Subtraction Through Addition via the FRAC Act
Desperate for something to advocate for on visits with friendly legislators during periodic trips to Capitol Hill, opponents of natural gas were able to secure the introduction of legislation a couple years back called the FRAC Act. A recent review found the only thing the FRAC Act would achieve is to cripple the U.S. economy, reverse a nearly half-decade long trend of falling CO2 emissions, and undermine production of what President Obama himself called “clean power” in his recent State of the Union address. Only in Washington could this possibly make sense.
Julia
Researcher
Desperate for something to advocate for on visits with friendly legislators during periodic trips to Capitol Hill, opponents of natural gas were able to secure the introduction of legislation a couple years back called the FRAC Act – legislation that seeks to wrestle regulatory control over hydraulic fracturing from the states and place it firmly in the purview of the U.S. EPA under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
That SDWA has been the law of the land for nearly 40 years and was never written, and has never been used, to regulate hydraulic fracturing is, for opponents, merely an inconvenience; granting regulatory authority to the EPA means another layer of bureaucracy through which oil and gas operators would have to navigate, which in turn means a slowdown if not an outright halt in development. The FRAC Act has become something of an obsession for folks opposed to responsible shale development, with none other than Josh Fox using it as the main “thing to do” after he misled the public with Gasland just a few years back.
Even though the FRAC Act has gained exactly zero traction in the U.S. Congress (even Henry Waxman intervened to stop its advance back in 2010) two U.S. Senators – Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) – have nonetheless tried to bring it to life by including the full text of the act as part of a bigger carbon tax bill. That’s what makes a recent report by the Hudson Institute, entitled “Institutional Choices for Regulating Oil and Gas Wells,” incredibly timely, as the report makes it abundantly clear why this proposal is a less than stellar idea.
Of course, before even discussing whether the federal government should insert itself into this conversation, it’s worth asking: Are state regulators failing to meet their responsibilities? After all, if it’s not broken don’t fix it. According to officials at the EPA – the agency that opponents so desperately want to regulate hydraulic fracturing – there is no indication that state regulation isn’t adequate. As former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson recently observed: “States are stepping up and doing a good job,” which of course came not long after EPA’s Drinking Water Protection Division chief said he has “no information that states aren’t doing a good job already” regulating hydraulic fracturing.
With that as background, the Hudson Institute study presented four fundamental questions often used to determine the appropriate level of regulation for any activity:
- Do any potential environmental problems involve large trans-border effects?
- Would uniform standards protect large network or scale economies in the affected industry?
- Which level of government is likely to possess better information?
- And is the federal government more attentive to the public welfare than the states are?
In considering the above, the study found “these considerations imply that state-level control [of hydraulic fracturing] is a superior option” and that “given current evidence, the case for the FRAC Act is weak.” Here’s why:
The first question wasn’t very difficult to answer. Hydraulic fracturing has been applied more than 1.2 million times since 1947 and has compiled an exceptional record of safety and execution during that span. This is a fact confirmed by state regulators, multiple independent reviews and the U.S. EPA under three separate administrations. In addition, a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study noted that natural gas development from shale produces results in dramatically lower air emissions than other studies have acknowledged. And we’d obviously be remiss if we didn’t note that natural gas produced from shale is enabling the United States to lead the world in carbon emissions reductions. This is a trans-border effect that even the most ardent opponent of natural gas development should relish — if such opponents were actually interested in reducing emissions.
On to the second question: Would the natural gas industry and environment would benefit from a uniform set of regulatory standards on hydraulic fracturing? Uniform standards may sound nice in the abstract, but the realities of shale demonstrate otherwise. From the study: “The complex nexus of economic and environmental issues involved with oil and natural gas exploration and production are likely to frustrate efforts like the FRAC Act to impose simple sweeping schemes.” It added that a uniform regulatory scheme for oil and natural gas development “is likely to be very badly wrong in most or all specific cases” due to the “vast disparities among major natural gas plays that further magnify the case for decentralized control and diverse standards.”
Of course, these concerns apply whether states or the federal government are more likely to possess better information and thus implement a more effective regulatory program. In addressing that third fundamental question, the study notes that shale basins and even individual oil and gas wells are so unique that it would be virtually impossible for the federal government to fully understand the scope of information required to implement a successful regulatory regime. This is especially the case given funding and staffing limitations. The study lists just a few of these unique considerations including:
…geology, hydrology, and climate differ greatly from one shale basin to another. Some shale plays are actually in metropolitan areas; others are far from population centers. In some basins, water is plentiful; in some it is scarce. Water laws are diverse; so is the quality of local infrastructure and the demands it must satisfy.
Finally, as for attentiveness to public welfare, the study noted that “the demands on EPA resources would escalate rapidly” and, unless funding kept pace (an extremely unlikely scenario, especially given the current budget environment), “both the quality of the permitting process and the growth of economic output would be bound to suffer.” That’s right: placing control in EPA’s hands would actually create more of a burden for the agency itself than it would be able to handle! But that’s probably what opponents want: an agency so overwhelmed that it has to stop issuing permits altogether.
Which brings us to the potential hidden motives in the legislation. While supporters of the FRAC Act declare the bill is simply a means of achieving greater chemical disclosure (which is already happening at the state level, mind you; see FracFocus.org), the Hudson Institute recognizes a much more nefarious result: Placing regulatory authority under SDWA would make the whole process subject to “citizen suits” authorized under section 1449, which would “unleash a torrent of litigation” that “would both retard operations and chill innovation” by providing a “hunting license for any interest group seeking a pretext for litigation.” The study notes the likelihood of this occurring is quite high given ideological opponents of shale, like the Sierra Club, would be provided an open door to “unfettered legal obstructionism” that “entails high risk of snarling [natural gas development] in regulatory and legal gridlock.”
Of course, that would mean destroying the millions of jobs, increased economic competitiveness and the opportunity for the United States to achieve greater energy independence – but ideological opponents of responsible shale development have never much cared about those details.
Taken together, the study’s findings demonstrate why former Colorado governor Bill Ritter (D) called the FRAC Act a “new and potentially intrusive regulatory program” back when it was first introduced in 2009 (back then, the entire bill came in at fewer than 45 words; today, it reads more like a press release than genuine legislation). The study also paints a pretty clear picture as to why the act has failed to advance in two separate sessions of Congress under both Democratic and Republican leadership: It’s just a really awful piece of legislation.
However, none of these details seemed to matter to Sens. Boxer and Sanders. By knowingly including legislative language that could grind to a halt the very technology responsible for our nation’s precipitous drop in carbon emissions, two U.S. senators have completed a rather impressive feat: Introducing a bill that is both designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions and prevent deployment of the technologies necessary to achieve those reductions.
So, in the end, it appears the only thing the FRAC Act would achieve is to cripple the U.S. economy, reverse a nearly half-decade long trend of falling CO2 emissions, and undermine production of what President Obama himself called “clean power” in his recent State of the Union address. Only in Washington could this possibly make sense.
Clearing the Air on HF Laws in Texas
Recently, a media outlet with a track record of aggressively protecting its own proprietary information published an article that called into question how some contractors have chosen to use the Texas hydraulic fracturing fluid disclosure provision since the law became effective in February of this year. The article contained numerous quotes from well-known anti-energy development activists and politicians with long track records opposing responsible development of our nation’s bountiful oil and natural gas reserves.
Elizabeth Ames Jones
Immediate Past Chairman, Texas Railroad Commission
**This op-ed originally appeared on Forbes.com**
Texas became the first state in the union to require well-by-well disclosure of all ingredients of fracturing fluids being used anywhere in the state when Governor Rick Perry signed into law House Bill 3328, the Texas Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Disclosure bill, in June, 2011. As Chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, the nation’s premier energy oversight agency, I made sure that the prompt enactment of rulemaking to implement the statute supported our very important dual mission of ensuring responsible production of Texas’s bountiful energy resources, protecting the environment, and ensuring the safety of Texans.
Like every other law governing fluid disclosure, the Texas law contains a provision that allows contractors to protect chemical ingredients or compounds that qualify as proprietary information. It does so using a process governed by the State Attorney General’s office that has been a feature of Texas law for decades, and it contains a process for concerned parties to file challenges if they believe the process is being abused.
This provision of Texas law that assigns oversight of proprietary information to the Attorney General has proven to be fair and effective over time. That is why the sponsors of HB 3328 decided to use it as the procedure for the hydraulic fracturing disclosure law.
Recently, a media outlet with a track record of aggressively protecting its own proprietary information published an article that called into question how some contractors have chosen to use this provision since the law became effective in February of this year. The article contained numerous quotes from well-known anti-energy development activists and politicians with long track records opposing responsible development of our nation’s bountiful oil and natural gas reserves.
