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Redstate
Fact-Checking
Matt Damon’s
‘Promised Land’
Toto, I've a feeling we're not in
Kentucky any more. ... Kentucky, Kansas, whatever.
By: Steve Maley
January
8th, 2013
I
wasted $7.75 on Hollywood’s
latest anti-fracking agitprop “Promised Land” (1) so you won’t have to.
You
can read movie reviews
elsewhere. From what I’ve seen, they’ve been rather lukewarm. And in
its first
weekend of nationwide distribution, audience response was tepid at
best. In the
words of lead actor/screenwriter Matt Damon, “Who ****ing wants to go
see an
anti-fracking movie?”
Not
only is the subject matter
right in my wheelhouse, Damon et al bring the lies and distortion right
into my
backyard. Quite literally.
Oh,
and did I mention that the film
was partly funded by a state-owned media company in the United Arab
Emirates?
Let
the fact checking begin.
Plot
spoilers follow. I promise.
The
movie tells the story of Steve
Butler (Matt Damon), the new VP of Land Management for $9 billion
Global
Crossover Energy. His task is to acquire leases to develop the
Marcellus Shale
in and around a small, rustic Pennsylvania town called McKinley (2).
When his
coworker says the countryside looks like Kentucky, Butler replies, “Two
hours
outside any city looks like Kentucky.”
Small
town boy Butler is convinced
that small towns can no longer make it on farming economies, and that
natural
gas development provides the way out of their current economic jam. Gas
means
“F*** You money”, Butler tells his prospective lessors, allowing the
landowner
to say “f*** you” to the banker, the mortgage company, and the bill
collector.
Given
his PhD, kindly old science
teacher Yoda Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook) would be in the best position
to offer
the townspeople a scientific justification for his anti-development
stance. The
best he can do is “Just Google the word fracking.” The very first hit,
he says,
gives you an idea of people’s concerns (3). Yates says that there are
cases of
water contamination “all over the country” (just don’t ask the EPA).
Every
other argument is baseless fear of the unknown: gas development will
“scorch
the earth” (but how?); the worst “probably won’t happen … but what if
it did?”;
“The potential for error is just too high.” And so on.
I
can’t debunk the movie’s science,
because there’s no scientific argument. Just fear, mostly irrational
fear.
We
see Damon/Butler negotiating
with a landowner, signing him to a lease for $2,000 per acre and an “8%
share
of the profits”, knowing that his company is willing to pay $5,000 and
18%.
This
highly misleading exchange is
wrong on multiple levels. A royalty paid to a landowner under an oil
and gas
lease is a non-cost bearing share of a well’s gross revenue, not
“profit”.
Hollywood types know the difference between “a percentage of the net”
and “a
percentage of the gross”; the latter is a lot more valuable, and is
risk-free
to the owner. Also, 12.5% royalty is the minimum permissible rate under
Pennsylvania law [58 PA. STAT. § 33, pdf link]. In can be double that,
or more.
By the way, I found that link on Google.
Also
using Google, I found a
20-page pdf file from the Penn State Cooperative Extension Service
entitled
Natural Gas Exploration, A Landowner’s Guide to Leasing Land in
Pennsylvania.
It explains, in very clear layman’s language, the terms and provisions
of an
oil and gas lease, the contract that dictates the relationship between
the
operating company and the landowner. It also advises the landowner to
engage an
attorney (you can find one of those on Google)…
Read
the rest of the article at
Redstate
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