February 22, 2014
The CEO of ExxonMobil – the top producer of natural gas in the US – has joined a lawsuit that challenges the construction of a water tower connected to hydraulic fracturing operations near his Texas home, given that it may reduce the property value.
CEO Rex Tillerson and other plaintiffs claim the hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – project will cause unwanted noise and traffic associated with trucking water from the 160-foot tower to the drilling site, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The tower will provide water “to oil and gas explorers for fracing [sic] shale formations leading to traffic with heavy trucks on FM 407, creating a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,” according to the lawsuit. The water tower is owned by Cross Timbers Water Supply Corporation.
Tillerson’s lawyer claims the noise, traffic, and actual fracking does not bother the ExxonMobil CEO, stating that it is the possible depreciation of his $5 million property in Bartonville, Texas that he is worried about.
Fracking is the controversial process of injecting water, sand, and various chemicals into layers of rock, in hopes of releasing oil and gas deep underground. Fracking in a single well can take millions of gallons of freshwater.
Tillerson himself has excoriated fracking regulations amid the practice’s boom across the country.
“This type of dysfunctional regulation is holding back the American economic recovery, growth, and global competitiveness,” he said in 2012, Reuters reported.
In another 2012 interview – with the Council on Foreign Relations – Tillerson said that natural gas production today has been revamped with new technologies, “so the risks are very manageable.”