Substantively, though, perhaps the story’s biggest failure is that it fails to report on the fact that a process for appealing company decisions on disclosure actually exists assuming a spill occurs, and the need for disclosure becomes immediate. Unfortunately, the article is chock full of hyperbole and frightful accusations, but precious little evidence that any wrongdoing has actually taken place, or that protecting proprietary information is dangerous for the public.
Texans, including those working in the oil and gas industry, want this law to be effective, and everyone wants service providers to comply with not just the letter of the law, but its spirit as well. An overwhelming majority of oil and natural gas producers supported this law and the subsequent rulemaking at the Railroad Commission. These companies want to make sure that their fellow Texans can be confident that energy produced in Texas – and all the states for that matter – is produced responsibly. They and their families live here, too.
Opponents of the oil and gas industry can’t have this argument both ways. After all, they support passage of a federal FRAC Act but what you seldom hear from supporters of that federal act is that it, too, contains a provision to allow providers of fracturing services to protect trade secrets. Protection of trade secrets is as American as apple pie. Here’s why.
Service providers spend millions of dollars each year on research and development designed to optimize the effectiveness of the fluids they use. Much of that R&D investment is geared toward finding ways to reduce or even eliminate the need for the use of chemicals, and companies like those negatively mentioned in the article in question have made enormous strides in that direction over the last few years. As we all know, no company – regardless of industry – will invest millions of dollars in research into any cutting edge technology if a competing company can uncover the blueprints and license it as their own.
So the supporters of the federal FRAC Act understand what the sponsors of HB 3328, Governor Perry, I and my two fellow Railroad Commissioners, who are directly elected by the people of Texas, understood at the time: If we don’t allow these service providers to protect legitimate trade secrets, the value of their R&D efforts will be dramatically diminished, and that’s not good for anyone who supports technological progress.
If service providers in Texas are abusing the disclosure law’s trade secret provision, then there is a longstanding, very workable process in place for challenging them on it. I would suggest that, rather than running to the media to complain, opponents of the oil and gas industry should encourage qualified parties to take advantage of that provision and participate in the process in good faith.
That would be a change in behavior we would all welcome, and certainly one that would truly be in the spirit of public transparency.
Elizabeth Ames Jones served on the Texas Railroad Commission from 2005-2012.
You Missed a Spot: A Timeline of Hydraulic Fracturing
Last week, ProPublica posted a big fancy chart about hydraulic fracturing on its website. So, we decided to make our own timeline to provide everyone with a little more context (and facts)...
Last week, ProPublica posted a big fancy chart about hydraulic fracturing on its website that purports to show that “government involvement with the drilling technique goes back decades.” (By “drilling technique” we assume they’re referring to hydraulic fracturing, even though, as a point of fact, hydraulic fracturing is not a drilling technique.) It’s a less-than-veiled attempt to provide cover for the claim that it was the federal government, not private industry, that facilitated the growth of shale development. But as we already know, that claim lacks merit. As Professor Michael Giberson of Texas Tech University has observed, the federal government’s role was “merely convenient to technological advancement and not necessary.” (emphasis added)
And, as it turns out, the chart is defined more by what it omits than what it includes. So, we decided to make our own timeline to provide everyone with a little more context (and facts) about the history of hydraulic fracturing, not to mention its incredible safety record.
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1947: First well receives hydraulic fracturing treatment to stimulate natural gas development (Grant County, Kan.).
1950s: Hydraulic fracturing is used for the first time in Canada (Cardium oil field in central Alberta).
November 1974: Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) is signed into law. Establishes new standards and regulations to protect underground sources of drinking water (USDW). Despite having been utilized commercially for a quarter century, hydraulic fracturing was never considered for regulation under SDWA.
June 1986: SDWA is amended to regulate more than 100 specific contaminants. Hydraulic fracturing, now commercially utilized for nearly four decades, is never considered for regulation.
1980s/early 1990s: George Mitchell successfully combines horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing to “crack the code” of the Barnett Shale in north Texas.
1994/1995: The Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation (LEAF) petitions the EPA to withdraw approval of Alabama’s underground injection control (UIC) program, arguing that the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) required that the federal EPA regulate hydraulic fracturing. Then-EPA Administrator (and later President Obama’s climate czar) Carol Browner responds with a clear message: “EPA does not regulate – and does not believe it is legally required to regulate – the hydraulic fracturing of methane gas production wells under its UIC program [under the Safe Drinking Water Act].” In that same letter, Browner says there was “no evidence” of hydraulic fracturing contaminating ground water.
August 1996: SDWA is amended once again to emphasize sound science and standards. Hydraulic fracturing is not considered for regulation.
1997: LEAF appeals EPA’s position (in LEAF v. U.S. EPA) on Alabama’s UIC program, arguing once again that the Safe Drinking Water Act requires EPA to regulate hydraulic fracturing of coalbed methane.
1999: In response to the LEAF decision, the State Oil and Gas Board of Alabama promulgates new rules and regulations on hydraulic fracturing, which the EPA approves one year later. LEAF appeals the Board’s new regulations to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Court ultimately sides with the EPA and the State Oil and Gas Board of Alabama, agreeing that the state’s regulatory system is an “effective program to prevent endangerment of underground sources of drinking water.”
2000: EPA initiates its own study of hydraulic fracturing. At less than 0.5 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of production, natural gas from shale accounts for roughly one percent of America’s total natural gas production.
August 2002: EPA releases a draft of its study of hydraulic fracturing, which affirms that the technology does not pose a risk to drinking water.
June 2004: EPA completes its four-year study on hydraulic fracturing (which began under the previous administration), concluding that the technology poses only a “minimal” threat to water supplies and that there are “no confirmed cases” linking hydraulic fracturing to drinking water contamination.
July 2005: The U.S. Congress passes the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (signed in August by the President), which includes a provision codifying that Congress never intended for hydraulic fracturing to be regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (as also evidenced by decades of precedence.) Also in 2005, Range Resources drills the first wells in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania (three of them, in fact).
September 2008: The Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) sends a letter to Mike W. Markham in Weld County, Colo., after Mr. Markham expressed concern that nearby natural gas production could have contaminated his drinking water. After extensive sampling and testing, COGCC finds “no indications of any oil & gas related impacts” to Mr. Markham’s well.
June 2009: U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Jared Polis (D-Colo.), and Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) introduce the FRAC Act in Congress, which would rewrite the intent of the Safe Drinking Water Act (and upend the effective, state-based regulatory regime currently in place) to put control of hydraulic fracturing squarely in the hands of the U.S. EPA. Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.) introduces companion legislation in the Senate. Interestingly, Colorado’s Governor at the time, Bill Ritter (D), accused Rep. DeGette of trying to create a “new and potential intrusive regulatory program” with the FRAC Act. Ritter further noted that states, including Colorado, have already “responsibly addressed” hydraulic fracturing. State regulators from across the country, meanwhile, defend the safety record of hydraulic fracturing.
August 2009: Initial testing of local water supplies in Pavillion, Wyo., by the EPA reveals the presence of a “tentatively identified compound,” or TIC. Earthworks blasts out a press release saying EPA has linked hydraulic fracturing to water contamination, even though the EPA made no conclusion or statement about the origin of the TIC, nor did it make any declaration that public health was in danger. A staffer with EPA says the possible contamination could be traced to household items, mentioning cleaning solvents specifically.
February 2010: Steve Heare, director of EPA’s Drinking Water Protection Division, says: “I have no information that states aren’t doing a good job already” with respect to regulating hydraulic fracturing.
March 2010: Under direction from Congress, the EPA initiates yet another study of hydraulic fracturing. The focus of the study is specifically on potential water impacts (despite dozens of state regulators saying hydraulic fracturing does not contaminate water.)
June 2010: The state of Wyoming approves a rule to require disclosure of the additives used during hydraulic fracturing. Later that month is the HBO premiere of the film Gasland, which, among many other things, attempts to rewrite much of the history of hydraulic fracturing. The film includes footage of one Mike Markham from Weld County, Colo., lighting his tap water on fire, which the film links to nearby gas drilling, despite the 2008 letter from Colorado regulators clearly and scientifically denying such a link.
October 2010: The Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) releases a document debunking many of the inaccuracies in Gasland, including notably the “flaming faucet” scene.
December 2010: Arkansas adopts new rules to require disclosure of additives used during hydraulic fracturing.
February 2011: Pennsylvania updates its regulations to include disclosure requirements for hydraulic fracturing fluids.
