste in the doi number), or if you are uncomfortable with that, send me a message and I’ll lend you a copy.