Fracks heard round the world

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Scott Poynter of Poynter Law Group, and Of Counsel to Steel, Wright & Collier, PLLC, has announced his support for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission's decision to reduce the disposal volumes of five injection wells near Edmond earthquakes.

While supportive of this directive, his support is only lukewarm, because Mr. Poynter says the Commission has been very slow to admit that wastewater disposal wells have been wreaking havoc on homes and businesses in Oklahoma since at least 2011, and moreover, has not gone far enough in addressing the frackquakes making Oklahoma the earthquake capital of the world.

Most importantly, the Commission has said it is powerless to create moratorium areas around the now active fault lines – something the Arkansas Oil & Gas Commission did in 2011 following manmade induced seismicity there, which ended threatened disaster.

"Oklahoma needs and must have wastewater injection moratorium areas to end the substantial risk of catastrophe," Mr. Poynter said, and he and his co-counsel are using federal environmental laws to create such moratoriums through the courts.

Mr. Poynter pioneered manmade earthquake litigation beginning in Arkansas in mid-2011, and his experience has translated well to the first cases ever filed on the novel theory in Oklahoma.

In the summer of 2015, he successfully argued before the Oklahoma Supreme Court that property owners' claims against the industry for earthquake damages belonged in district court, and not before the commission as the industry wanted. His successful work was featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, the Washington Post and many other national news outlets.

Mr. Poynter represents the only Oklahomans who have brought personal injury and property damage cases in the state. One property damages case has been brought as a class-action case, and another class case is expected this month.

Mr. Poynter and his co-counsel also represent the Sierra Club in the action specifically designed to end the threat of continued shakes that the U.S. Geological Survey reports could reach over 5.0 in magnitude and destroy the populated areas around Oklahoma City or Stillwater, or the tank farm in Cushing.

The Gayly - 1/08/2016 @ 12:51 p.m. CST