April 2011: The Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC) and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) officially launch FracFocus.org, an online disclosure website for the additives used during hydraulic fracturing. To date, the industry has uploaded more than 11,000 wells to the searchable database. That same month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) releases a report that finds natural gas from shale accounts for 23 percent of total natural gas production in the United States, increasing from 0.39 trillion cubic feet (tcf) in 2000 to 4.87 tcf in 2010. Democrats on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, despite using “no scientific data” to support their most frightening conclusions, release a report summarizing the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids. The report says nothing about actual water quality, nor does it provide appropriate context relating to concentration levels.
May 2011: During a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says, “I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.” Michigan regulators announce new regulations that include, among others, a provision to require disclosure of the additives used during hydraulic fracturing.
July 2011: The city of Fort Worth, Tex., releases results from a study looking at health impacts near natural gas exploration and production sites in the Barnett shale. The study “did not reveal any significant health threats.”
September 2011: Montana begins implementing its new disclosure rules for additives used during hydraulic fracturing.
October 2011: Louisiana’s rules for hydraulic fracturing fluid disclosure go into effect (see page 3064 of this document).
December 2011: EPA issues a draft report on water quality in Pavillion that, despite no independent scientific review, alleges that hydraulic fracturing was “likely” the cause of water contamination in the area. Numerous state officials and regulators criticize the report as inherently flawed. Meanwhile, Colorado implements new rules requiring disclosure for hydraulic fracturing fluids, and Texas regulators approve their own disclosure law. Both Colorado and Texas utilize the FracFocus website for implementation of their laws.
January 2012: In his State of the Union address, President Obama issues strong support for developing natural gas from shale, noting that his administration will “take every possible action to safely develop this energy” in order to create “more than 600,000 jobs” by the end of the decade. “The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy,” the President added.
February 2012: Two months after releasing its draft report on Pavillion, the EPA backtracks its initial (and inflammatory) claim that hydraulic fracturing “likely” caused water contamination. At a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, EPA Region 8 administrator Jim Martin says: “We make clear that the causal link [of water contamination] to hydraulic fracturing has not been demonstrated conclusively,” adding that EPA’s draft report “should not be assumed to apply to fracturing in other geologic settings.” President Obama, in his FY 2013 budget, requests additional funds for the EPA to expand its own mandate for its hydraulic fracturing study, a mandate that goes beyond what was authorized by Congress. Two days later, during a hearing before the House Natural Resources Committee, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says of hydraulic fracturing (subs. req’d): “From my point of view, it can be done safely and it has been done safely.”
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Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t include all of the economic benefits that hydraulic fracturing — by helping to unlock enormous amounts of natural gas — is delivering to Americans from coast to coast. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs, lower energy bills for consumers, and a rebirth of domestic manufacturing, not to mention less reliance on places like Russia and Saudi Arabia for our energy supplies.
Hydraulic fracturing certainly has a long history, and though it may be inconvenient for opponents to acknowledge, it’s a history that shows time and again how industry best practices and regulation by the states, not federal control, have facilitated robust economic growth as well as a clean and healthy environment.
A Lesson In How Crackers are Made
With EID programs currently up and running in both Pennsylvania and Ohio -- and having great, collaborative relationships with our friends in West Virginia as well -- it's fair to say that EID is more than a little bit conflicted when it comes to our institutional position on where Shell should build its new $2-billion ethane-fed cracker facility among the several sites currently under review throughout the three-state region.
With EID programs currently up and running in both Pennsylvania and Ohio — and having great, collaborative relationships with our friends in West Virginia as well — it’s fair to say that EID is more than a little bit conflicted when it comes to our institutional position on where Shell should build its new $2-billion ethane-fed cracker facility among the several sites currently under review throughout the three-state region.
But as you might expect, the senior U.S. senator from Pennsylvania isn’t quite so torn. In a letter sent this week to Mark Quartermain, president of Shell Energy North America, U.S. Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) lays out a pretty compelling case for why Shell should set-up shop in Pennsylvania, citing the state’s skilled workforce, extensive rail transportation network, and the “great potential that Marcellus Shale resources” has to offer. Not to be outdone, federal lawmakers from Ohio and West Virginia (and governors too) have weighed in as well, each hopeful that their workforce, infrastructure and shale-related geology will help put their state over the top – and snag 10,000 new jobs in the process.
As Sen. Casey alludes to his letter, the reason Shell’s in the position today to make such an enormous investment in the region is directly related to the remarkable volumes of natural gas (and especially, natural gas liquids) currently being produced from shale. What the senator doesn’t mention in his letter, though, is the fact that he’s currently the co-author and chief sponsor of legislation in the Senate that has the potential to shut down shale development all across the country, starting in his home state of Pennsylvania.
At least that’s the position of Gasland director Josh Fox, who has called for a nationwide ban on the technologies needed to harvest energy from shale, and for good measure, a global ban on all fossil fuels. Over on his website, Fox directs visitors to call their elected representatives and “let them know you support the FRAC Act.” Why that bill? Because “we can’t stop fracking without you.” Does that sound like a disclosure bill to you?
All of which sets up an interesting question: Had Sen. Casey actually passed his legislation when it was first introduced a couple years back, would Shell have decided to invest $2 billion in a facility whose entire business case is premised on continued access to affordable energy resources from the Marcellus and Utica shales? We can’t say for sure. What we do, though, is that one of the provisions included in the $41-billion merger between Exxon and XTO in December 2009 was a clause suggesting the deal could be called off if Congress were to pass a bill making “hydraulic fracturing or similar processes… illegal or commercially impracticable.” Sounds a little bit like Sen. Casey’s bill, doesn’t it?
Separate and apart from the legislation, the senator also appears to have a habit of “shooting first” and asking questions later when it comes to assigning blame in rare occasions when things go wrong. In March 2011, Sen. Casey wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy asking the agency to investigate “yet another gas-migration-related explosion” in McKean Co., Pa. – telling Secretary Chu that, to him, “it appears” the incident was caused by “extensive new deep drilling activities.” Less than a month later, PA DEP released the findings of its investigation, showing the source of methane migration to be shallow, abandoned wells drilled in the area more than 125 years ago. Not shale. And not new.
All that aside, though, Sen. Casey deserves credit for standing up for his state and fighting for thousands of family-supporting jobs at an otherwise very difficult time for our country and our economy. The good news for everyone is that, wherever the cracker is located, most experts believe that the entire region will benefit tremendously from the multi-billion dollar shot-in-the-arm that this facility portends. According to Keith Burdette, West Virginia’s commerce secretary, “the sites [are] just so closely grouped together that the impact across state lines will be significant.”
Of course, all things being equal, Mr. Burdette wants that sucker in West Virginia. Ohio governor John Kasich wants it in Ohio. And Sen. Casey? Well, he wants that cracker in Pennsylvania. As for us? We’d settle for a box of wheat thins. That, and maybe before anyone sends out any more letters – perhaps a moment of reflection on what’s made this entire conversation possible?
What the Waxman Report Doesn’t Report
Pa. Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Regional Director George Jugovic Jr., a former PennFuture attorney, addressed the Marcellus Shale Gas Environmental Summit this week in Pittsburgh. Following are key excerpts from his remarks:
On Fracture Zone and Groundwater:
- “Marcellus of course is about between 5,000 and 9,000 feet, as it moves across Pennsylvania. And so the point there of course, is that persons that are concerned about interaction between frac fluids and our drinking water supplies, and there are a substantial number of aqua guards that exist between where the Marcellus Shale is and where our drinking water supplies are. Thousands of feet of course separate them.”
- “[U]nless you provide a conduit between those two areas, between the Marcellus Shale and the drinking water, there is virtually no physical way for frac water to interfere with, or directly communicate with, drinking water supplies.”
- In fact, we have not had, to date, any documented incidents of frac water directly communicating and polluting drinking water supply… in Pennsylvania.”
On the FRAC Act:
- “The fact is, that even if enacted, we don’t believe that the FRAC Act will change regulation in Pennsylvania at all.”
- “Pennsylvania already achieves what is sought to be achieved by the Federal FRAC Act. We already require cementing and casing to protect underground drinking water resources, which I just went through briefly, and we also, I will go through this in a little more detail, require reporting of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing by the percent volume.
- “[A]ny member of the public or industry for that matter, that wants to identify what is in FRAC fluids can get on our website and go to that well and find out what the mix was by percent volume and identify all the chemicals used in that particular well for fracking.”
Audio clip available HERE.
Clearing the Air on the BREATHE Act
EID takes a closer look at “twisted sister” legislation offered as companion to ill-fated FRAC Act
Keep Reading »
Press Release: Waxman Memorandum Elicits Detailed Response from Natural Gas Caucus
EID: Boren/Murphy letter fills “factual and historical holes that were unfortunately left agape subsequent to the release of the Waxman memorandum.”
