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EPA Launches National Study of Hydraulic Fracturing
Responding to reports of environmental contamination in gas drilling areas across the country, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will conduct a nationwide scientific study to determine if the problems are caused by the practice of injecting chemicals and water underground to fracture the gas-bearing rock.
The study, announced Thursday but hinted at for months, will revisit research the agency published in 2004, which concluded that the process of hydraulic fracturing did not pose a threat to drinking water. The 2004 report has been widely criticized, in part because the agency didn't conduct any water tests in reaching that conclusion.
"The use of hydraulic fracturing has significantly increased well beyond the scope of the 2004 study," EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones wrote in response to questions from ProPublica. The old study, she said, did not address drilling in shale, which is common today. It also didn't take into account the relatively new practice of drilling and hydraulically fracturing horizontally for up to a mile underground, which requires about five times more chemical-laden fluids than vertical drilling. "This study is the agency's response to public concern about this practice and Congressional request."
The 2004 report was used by the Bush administration and Congress to justify legislation exempting hydraulic fracturing from oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The exemption came to be known in some quarters as the "Halliburton loophole" and has inhibited federal regulators ever since.
The
fracturing technology, in which a mixture of chemicals and water is
injected underground with sand at high pressure to crack the earth and
release natural gas, made it possible for energy companies to open vast
domestic energy reserves across the country and fueled a nationwide
boom in drilling activity.
"EPA needs to finish what is started," said Gwen Lachelt, director of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, a Colorado-based advocacy group that represents landowners with contaminated water. "We need comprehensive studies of the entire exploration and production process, but this is an important place to start."
The American Petroleum Institute released a statement saying it expects the study "to confirm what 60 years of experience and investigation have already demonstrated: that hydraulic fracturing is a safe and well understood technology for producing oil and natural gas."
Lee Fuller, vice president of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said hydraulic fracturing is one of the industry's "crowning achievements."
"Adding another study to the impressive list of those that have already been conducted and completed is a welcome exercise," he said.
A series of investigations by ProPublica found that fracturing is the common thread in more than 1,000 cases of water contamination across seven states. In some cases fracturing may have caused dozens of well failures where the concrete or steel meant to protect aquifers from the gas and drilling fluids cracked under high pressure, allowing contaminants to seep into the water. In hundreds of other cases the waste and chemicals generated by hydraulic fracturing have been spilled or seeped into surface and groundwater supplies.
Fuller said that Congress' efforts to allow the EPA to regulate the process "should come to a standstill until this study is completed."
More than 50 members of the House of Representatives have co-sponsored the Frack Act, a bill that would reverse the drilling industry's exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act and allow the EPA to regulate fracturing if it chose to do so. The Frack Act also would require companies to disclose the chemicals pumped underground in the process -- information that is usually protected as trade secrets. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is also conducting a separate investigation of hydraulic fracturing's impact on water resources.
The EPA has yet to say exactly how the new study will be conducted or when it will begin, but sources within the agency told ProPublica that it will likely involve a number of EPA regional offices in Colorado, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and could build off two related investigations the EPA is undertaking in Wyoming gas fields.
In its announcement Thursday, the agency said it will spend nearly $2 million on the research this year and is asking for more money for next year. It promised a transparent, peer-reviewed process that includes stakeholder input. The EPA is seeking input from its Science Advisory Board on exactly how the study should proceed.
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18 Comments so far
Show All"The Frack Act also would require companies to disclose the chemicals pumped underground in the process -- information that is usually protected as trade secrets."
usually protected...what an odd phrase...
yes, a list would be welcome...
to declare the practice safe, previously, and exempt, without such a list, or any testing, rivals the heights of current human thinking and behavior on any number of fronts...
criminal, and self-harming...
Criminal and self harming - That's why Cheney and Haliburton are involved.
They better get working - with both the study and the Frack Act. They are drilling like gangbusters in my area, pollution reports are increasing, and the state regulators at the defunded PaDEP are fully bought-out friends of the drillers.
that 'bought-out' part is so troublesome...
