9 Investigates

Reality Check: Fracking Fight

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — After a temporary ban on hydraulic fracking failed in 2016, Florida lawmakers are back with another ban this year which might pass.

Tampa-area Republican Dana Young filed SB 442 earlier this year.

Young’s bill would ban "advanced well stimulation treatment," which includes hydraulic fracturing and acid fracking. The bill has 16 co-introducers in the Senate and seems poised to pass the upper chamber.

But not everyone is celebrating the ban.

Enter the Washington, D.C.-based American Petroleum Institute and its new ad campaign.

“Fracking is the safe exploration of clean natural gas,” says a narrator in a new ad that highlights the benefits of the process while decrying the move by the state to ban fracking.

“New big-government rules that would ban fracking and trample on private property rights.”

“It’s the American Petroleum Institute trying put their best spin on the issue of fracking and pointing out all of the positive points but not talking about all the negatives,” says Dr. Aubrey Jewett, from University of Central Florida.

The negatives of fracking, which are not mentioned in the ad, include concerns over air and groundwater pollution as well as the possibility of seismic events.

Geologists say there are only a few places in the state where fracking would make sense: southwest Florida and parts of the Panhandle where oil wells have already been established and there is a known deposit of oil and natural gas that may still be accessible.

The Senate bill is now in the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Environment and Natural Resources and is expected to pass.

However, a similar bill in the House may not get a floor vote.