WASHINGTON – Less than a month after Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) sent letters to nine separate service companies seeking additional information on the processes and technologies involved in producing America’s enormous reserves of clean-burning shale gas, U.S. Reps. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) submitted a letter of their own this past week, reminding the chairman that shale gas is a “proven and powerful engine of economic growth – and one this Congress idles at the peril of those it represents.”
After reviewing the letter, Lee Fuller, executive director of Energy In Depth, released the following statement:
“With more attention being paid on Capitol Hill to the critical role that shale gas can play in securing our nation’s economic and environmental future, it’s natural that additional questions will be raised, and additional information will need to be provided so that lawmakers have access to all the facts, and a full appreciation of the context within which they reside. This letter from Congressmen Boren and Murphy addresses both of those needs, all while filling-in several factual and historical holes that were unfortunately left agape subsequent to the release of the Waxman memorandum.”
The following excerpts were taken directly from the Boren/Murphy letter, which can be downloaded in full here:
On Jobs:
“Consider that in just the past few years, more than 100,000 high-wage jobs have been created in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania alone, all of them tied to the responsible development of American natural gas, and every bit of that made possible thanks to the safe and steady deployment of fracturing technology.”
“At a time of unprecedented economic uncertainty, and in a year in which four million Americans lost their jobs, shale gas exploration represents a proven and powerful engine of economic growth – and one this Congress idles at the peril of those it represents.”
On Shortcomings of the Waxman Memo:
“While a number of the elements contained in your memorandum appear to be sufficiently-researched and adequately sourced, we were nonetheless disappointed to find in the eleven-page document only a single reference to the landmark 2004 study on hydraulic fracturing done by EPA, a reference that does not even acknowledge the core findings and conclusions of the actual report.”
On Relationship between Committee Investigation and EPA’s Pending Study:
“While the agency has yet to formally release details indicating the scope and methodology of that research, it seems likely that much of the information you intend to gather pursuant to your investigation will also be sought, compiled and analyzed by EPA. It’s our hope that you work does not in any way interfere with that process, and our expectation that your course of study meets the same rigorous standards of science, evaluation and peer-review as historically observed by the agency.”
On Waxman Assertion that Fracturing Solutions are Unknown:
“[C]ertainly you must know that federal law mandates that Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) be kept on-hand at every wellsite in America when chemicals are present, and further, that those sheets include an accounting of the identities of those chemicals with identified risks used in the fracturing process. Indeed, the vast majority of these information sheets can be found readily and easily on the Internet. As you indicate, a number of states today post this information in full view of the public online.”
On the Critical Role that Well Integrity Plays in Safeguarding Drinking Water:
“Unfortunately, those who support the FRAC Act appear to believe the mere existence of small amounts of chemical additives in the fracturing solution represents a circumstance sufficient for public drinking water supplies to become contaminated.
“The reality, however, is that these materials are well known to those who regulate the process, and are managed in a way that eliminates virtually any risk of those components coming into contact with shallow reservoirs bearing potable water. Wells drilled today incorporate thousands of feet (and many layers) of steel casing, and thousands of pounds of cement – every bit of that installed using a time-tested engineering process and precise instrumentation to ensure what’s happening inside the wellbore remains in complete isolation from what naturally exists outside of it.”
Click here to view the letter online.
READ MORE
- Top EPA Water Official: No “documented cases that the hydro-fracking process was contaminating water supplies”
- EPA Report on HF: “No credible evidence” that hydraulic fracturing endangers groundwater
- Senate Hearing: Top Brass from Obama Admin Tell Congress They’re “Not Aware” of Even “One Case” of HF-Related Contamination
- Fact Sheet: HF Opponents Say the Darndest Things
- Issue Alert: When Gummy Bears Attack
- Graphic: What’s In Frac Fluids?
- Browner Memo: Letter of Support for Hydraulic Fracturing from Carol Browner, Fmr. EPA Administrator
Unable to pass the bill in the previous two sessions of Congress, or secure even a single committee hearing during that time, proponents of the so-called FRAC Act re-introduced legislation earlier this week that seeks to fundamentally re-write a 37-year-old federal statute – with an eye on assigning the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) direct authority over the regulation of hydraulic fracturing for the first time in the history of the Act, the technology, or the agency itself.
In a statement, Energy In Depth’s Lee Fuller underscored the potential impact this far-reaching, Washington-knows-best policy could have on America’s economy and job creators, as well as our nation’s energy security:
“Hydraulic fracturing is one of the most critical processes that occurs at the wellsite; it’s also among the most stringently regulated. With this technology, it’s possible that literally quadrillions of cubic feet of clean-burning natural gas can be rendered available for American consumers in the future, resources that would otherwise be too deep and diffuse to access. It’s a technology that’s been around a long time, stretching all the way back to the Truman administration. But it’s also a technology that’s never been more important to our nation’s economic and environmental future than it is today. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, it became a victim of its own success. If hydraulic fracturing weren’t as patently effective as it is, it’s tough to imagine it’d be as strangely controversial as it has become.”
And today’s Wheeling News-Register reports this on the misguided legislation:
Lee Fuller, executive director of Energy In Depth, went further than Klaber, saying the FRAC Act is “based on fundamentally incorrect information,” noting the Safe Drinking Water Act was never used to regulate fracking. “Its backers say it’s about forcing companies to disclose the composition of the … solution that’s not water and sand, even though just about every state regulatory agency in the country will attest that such information is already available,” Fuller added.
Those responsible for regulating oil and natural gas development, and fracture stimulation technologies, are in agreement with energy producers on the facts: this 60 year old technology has never impacted groundwater, thanks in large part to the industry’s commitment to protecting the environment and the common sense state regulations and laws in place. This from Oklahoma’s News On 6 (also on EID’s YouTube page):
Chesapeake Energy’s Chairman and CEO, Aubrey McClendon, said he welcomes the study. “I think the EPA will do a good job of examining it,” McClendon stated, “and if we’re doing something wrong…somehow hurting the environment and we don’t know about it, then we want to fix what we’re doing wrong.”
But McClendon said Chesapeake has hydraulically fractured formations 14,000 times since 1989, and the record shows there isn’t anything wrong.
Larry Nichols, Devon Energy Executive Chairman, agrees. “Show us one single well where hydraulic fracturing has caused any problem,” Nichols said. “I’ve said that in testimony before Congress, and no one has yet to come up with one single well where hydraulic fracturing has caused a problem, that anyone can document with any scientific accuracy.”
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission has oversight of all drilling in the state, including fracking. Commissioner Bob Anthony believes the EPA study is a political scare tactic. “The facts are,” Anthony said in a written statement, “that hydraulic fracturing has been used in Oklahoma about 100,000 times in the last 60 years, with no documented cases of groundwater contamination.”
Nichols worries that the Obama administration’s goal, through the EPA study, is to wrest control of onshore drilling from the states. His fear is that they would then do to onshore drilling what they’ve done to offshore — “Shut it down,” he said.
