This bill appears to be simply vindictive towards the hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children who have their livelihoods tied up in finding and producing oil and gas domestically. To displace that many people soley to highlight a popular political stance seems ludicrous. There are only a very few fields in the United States left where hydraulic fracturing is not neccessary for commercial production, and +96% of all processes employed require some injection of produced load fluids to safe depths. To effectively move most or all new oil and gas production outside our country makes no fiscal sense, and is a morally questionable practice.

The health, safety and well being of people far outstrips any urgency to find yet more fossil fuels in an age when alternatives must be deployed to save our planet for future generations. Hyrdrofracturing involves the use of carcinogenic chemicals that can cause untold damage to our drinking water and our health. Exempting them from the clean water bill was outrageously inappropriate and in deference to the energy corporations that seek to profit at the expense of other people’s health and the sanctity of the environmnent.I strongly support the passage of HR 7231.