SOD, W.Va. — Six West Virginia environmental groups are denouncing Monday’s shooting of an energy industry worker near an oil well in Lincoln County.
HG Energy LLC worker Mark Miller was shot in the hand while he checking on a leaking oil well in the Joe’s Creek area. Miller told state police the shooter, a man dressed in camouflage, played a recording that said “Stop the drilling.”
Environmental groups released a statement Wednesday saying they “absolutely repudiate any and all violence whether in deed or word. The future we seek is one of peace and justice.”
West Virginia Chapter Sierra Club spokesman Jim Sconyers told MetroNews his group and others thought it necessary to make it clear they in no way support the attack.
“It shouldn’t require saying but I guess it does: We don’t do that. We don’t do violence. Never have, never will,” he said.
Sconyers said environmental groups try to protest gas drilling and fracking the right way.
“It’s always done peacefully and non-violently,” Sconyers said. “Pulling a gun out and shooting a guy tending a well is not exactly our cup of tea by any stretch of the imagination. No way.”
Police tracked the man for about four miles before a dog lost the scent.
The environmental groups that signed the letter included: West Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club, Eight Rivers Council, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, OVEC, Christians for the Mountains and the Greenbrier River Watershed Association.