A quick look around the U.S. at the overwhelmingly positive impacts that hydraulic fracturing – which is tightly and aggressively regulated by energy-producing states – continues to have, all of which would be jeopardized if the FRAC Act were to become law:
MT Gov. Brian Schweitzer, Western Governors Association chair, and fmr. Democratic Governors Association chair: “We’re increasing in Montana by thousands of jobs in drilling in what’s called the Bakken (Shale Formation) in eastern Montana,” the state’s Governor Brian Schweitzer told Fox News. “It is the richest geologic structure in all of the United States. Recent estimates are that there’s about 25 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Bakken in North Dakota and Montana. To put that in perspective we import about 4 billion barrels a year. We use about 6 billon barrels a year. So this one structure in North Dakota and Montana could be one of the keys to energy independence in the short term.” (Fox News, 3/17/11)
Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) President Daniel Juneau: The second factor that can greatly expand economic activity in the state is for the federal government to stay out of regulating shale oil and gas drilling activities. In 2004, the EPA concluded a 5-year study that concluded that the hydraulic fracturing process used in shale drilling was safe. Now the current EPA wants to go back and revisit the issue. If the EPA outlaws hydraulic fracturing, it will be the death-knell for shale oil and gas production. There is currently a tremendous amount of economic activity going on in northwest Louisiana from shale gas drilling in the Haynesville Shale play. Across central Louisiana, there is a potential for as much as 70 billion barrels of crude oil from the Tuscaloosa Shale play. Production from these shale plays can be a real shot in the arm to jobs and investment in our state. (Bastrop Daily Enterprise Op-Ed, 3/16/11)
“Penn State study shows sales tax revenue higher in Marcellus counties”: A new Penn State University publication examines state tax collection data and specifically compares counties where there is drilling and production activity in the Marcellus shale play with that of non-Marcellus counties. … The data indicates that local spending has increased in counties with major Marcellus activity. State tax collections of the personal income tax and realty transfer tax show similar differences between Marcellus and non-Marcellus counties. (Oil & Gas Journal, 3/16/11)
“Why North Dakota Is Booming: They’re drilling for oil, attracting high tech, and keeping the tax burden moderate. Result: 3.8% unemployment.” Living on the harsh, wind-swept northern Great Plains, North Dakotans lean towards the practical in economic development. Finding themselves sitting on prodigious pools of oil—estimated by the state’s Department of Mineral Resources at least 4.3 billion barrels—they are out drilling like mad. And the state is booming. Unemployment is 3.8%, and according to a Gallup survey last month, North Dakota has the best job market in the country. Its economy “sticks out like a diamond in a bowl of cherry pits,” says Ron Wirtz, editor of the Minneapolis Fed’s newspaper, fedgazette. (Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, 3/15/11)
PA State Rep.: Marcellus Shale’s “powerful [economic] ripple effects are spreading throughout the commonwealth”: And in those once-depressed counties where clean natural gas trapped in the deep shale rock is now being reached for energy consumers through high-technology horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, residents are enjoying a dramatic rebirth of jobs, business growth, and income. And, as a result, the Pennsylvania state treasury and the municipal governments in those regions are already receiving significant boosts in tax revenue … Pennsylvania natural gas is creating jobs, generating income, and boosting tax revenues. And while much of the economic activity remains concentrated in the Marcellus Shale regions, powerful ripple effects are spreading throughout the commonwealth. (The Sentinel Op-Ed, 3/12/11)
“Increased Drilling Creates Jobs”: An oil drilling boom across the American West is creating a wealth of job opportunities at a time when most segments of the economy remain sluggish. The boom is the result of new and updated technologies allowing companies to go after oil reserves that until recently were trapped in shale formations, making them too expensive and difficult to tap even five or ten years ago. “This is solid rock, so it’s not like a conventional resource where you just drill a well and the oil starts to flow,” Kathleen Sgamma, Director of Government and Public Affairs for The Western Energy Alliance, explained. “We have to crack that rock through a process that we call hydraulic fracturing where we pump high pressure water and a mixture, and sand down into the formation to crack the rock and create micro-fissures in the rock and prop it open with sand.” (Fox News, 3/17/11)
“This is an employment opportunity for the region. It’s going to provide a new workforce opportunity”: This summer, Clarion University’s Venango Campus will begin offering a natural gas technology program. “Obviously the Marcellus Shale industry is emerging in Pennsylvania and beyond, and it is going to be requiring a huge workforce,” said Christopher Reber, Executive Dean of Clarion University-Venango Campus. “There’s already been a phenomenal investment in Pennsylvania.” … “This is an employment opportunity for the region. It’s going to provide a new workforce opportunity, and certainly we’re committed to promoting economic development for the whole area,” Reber said. (WYFX-TV, 3/16/11)
ND’s Oil Boom Has “has created a $1 billion state budget surplus”: North Dakota, the state with the nation’s lowest unemployment rate, capped a decade of economic prosperity with dramatic population growth in its biggest cities. … North Dakota is enjoying an oil boom in the western part of the state, drawing workers from across the country. Williston, in oil country, grew 17.6% to 14,716. The oil windfall has created a $1 billion state budget surplus. … “We feel extremely fortunate for the position we’re in,” says North Dakota Commerce Commissioner Paul Govig. (USA Today, 3/17/11)
Hydraulic Fracturing, American Oil Production Creating Blue Collar Jobs: Increased drilling in the Niobrara Shale Formation in eastern Wyoming and Colorado is also creating job opportunities. “Currently, Noble Energy has over 60 jobs that are available in this area,” according to Stephen Flaherty, Director of Government Relations for Noble Energy. “The opportunities range from field pumpers, which just require a high school degree and no oil field service all the way up to petroleum engineers and everything in between; information technology services and accounting, just about every discipline.” (Fox News, 3/17/11)
EID Statement on Re-Introduction of the FRAC Act
Nat’l Environmental Group “Gushes” Over Economic, Environmental Benefits of Shale Gas, Then “Lauds” Gasland Filmmaker’s Efforts to Halt its Responsible Production Two Days Later
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Backyard Brawl: WVU, Pitt Profs. Confirm Hydraulic Fracturing’s Environmental Safety Record
AP: “The number of millionaires in ND rose by more than 40 percent in one year alone”, thanks to fracturing
Last week, PA’s DEP secretary, John Hanger, once again confirmed the fact that hydraulic fracturing has never impacted groundwater, a fact that a host of PADEP officials continue to reinforce. And last night, in a KDKA-TV segment, Sec. Hanger once again confirmed that fact that fracturing – a tightly regulated, 60 year-old technology used to stimulate oil and natural gas production – has never contaminated groundwater, which is what top EPA officials told a U.S. Senate panel this year.
And earlier this week, Radisav Vidic – a University of Pittsburgh professor with a Ph.D. in environmental engineering – told the Wheeling News Register that he has “not seen any evidence that fracturing itself poses a danger to the environment. The process has been around since the 1950s.”
Not to be outdone, though, West Virginia University’s Donald Lyons, an engineering professor, writes about the economic potentials of responsible Marcellus Shale development, fracturing’s long and clear record of safety, and the devastating impact that the FRAC Act could have on job creation and domestic energy production in a Charleston Gazette op-ed this week entitled “Natural gas means more jobs”:
Underlying West Virginia is the Marcellus Shale, which is another great source of natural gas. Last year, shale-gas drilling in the Marcellus provided 57,000 new jobs — mainly here in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. An economic study estimated that drilling throughout the Marcellus Shale, which extends from Kentucky to upstate New York, could create 280,000 new jobs and add $6 billion in tax revenues over the next decade.
State agencies do a commendable job of overseeing the process of hydraulic fracturing, a technology that has been used for decades to produce oil and natural gas, to assure the process is done safely and without a negative impact on the environment.
Opponents of shale-gas drilling … want regulatory oversight to be shifted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is conducting a study of hydraulic fracturing practices at the direction of Congress. But adding one more layer of bureaucratic red tape will stall natural gas production by raising drilling costs by as much as $100,000 per well, without making shale-gas production any safer than it already is. This could force most of the independent companies that account for the bulk of natural gas production to shut down their operations. In that event, gas production would drop 45 percent within five years, according to an industry study, and thousands of jobs would be lost. Shale gas production should be increased, not decreased.
So what does the public think about this historic opportunity? Well, according to a Lycoming College poll released yesterday, folks in the communities where Marcellus production is underway overwhelmingly support this activity and believe strongly – nearly 80 percent – that “the creation of many jobs was very likely.”
But hydraulic fracturing is not just helping to create thousands of good-paying jobs, stable supplies of homegrown energy for consumers, and much-needed economic activity in the Rust Belt exclusively. In North Dakota, through the responsible development the Bakken Shale’s abundant, job-creating oil reserves, small towns are expected to “double in the next 5 years,” according to a WDAY news report this week. This from their dispatch under the headline “Workers needed to fill thousands of jobs in western North Dakota”:
Williston’s Economic Development Executive Director Tom Rolfstad says the surge out west is not an oil boom, but an oil industry, saying it isn’t going away anytime soon. He expects Williston and other western towns in the Bakken Shale to double in the next 5 years. It’ll leave them in need of everything from oil workers, to doctors, bakers, and waitresses.
It’s a problem much of the country would like to have. Tom Rolfstad is pleading for workers.
“We need a lot of help! How are we going to grow this fast?” He says he needs thousands of people. It’s part of the “Invest in the West to Fund the Rest” campaign. Rolfstad and other economic development leaders are trying to get more North Dakota workers out west to fill about 3-thousand jobs.
The Associated Press also reports on the incredible amount of economic opportunity, job creation and prosperity that fracturing is helping to make possible for North Dakotans:
In recent years, oil companies have been extracting oil from the Bakken shale deposit, the largest such formation ever surveyed in the United States by the U.S. Geological Survey.
The number of millionaires in North Dakota rose by more than 40 percent in one year alone, to 388 in 2006.
Roundabout Theatre: NY Rep. Wants D.C. to Tell Commission in N.J. to Shut Down Marcellus Work in Pa.
Congressman Maurice Hinchey, Democrat from Hurley, N.Y., may not have a particularly firm grasp on the history of hydraulic fracturing – continuing to tell anyone who will listen (wrongly) that HF was previously regulated by EPA under the Safe Drinking Water Act, but now is not.
But anyone who thinks he doesn’t have a sophisticated understanding of how to use all levels of government to get things done (or, in this case, stop things from happening) – think again.
