Environmental concerns about the contamination of drinking water from fracking are overdone, according to Loren Scott, president of economic consulting firm Loren C. Scott & Associates Inc.

“There’s typically at least four steel pipes and a whole bunch of cement between the well and the (drinking) water,” Scott told attendees at the National Association of Steel Pipe Distributors’ 38th annual convention in Las Vegas.

Of 35,000 natural gas wells drilled in 2011, there were “zero reported cases of drinking water contamination,” he said, calling the worries by environmentalists a “fictional attack on the industry.”

Prices for natural gas are expected to continue to languish due to an abundance of supply, according to Scott, with forecasts of an average price of $3 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) in 2013 and $3.10 per mmBtu in 2014.