Check out PennEnvironment
This is long overdue. The 2004 study mentioned in the article was completely flawed and was used as the basis for deciding the 2005 Alabama lawsuit which in effect prohibited the EPA from following its mandate to protect the public health.
We should all urge the House to pursue this vigorously. The Chaney energy task force was the culprit that facilitated this crime. Not satisfied with the miscarriage of justice and responsibility that they secured in that 2005 lawsuit the task force attempted to insert language into the settlement that: "energy development is too important to be hampered by unnecessary environmental regulation."
No shit, I kid you not. And they call this a "crowning achievement."
The article was wrong about one detail. One company involved in this gas development did release a complete list of the possible ingredients of the fracking fluids; the exact formulation depends on the physical nature of the strata and deposit, depth, and other factors, and the industry considers these formulations to be proprietary information. One common characteristic of many of these chemicals is their ability to penetrate and infiltrate tightly bound rock strata at depth. They are in fact highly efficient lubricants that will migrate eventually into many places they were never intended to be. Most are not only toxic but highly carcinogenic. The list can be found here:
http://catskillmountainkeeper.org/node/290
I became involved in this gas development through my profession about two years ago and knew nothing about these current technologies. So I began to investigate every aspect that I could through the internet. One federal study I found concluded that hydraulic fracturing should not be performed on strata any shallower than about 600 feet because the fracturing process also opens fissures and conduits in the overlying strata which could directly compromise drinking water aquifers.
In every region of the country where these operations are ongoing drinking water wells are becoming contaminated and surface spills of fracking fluids are becoming commonplace. Not only did Deadly Dick ensure that this industry was not to be regulated by the Clean Water Act, they exempted these operations from regulation under The Clean Air Act.
The land-owning inhabitants of the regions where this gas development is taking place will, in the main, be of no help in bringing responsibility to this industry because they are all getting a piece of the pie in the form of royalties and lease agreements. It will only be after they have no potable water from their wells that they will realize their error.
Tomorrow there will be a rally in DC to demand an end to Mountain Top Removal for coal extraction. My area of operations in my involvement with this gas development was centered around northern central West Virginia where a Pittsburgh based (large) gas developer owns much of the rights to the Pennsylvania coal seam and has extensive plans to implement the horizontal drilling technique there. During the course of this work the well layouts had to be revised because of protests from the locals that too many were being left out - they were not going to get their piece of the pie.
Many high profile environmental groups are supporting these gas development projects on the simple-minded notion that burning methane is preferable to burning coal. They seem to be completely unaware of the huge environmental risk this technology entails.
We do need the energy, of that there is no doubt. In many cases this technology might be able to be applied at sufficient depths that the environmental risks are indeed minimal. However, prohibiting the EPA from actually determining those risks through adeqaute and responsible investigation is outright bullshit.
We may be able to survive without the natural gas, but I am certain that we cannot survive without safe drinking water. Before my involvement with this industry I was already learning about modern methods of cistern construction and operation for use at my home. It now appears that this region will need my expertise once wells become contaminated and unusable. This does not give me any comfort or satisfaction.
There are many other issues surrounding this technology that have not been raised yet, such as: The area I was responsible for has alredy seen major gas plays in 1800's and 1900's. The WV DEP estimates approximately 5000 old wellheads for which the status of their caps is unknown or uncertain. What happens when, through fracking operations, methane enters these old borings and begins to expel methane at an ecelarated rate into the atmosphere. This should be a simple matter to investigate through spectral analysis using sattelite imagery. I have heard of no efforts to do such studies. As we all know, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
thank you for that excellent link! very interesting list, indeed...
Justaman: Thank you for the most informative post. Your last para was particularly interesting. If I understand correctly, West Virginia has 5,000 old (and now dormant) natural gas wells whose holes into the ground may or may not be adequately covered.