Mr. Hinchey, an original co-sponsor of the job-killing FRAC Act – which aims to strip individual energy-producing states of their ability to tightly and able regulate hydraulic fracturing – has elevated (or at least tried) his attack on responsible domestic shale gas development.
Under the headline “Obama admin rejects timeout for Marcellus drilling,” Greenwire’s Mike Soraghan reports this:
Brig. Gen. Peter “Duke” DeLuca, commander of the North Atlantic Division of the Army Corps of Engineers, last week declined a request from Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) to use the federal government’s vote on the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to seek a temporary ban on gas production in the Delaware watershed.
The Obama administration has decided against pressing for a temporary halt to Marcellus Shale drilling in Pennsylvania and New York, a key federal official said.
Hinchey wants drilling there to wait until the commission completes a “cumulative impact statement,” but DeLuca said that could delay drilling for years.
“Just to be clear here, Hinchey was trying to use a federal agency to direct the actions of a regional water board for the purposes of preventing the development of natural gas in a state where he doesn’t even live,” said Chris Tucker, spokesman for Energy in Depth, a group of independent drillers. “Next thing you know, he’ll be ordering the Army Corps to build levees around our well sites in Wyoming.”
Here’s what others – who have actual energy backgrounds and expertise – are saying about hydraulic fracturing’s long and clear record of environmental safety and effectiveness.
- IPAA’s Barry Russell: “Special Interests’ Misguided Policies”: “While some opponents of responsible American energy production contend that Washington ought to step in and brush aside the authority and expertise of the states in this area, the industry continues to provide the facts, history and data needed to better understand and appreciate the record of achievement to which state officials continue to lay claim after 60 years of successful oversight. This has become such an important policy issue, that the industry has created a coalition – small and large companies, consumers, landowners – to address the very questions asked today by National Journal. You can visit the Energy in Depth coalition’s website at www.energyindepth.org. (National Journal, 9/20/10)
- Pa. Petroleum Geologist: “In praise of shale gas”: “The risk of polluting underground aquifers is vanishingly small. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection tightly regulates the use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the technique that’s made it possible in recent years to reach large deposits of shale gas, and hydraulic fracturing is done at a considerable distance from any underground water resources. Safeguards also are in place to protect water systems from discharging drilling wastes. (Post-Gazette, 9/22/10)
- Ph.D. in Geophysics with a focus in Petroleum Seismology: “Pa. doesn’t need federal agency’s help regulating shale gas development”: “Pennsylvania has returned to the national energy stage. The Marcellus Shale is filled with natural gas but only allows it to flow along cracks in the rock known as “fractures.” Hydraulic fracturing – sometimes called “fracking” – involves injecting fluid into these tight formations at very high pressures to create man-made fractures. Without directional drilling and fracking, the gas boom in Pennsylvania might never have started. The type of fluid used for fracking varies, but it is usually over 99 percent water and solids with the remainder being additives that promote flow of the fracking fluid through the rock. (Wilkes Barre Times-Leader, 9/19/10)
ICYMI – GasLand debunked (again) in Okla. Paper
With so much talk in Washington these days from politicians about “plans” aimed at redirecting our struggling economy and putting Americans back to work, not as much attention has been paid to the incredible economic force that America’s oil and natural gas producers continue to bring to bear in so many regions across the country.
Unfortunately though, some leaders in Washington are working to advance misguided policies that seek to severely undercut producers’ ability to safely deliver the energy resources needed to fuel our economy. Naturally, the less energy produced, the fewer jobs created – and tougher it is to make good on the promise of America’s homegrown (and growing) energy potential.
Consider the potential consequences of the FRAC Act, which could strip energy-producing states of their ability to determine the regulatory landscape associated with hydraulic fracturing – a 60-year old technology that’s used to enhance energy production in 90 percent of the nation’s oil and natural gas wells.
While some opponents of responsible American energy production contend that Washington ought to step in and brush aside the authority and expertise of the states in this area, Energy In Depth continues to provide the facts, history and data needed to better understand and appreciate the record of achievement to which state officials continue to lay claim after 60 years of successful oversight.
In today’s Bismark Tribune, EID’s Lee Fuller shares some additional insight on this record:
Here are the actual facts: Fracturing has been used safely in the United States for more than 60 years, and has never in that time been directly regulated by the EPA. For decades, that responsibility has remained with states, which continue to compile a remarkable record of oversight and enforcement.
How good? In 60 years, not a single case of groundwater contamination has been credibly tied to hydraulic fracturing. Don’t believe us? Just ask the EPA — it confirmed as much to the U.S. Senate earlier this year.
Rep. Earl Pomeroy said recently that the “regulation of hydraulic fracturing is best left to the states,” and that new efforts to turn that authority over to the federal government “will do nothing to protect drinking water and will only serve to slow down development resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs and more imported oil.”
Sen. Byron Dorgan confirms that “hydraulic fracturing is not a problem,” noting there have been “many studies” that “show that it does not contaminate groundwater,” including one by the EPA in 2004.
Thanks to the Bakken Shale, North Dakota’s unemployment rate is currently at 3.6 percent. Compare that to the national rate of 9.5 percent. And what about the North Dakota budget? Thanks to the Bakken, it currently enjoys a surplus of $500 million.
Here’s what others are saying about oil and natural gas production enabled by tightly-regulated fracture stimulation technology:
ON FRACTURING’S RECORD OF SAFETY, ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
- Ph.D. in Geophysics says “Gas shale and hydraulic fracturing work for NY”: “No evidence directly connects injection of fracking fluid into shale with aquifer contamination. In 2004, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a study finding no confirmed instances of drinking water contamination by fracking fluids in the ground. This finding is not surprising as fracking fluid is pumped through heavy, steel pipe surrounded by a concrete liner to formations thousands of feet below aquifers. (Hornell Evening Tribune, 9/7/10)
- Surge in use of natural gas helping to lower emissions: “But now, thanks to greater geologic and scientific insight and developments in drilling and production techniques, producers are unlocking shale’s enormous potential. We don’t have to look overseas to realize the environmental and economic gains of relying on natural gas; huge shale gas reserves in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Appalachia are easily accessible – right here, right now. Shale gas has begun to tip the scales such that experts deem the boom a game-changer, the most significant energy innovation in years. (Houston Chronicle, 9/3/10)
ON JOB CREATION, ECONOMIC GROWTH
- Gas boom economic engine for company: “When a Texas gas company hired Michael Pascuzzi’s earth-moving business to build two water impoundments, he sat down at his desk and cried. The family-owned company had been headed for bankruptcy. ‘We were real close to throwing in the towel,’ said Nicholas Pascuzzi Jr., Michael’s father and president of their McDonald-based company, New Dominion Construction. Marcellus shale saved the company, fresh evidence of how the commercial discovery of gas in the deep shale formation boosted the economy of Western Pennsylvania during a national recession.” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/8/10)
- Gov. Rendell touts Shale’s economic potential during broadcast: “There is an economic upside here that is substantial,” Gov. Ed Rendell said on the Wednesday night show, which was part of a series of PCN programming on the Marcellus Shale. (Scranton Times-Tribune, 9/9/10)
- “Atlas Energy Inc. is among those doing some hiring. The natural-gas producer, based in Moon Township, Pa., has added 160 workers this year, bringing its head count to 680. The company recently played host to a jobs fair at a Pittsburgh-area hotel, where a line to register spilled out of a ballroom and into the lobby.” (Wall Street Journal, 9/4/10)
ON EXANDED SUPPLIES OF AFFORDABLE, RELIABLE ENERGY
- Marcellus Shale production data exceeds expectations: “Marcellus Shale gas wells in Northeast and Northcentral Pennsylvania led the state in natural gas production last year, exceeding even industry predictions about the promise of the gas-rich shale, according to well production data released for the first time by the state. In the 12 months between July 1, 2009 and June 30, 2010, the state’s 632 producing Marcellus wells released 180 billion cubic feet of gas – an amount that more than doubles Pennsylvania’s annual natural gas production from the years before the shale exploration began. … Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for Range Resources, which reported a total production of about 35 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 402,000 barrels of natural gas liquids last year, said the report indicates what the industry believed, “which is that it is a very large natural gas discovery and could be one of the largest anywhere when it’s all said and done. It’s just going to take time.” (Scranton Times-Tribune, 9/9/10)
- What peak oil? Why an oil glut is ahead: “Part of that surplus comes from increased oil and gas production, particularly from ongoing production in the non-OPEC countries (including the U.S., where a “shale gas boom” has created a natural-gas glut). … But as the summer driving season passes and students head back to school, awareness has gradually dawned that we may be looking at an oil surplus for years to come. (CNNMoney, 9/8/10)
- Natural gas from shale rock promises energy revolution: “A new source of energy, shale gas promises to add significantly to the world’s energy reserves. … David Spigelmyer, vice-president of government relations at Chesapeake Energy said the firm’s gas extraction takes place a mile or more underground. “Groundwater rests between 300 and 500 feet and we have multiple layers of cement and steel to protect these freshwater aquifers,” he said. (BBC, 9/8/10)
With so much talk in Washington these days from politicians about “plans” aimed at redirecting our struggling economy and putting Americans back to work, not as much attention has been paid to the incredible economic force that America’s oil and natural gas producers continue to bring to bear in so many regions across the country.
