Environmentalists are making a new kind of argument against fracking using California’s drought as an excuse. They state that because fracking involves using water, that it should not take place in California because of the drought since the drilling method allegedly uses 2 million gallons of water. A surprising debunking of this notion was featured in an article by Chris Mooney at The Washington Post. In his refutation, Mooney states:

While it’s not clear where the 2 million gallon figure above comes from, Reuters recently reported that California oil companies used “214 acre-feet of water, equivalent to nearly 70 million gallons, in the process of fracking for oil and gas in the state last year, less than previously projected.” The story, which cited “state officials” for the figure, was widely read, and the factoid ended up in viral images like this one.

Seventy million gallons may sound like a large number. But in the context of California’s drought, it’s not. In December, NASA noted that it would take 11 trillion gallons to end the drought.

And in a blog post recently, Michael Campana, a hydrologist at Oregon State University, tore into those citing the 70 million number, noting that in 2010, California’s freshwater “withdrawals” amounted to “31 billion gallons per day or 11.3 trillion gallons per year” (excluding thermoelectric withdrawals, which Campana said he assumed were “not freshwater”).

What does that mean for the fracking number? Campana writes:

Fracking accounts for 0.00062% (or 0.0000062) of the state’s annual freshwater withdrawals. A lot of water? Not in my book. In fact, I thought there was an error – that the figure should have been 70M gallons per day. But note that locally 70 MGY could be a significant amount.

The drilling method was also defended by none other than California Governor Jerry Brown too. Mooney points out that during an interview in Meet the Press, when asked if The Golden State should ban fracking because of the state’s drought, Brown responded:

“Fracking in California has been going on for more than 50 years. It uses a fraction of the water of fracking on the East Coast, for gas, particularly. This is vertical fracking for the most part. It is different.”

You can read Mooney’s article in its entirety here. His research is quite good and goes to show the lies and misrepresentations environmentalists will conduct in order to see to it that our usage of fossil fuels is cut off at the knees. It is good to see people like Chris Mooney doing an investigation and getting the facts which is what journalists should do.