If W. Va has 5,000 of these potential problems, how many more exist across the country? And now many more exist across the world - especially in countries that have even less oversight and regulation than our current poor excuse for an Enviro Protection Agency.
That's my first question.
My second question is: If this fracking has been going on for a period of time, how much unintended harm have we caused to the underlying bedrock of this planet? I mean, once fracking gets close to fault lines, doesn't it just add more pressure to the shifting plates? I'm not a geologist, so forgive if the question is a stupid one.
Thanks again for the excellent post.
The answer to your second question involves a matter of scale. Plate boundaries are deep-seated; much deeper than petroleum or gas operations. But hydro-fracking can stimulate movement on shallow faults and produce relatively minor seismic events. The government did that in Colorado a few decades ago when it pumped waste liquids from poison gas development into deep wells to dispose of it. Seismic activity increased markedly. No large events, but ones that could be felt. The correlation between the pumping and the events was so strong that the government finally could not deny the relationship, and it changed the disposal method.
It would be interesting if the groups tracking poluution from fracking operations also tried to collect data on seismic events in the regions.
Fracking may be prevented by having the county pass ordinances that charge drillers for increases in costs of roads, police, fire, schools etc.
It worked in this county.
When kerosene comes out of your watertap, fracking just may have poluted your well(snark).
They will be back once they've taken the low hanging (unregulated, untaxed) fruit.
Maybe with the guys with briefcases and wearing $500 suits and alligator shoes.
So once again, it's the people who live near where these resources are being plundered who are really getting 'fracked'...
Stop this heavy oil drilling already. HEMP and ALGAL OIL for fuel please !
Massive plantings of hemp would be an amazingly cheap way to scrub massive amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere provided it is not burned for fuel, but rather used for textiles, building materials, food products, etc. This would also increase te oxygen content of the atmosphere. Cap and Trade will not remove ANY CO2 but WILL raise the cost of energy for everyone and will continue to deplete oxygen from the atmosphere. Of course, there is one problem. Hemp is, after all, an EVIL WEED.
I can never understand why Al Gore praised the DEA for bombing a hemp farm in Lakota for all his talk on global warming. Oh one of these days if only peak oil would come sooner...
We in Chippewa Falls, WI may not be the direct victims of hydaulic fracturing, but we are very intimately affected in that strip mining will be done in the rural areas to take out sandstone and it will be shipped to the city limits for processing. This frac sand will be used for the hydraulic fracturing industry. Large amounts of clean, highly processed water supplies will be used to clean the sand; the air will be affected with small particulate matter(silica dust). Since the plant site is the home to 3 wetlands, even those will be destroyed!! The 500 trucks coming to and leaving the sand plant will create fugitive dust which isn't even measured as a potential problem; diesel emissions will be great along a 15 mile expanse of highways in northwestern Wisconsin. At least 100 rail cars will be coming and going from this plant. We in the USA must protect ourselves from foreign investors and the economic developers who profess that anything goes.........water, air, the right to a safe and healthy life.........just for progress and the gold of the green dollar. Our life styles must change if we are to protect future generations from living in a 3rd world environment! Speak out, write to your local, county, state, and national legislators. We must search for alternative ways to provide for energy! Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin is on the map along with a number of other areas in the United States where aggressive pressures are being put upon innocent people who are facing dispair. Stimulous money in massive amounts should be being put into allowing the investigation of finding alternative fuels post haste!!!
This gas find is actually the darling of AGW reduction proponents. Substituting this gas for coal by utilities would be an instant 45-50% recuction in CO2 produced for the same amount of power! This is so good, they are ovelooking the pollution problem. Time for splash of cold water.
The drillers don't want EPA to have regulation authority as it would take away their ability to make states and counties compete for the businesss with weak or no regulations.
Sometimes I can tell the future:
I can assure you that Oil and Gas as well as all other corporations will be allowed to do whatever they damn well please, even if the profits be small and the outsourced environmental costs be great.