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Sen. Casey asks Colo. congresswoman to help him make the case for jobs-killing anti-HF bill in Philadelphia paper – EID takes a closer look
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Six Reasons to Oppose Stowaway HF Provisions Tucked Into Reid Energy Bill
Undermines the states, stifles energy development in America, asks for things we might not even own … Energy In Depth counts down the ways
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ICYMI – Longtime NYT Editor, Columnist on GasLand: “One-sided, flawed … in the Michael Moore mode”
Peter Applebome, a reporter and editor at the New York Times since 1987, writes thisabout GasLand in the Gray Lady:
- “It’s one-sided, flawed and personal in the Michael Moore mode”
Local PA newspaper calls out Josh Fox: “One glaring error in the film is the suggestion that gas drilling led to the September fish kill at Dunkard Creek in Greene County. That was determined to have been caused by a golden algae bloom from mine drainage from a [mine] discharge.” (Washington (Pa.) Observer-Reporter, 6/5/10)
Marcellus Shale group weighs-in: “Our understanding, based on previews of the film, is that it’s loaded with misleading claims and untruths, and completely fails to recognize the well-known fact that hydraulic fracturing has been used in this state for a half-century, and according to state and federal regulators, has never once been found to adversely impact the public’s underground drinking water supplies.” (Patriot-News, 6/2/10)
Washington Examiner: “[Lisa] Jackson forgot to mention “concerns” about hydraulic fracturing come only from environmental groups seeking to stop all uses of fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas. Jackson’s announcement followed the Washington premiere of the anti-fossil fuel “GasLand” propagandamentary produced by some of these same groups. Two more facts Jackson didn’t mention: Never in the 60-year history of hydraulic fracturing has it been linked to a single proven public health threat to water quality; and the EPA has already studied hydraulic fracturing, most recently in 2004, when it found no threat.” (Editorial, 3/19/10)
“Michael Moore has spawned imitators, including Josh Fox”: “Michael Moore, writer/producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, and Capitalism: A Love Story among others, has pioneered this kind of “documentary” that’s long on innuendo and short on facts, perfecting it as an art. It seems Mr. Moore has spawned imitators, including Josh Fox. … The drumbeat will only grow louder from the anti-drilling movement. Their two-pronged attack is to claim: 1) Hydraulic fracturing as a mining technique is unsafe, and 2) Your water will become contaminated with nasty chemicals and/or methane gas if there’s a drill anywhere near you. Both claims are false.” (Marcellus Drilling News, 2/23/10)
Interested in learning the facts? Click HERE to view Energy In Depth’s comprehensive fact-check of the “one-sided, flawed” claims perpetuated in GasLand.
Today marks the one-year anniversary of the introduction of the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act in the 111th Congress, a bill sponsored (but probably not authored) by Reps. Dianna DeGette (D-Colo.) and Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) While short on actual legislative text, the bill – the Senate companion to which was introduced the same day last year by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) – aims to give regulators in Washington unprecedented authority to regulate the commonly used energy technology known as hydraulic fracturing, never mind that states have been aggressively regulating the process for more than six decades already.
So here we are one year later. And despite the fact the no committee or subcommittee of either house of Congress has acted on the bill in any discernable way since its introduction, its threat to our economy and our nation’s energy security remains very real.
The Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg-based think tank, says the FRAC Act “is unwarranted,” writing this in a recent policy brief entitled “Pennsylvania’s Natural Gas Boom”:
Congress is considering a federal takeover of fracking oversight, which would only lessen Pennsylvania’s environmental protection. S. 1215, the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, would require the hydraulic fracturing process to be monitored by the federal government under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
S. 1215 is unwarranted. Fracking occurs thousands of feet beneath aquifers, and there is no indication it causes contamination. According to DEP’s Bureau of Oil and Gas Management director, “there has never been any evidence of fracking ever causing direct contamination of fresh groundwater in Pennsylvania or anywhere else.”
Besides being unnecessary, the FRAC Act is poor policy, as it shifts responsibility away from local authorities who are better equipped to handle local situations. Pennsylvania’s regulatory agencies have made sure no water contamination in the state has occurred and should be supported as the correct regulatory bodies for protecting the state’s waterways.
The FRAC Act has lined up a few cheerleaders recently, though. In fact, there’s even a movie out now called GasLand that perpetuates tired, debunked talking points aimed at domestic energy production and the tens of thousands of jobs this industry continues to create. While the “documentary” has garnered some fanfare for its theatrics, it didn’t get quite the same reception when put under the microscope of an Energy In Depth fact-check.
But it’s not just Energy In Depth that understands how critical shale gas production, enabled by fracturing, is to our nation and to our economy. Other top opinion-leaders are speaking out, too. San Antonia Express columnist David Hendricks writes this in a recent column:
What if I told you a domestic fuel exists that emits only half the greenhouse gases of coal and can be found in abundant supply to last the United States at least 45 years?
Many of you already know what it is: natural gas. Technological advances are unlocking natural gas reserves in deep shale rock strata around the world. The more people search for new reserves, the more they find.
The United States has enough shale gas that prices can range in a comfortable zone for the next few decades.
The threat of Washington stripping energy-producing states of their ability to regulate fracturing is as real as the economic benefits this technology is bringing to regions of the country who desperately need jobs and affordable, domestic supplies of energy. Send Congress the message that responsible, heavily-regulated, job-creating American energy production is critical to our long-term security.
Josh Fox makes his mainstream debut with documentary targeting natural gas – but how much of it is actually true?
For an avant-garde filmmaker and stage director whose previous work has been recognized by the “Fringe Festival” of New York City, HBO’s decision to air the GasLand documentary nationwide later this month represents Josh Fox’s first real foray into the mainstream – and, with the potential to reach even a portion of the network’s 30 million U.S. subscribers, a potentially significant one at that.
But with larger audiences and greater fanfare come the expectation of a few basic things: accuracy, attention to detail, and original reporting among them. Unfortunately, in the case of this film, accuracy is too often pushed aside for simplicity, evidence too often sacrificed for exaggeration, and the same old cast of characters and anecdotes – previously debunked – simply lifted from prior incarnations of the film and given a new home in this one.
“I’m sorry,” Josh Fox once told a New York City magazine, “but art is more important than politics. … Politics is people lying to you and simplifying everything; art is about contradictions.” And so it is with GasLand: politics at its worst, art at its most contrived, and contradictions of fact found around every bend of the river. Against that backdrop, we attempt below to identify and correct some of the most egregious inaccuracies upon which the film is based (all quotes are from Josh Fox, unless otherwise noted):
Misstating the Law
(6:05) “What I didn’t know was that the 2005 energy bill pushed through Congress by Dick Cheney exempts the oil and natural gas industries from Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Superfund law, and about a dozen other environmental and Democratic regulations.”
- This assertion, every part of it, is false. The oil and natural gas industry is regulated under every single one of these laws — under provisions of each that are relevant to its operations. See this fact sheet for a fuller explanation of that.
- The process of hydraulic fracturing, to which Fox appears to be making reference here, has never in its 60-year history been regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). It has, however, been regulated ably and aggressively by the states, which have compiled an impressive record of enforcement and oversight in the many decades in which they have been engaged in the practice.
- Far from being “pushed through Congress by Dick Cheney,” the Energy Policy Act of 2005 earned the support of nearly three-quarters of the U.S. Senate (74 “yea” votes), including the top Democrat on the Energy Committee; current Interior secretary Ken Salazar, then a senator from Colorado; and a former junior senator from Illinois named Barack Obama. In the U.S. House, 75 Democrats joined 200 Republicans in supporting the final bill, including the top Democratic members on both the Energy & Commerce and Resources Committees.
(6:24) “But when the 2005 energy bill cleared away all the restrictions, companies … began to lease Halliburton technology and to begin the largest and most extensive domestic gas drilling campaign in history – now occupying 34 states.”
- Once again, hydraulic fracturing has never been regulated under SDWA – not in the 60-year history of the technology, the 36-year history of the law, or the 40-year history of EPA. Given that, it’s not entirely clear which “restrictions” in the law Mr. Fox believes were “cleared away” by the 2005 energy bill. All the bill sought to do was clarify the existing and established intent of Congress as it related to the scope of SDWA.
