Rick Scott’s financial ties to fracking got that driller kicked out of Florida. Now that Gov. Scott has been tied to the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline, maybe Florida will kick Spectra out of the state, too.

Steve Bousquet wrote for the Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau 13 June 2014, Scott’s stake in oil company tied to Collier drilling riles environmentalists,

Gov. Rick Scott’s six-figure stake in a French energy company is angering environmentalists because the firm is involved in oil drilling in Collier County, near the Everglades.

Scott and the Cabinet oversee the Department of Environmental Protection, which regulates oil drilling in Florida, and Scott has invested in businesses that could be regulated by DEP and other state agencies….

Schlumberger helped apply for a DEP permit so that a Texas oil company, the Dan A. Hughes Co., can use a drilling technique that uses acid to create cracks in the rock and then a gel mixed with sand to hold the cracks open.

And six weeks later, William E. Gibson wrote for the SunSentinel 26 July 2014, Florida gets tough on oil driller in the Everglades: Texas company retreats, critics seek broader enforcement,

State officials have driven a Texas wildcatter out of Florida, signaling tougher restrictions on oil drilling in the Everglades.

Prodded by environmentalists and community activists, the state yanked all drilling permits held by the Dan A. Hughes Co. seven months after it was caught using fracking-like methods to blast open rock near underground aquifers….

“Fracking in Florida is dead,” said Eric Draper, executive director of Audubon Florida. “It’s a toxic issue now. There’s nothing like a company making a mess of things to help educate the public about how you can’t trust these drilling technologies.”

Well, the methane in that Sabal Trail pipeline would come from fracking. Does Florida want to burn methane that destroyed somebody else’s water? Does Florida want a hundred-foot gouge through its fields, forests, and wetlands for a pipeline that may leak and certainly will need testing water and cooling water for power plants? Instead, how about the Sunshine State should go straight to solar power.

-jsq

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