“The wrong way to go.”

That was how President Obama’s interior secretary, Sally Jewell, described recent efforts to ban hydraulic fracturing at state and local levels in several communities around the United States.

Speaking the other day to Northern California news outlet KQED, Sec. Jewell said, “There is a lot of misinformation about fracking.”

She went on to lament that “localized efforts or statewide efforts [to ban fracking] in many cases don’t understand the science behind it.”

We agree with Secretary Jewell that decisions about energy production ought to be informed by science. That’s why we are supporting efforts to expand the scientific understanding of hydraulic fracturing in a number of areas.

Increasing the store of knowledge about fracking

Several ExxonMobil scientists, for instance, conducted a comprehensive life-cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions and freshwater consumption of Marcellus Shale gas operations. Their findings were published in 2013 in a peer-reviewed article in the prestigious journal of the American Chemical Society. Subsequent investigation by other researchers largely has confirmed many of their findings.

More recently, ExxonMobil has joined with a leading environmental group and a number of other industry partners to support a long-running, comprehensive study of methane emissions from natural gas production.

That study, conducted by researchers at the University of Texas, was the first to provide the hard data on methane emissions from all aspects of natural gas production.

The knowledge we are gaining from such endeavors is helping us understand why methane emissions have been falling even as natural gas production from shale has soared. It could point the way to further reductions in the future.

New York’s head in the sand

This science-based approach contrasts sharply to the one taken recently by New York State in extending its ban on fracking in its portion of the Marcellus. The report issued to justify the move couldn’t point to concrete evidence of negative health or environmental impacts.

Instead, New York cited hypothetical, unspecified future health concerns, despite all the real-world evidence to the contrary gleaned from more than six decades of safe hydraulic fracturing in California, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and elsewhere.

Experts say fracking is safe

President Obama’s former secretary of energy, Dr. Steven Chu, has also pointed out that fracking “is something you can do in a safe way,” and a number of high-ranking Obama administration officials have echoed the Nobel-Prize-winner’s comments. It’s unclear why New York officials have chosen to ignore their studied pronouncements.

It’s gratifying the Obama administration claims it recognizes the need to ground regulatory efforts in science and facts. We’ll be watching to see if those principles apply as the administration rolls out new rules on methane emissions, well-design and completion, crude-by-rail transportation, and other issued tied to hydraulic fracturing.