If Europe Wants Fracking, It Needs Property Rights

The Daily Caller discusses fracking in Europe with Myron Ebell. 

“National governments in Europe own the subsurface rights, which is the principal reason the fracking revolution has been slow to spread beyond the United States,” Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute who was not involved in the study, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “In fact, the United States is one of the few countries in the world where private landowners usually own the subsurface rights underneath their land and thereby can benefit financially from subsurface oil, gas, and mineral production.”

“When the government owns the subsurface rights, landowners have no incentive to want to allow resource production beneath their property,” Ebell continued. “In fact, since oil, gas, and mineral production are disruptive, landowners have a strong incentive to oppose subsurface production.”

Read the full article at the Daily Caller.