- Interest in developing clean-burning natural gas resources from America’s shale formations began to manifest itself well before 2005. The first test well in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, for example, was drilled in 2004. In Texas, the first wells in the prolific Barnett Shale formation were spudded in the late 1990s. But even before natural gas from shale was considered a viable business model, energy producers had been relying on hydraulic fracturing for decades to stimulate millions of wells across the country. The technology was first deployed in 1948.
- The contention that current energy development activity represents the “largest … drilling campaign in history” is also incorrect. According to EIA, more natural gas wells were developed in 1982 than today. And more than two times the number of petroleum wells were drilled back then as well, relative to the numbers we have today. Also, while it may (or may not) be technically true that fracturing activities take place in 34 states, it’s also true that 99.9 percent of all oil and gas activity is found in only 27 U.S. states (page 9, Ground water Protection Council report)
(32:34) “The energy task force, and $100 million lobbying effort on behalf of the industry, were significant in the passage of the ‘Halliburton Loophole’ to the Safe Drinking Water Act, which authorizes oil and gas drillers exclusively to inject known hazardous materials, unchecked, directly into or adjacent to underground drinking water supplies. It passed as part of the Bush administration’s Energy Policy Act of 2005.”
- Not content with simply mischaracterizing the nature of existing law, here Fox attempts to assert that the law actually allows energy producers to inject hazardous chemicals “directly into” underground drinking water. This is a blatant falsehood. Of course, if such an outrageous thing were actually true, one assumes it wouldn’t have taken five years and a purveyor of the avant-garde to bring it to light.
- The subsurface formations that undergo fracture stimulation reside thousands and thousands of feet below formations that carry potable water. These strata are separated by millions of tons of impermeable rock, and in some cases, more than two miles of it.
- Once again, to characterize the bipartisan 2005 energy bill as having a “loophole” for hydraulic fracturing requires one to believe that, prior to 2005, hydraulic fracturing was regulated by EPA under federal law. But that belief is mistaken. And so is the notion that the 2005 act contains a loophole for oil and natural gas. As stated, hydraulic fracturing has been regulated ably and aggressively by the states.
(1:32:34) “Diana DeGette and Maurice Hinchey’s FRAC Act [is] a piece of legislation that’s one paragraph long that simply takes out the exemption for hydraulic fracturing to the Safe Drinking Water Act.”
- Here Fox is referring to the 2008 iteration of the FRAC Act, not the slightly longer (though equally harmful) 2009 version of the bill. The legislation does not, as its authors suggest, “restore” the Safe Drinking Water Act to the way it was in 2004. It calls for a wholesale re-writing of it.
- Here’s the critical passage from the FRAC Act: “Section 1421(d)(1) of the Safe Drinking Water Act is amended by striking subparagraph (B) and inserting: (B) includes the underground injection of fluids or propping agents pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations related to oil and gas production activities.”
- Why would you need to “insert” new language into a 36-year-old statute if all you were looking to do is merely “restore” it?
Misrepresenting the Rules
(1:00:56) “Because of the exemptions, fracking chemicals are considered proprietary … The only reason we know anything about the fracking chemicals is because of the work of Theo Colborn … by chasing down trucks, combing through material safety data sheets, and collecting samples.”
- With due respect to eminent environmental activist and former World Wildlife Fund staffer Theo Colborn, no one has ever had to “chas[e] down a truck” to access information on the materials used in the fracturing process.
- That’s because there’s actually a much easier way to obtain that information: simply navigate to this website hosted by regulators in Pennsylvania, this one from regulators in New York (page 130), this one for West Virginia, this one maintained by the Ground Water Protection Council and the U.S. Department of Energy (page 63), and this one on the website of Energy In Depth.
(1:03:33) Dr. Colborn: “Once the public hears the story, and they’ll say, ‘Why aren’t we out there monitoring’? We can’t monitor until we know what they’re using. There’s no way to monitor. You can’t.”
- According to environmental regulators from Josh Fox’s home state of Pennsylvania, “Drilling companies must disclose the names of all chemicals to be stored and used at a drilling site … These plans contain copies of material safety data sheets for all chemicals … This information is on file with DEP and is available to landowners, local governments and emergency responders.”
- Environmental regulators from Fox’s adopted state of New York also testify to having ready access to this information. From the NY Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) information page: “The [state] is assessing the chemical makeup of these additives and will ensure that all necessary safeguards and best practices are followed.”
- According to the Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC), “[M]ost additives contained in fracture fluids including sodium chloride, potassium chloride, and diluted acids, present low to very low risks to human health and the environment.” GWPC members include state environmental officials who set and enforce regulations on ground water protection and underground fluid injection.
Mischaracterizing the Process
(6:50) “[Hydraulic fracturing] blasts a mix of water and chemicals 8,000 feet into the ground. The fracking itself is like a mini-earthquake. … In order to frack, you need some fracking fluid – a mix of over 596 chemicals.”
- As it relates to the composition of fluids commonly used in the fracturing process, greater than 99.5 percent of the mixture is comprised of water and sand. The remaining materials, used to help deliver the water down the wellbore and position the sand in the tiny fractures created in the formation, are typically components found and used around the house. The most prominent of these, a substance known as guar gum, is an emulsifier more commonly found in ice cream.
- From the U.S. Dept. of Energy / GWPC report: “Although the hydraulic fracturing industry may have a number of compounds that can be used in a hydraulic fracturing fluid, any single fracturing job would only use a few of the available additives [not 596!]. For example, in [this exhibit], there are 12 additives used, covering the range of possible functions that could be built into a fracturing fluid.” (page 62)
- In the documentary, Fox graphically depicts the fracturing process as one that results in the absolute obliteration of the shale formation. In reality, the fractures created by the procedure and kept open by the introduction of proppants such as sand are typically less than a millimeter thick.
(50:05) “Each well completion, that is, the initial drilling phase plus the first frack job, requires 1,150 truck trips.”
- Suggesting that every well completion in America requires the exact same number of truck trips is absurd. As could be guessed, the number of trips required to supply the well site with the needed equipment and personnel will vary (widely) depending on any number of factors.
- As it relates to a source for Fox’s identification of “1,150 truck trips,” none is given – although it appears he may have derived those numbers from a back-of-the-envelope calculation inspired by a chart on page 6-142 of this document from NY DEC. As depicted on that page, the transportation of new and used water supplies, to and from the wellsite, account for 85 percent of the trips extrapolated by Fox.
- Unrepresented in this chart is the enormous growth in the amount of produced water that is currently being recycled in the Marcellus – with industry in Pennsylvania reusing and recycling on average more than 60 percent of its water, according to the Marcellus Shale Coalition.
- According to GWPC: “Drilling with compressed air is becoming an increasingly popular alternative to drilling with fluids due to the increased cost savings from both reduction in mud costs and the shortened drilling times as a result of air based drilling.” (page 55)
(51:12) “Before the water can be hauled away and disposed of somewhere, it has to be emptied into a pit – an earthen pit, or a clay pit, sometimes a lined pit, but a pit – where a lot of it can seep right back down into the ground.”
- The vast majority of energy-producing states – 27 in total, including all the ones to which Fox travels for GasLand – have explicit laws on the books governing the type of containment structures that must be used for temporarily storing flowback water. A number of producers today choose to store this water in steel tanks, eliminating all risk of that water re-entering the surrounding environment.
- GWPC (May 2009) “In 23 states, pits of a certain type or in a particular location must have a natural or artificial liner designed to prevent the downward movement of pit fluids into the subsurface. … Twelve states also explicitly either prohibit or restrict the use of pits that intersect the water table.” (page 28-29)
- GWPC (April 2009): “Water storage pits used to hold water for hydraulic fracturing purposes are typically lined to minimize the loss of water from infiltration. … In an urban setting, due to space limitations, steel storage tanks may be used.” (page 55)
Flat-Out Making Stuff Up
(53:36) “The Pinedale Anticline and the Jonah gas fields [of Wyoming] are directly in the path of the thousand year old migration corridor of pronghorn antelope, mule deer and sage grouse. And yeah, each of these species is endangered, and has suffered a significant decline of their populations since 2005.”
- 0 for 1: Three species of the pronghorn antelope are considered “endangered,” none of which are found anywhere near the Pinedale Anticline. Those are: the Sonoran (Arizona), the Peninsular (Mexico), and the Mexican Pronghorn (also of Mexico). According to the Great Plains Nature Center: “The great slaughter of the late 1800s affected the pronghorns … Only about 12,000 remained by 1915. Presently, they number around one million and the greatest numbers of them are in Wyoming and Montana.”
- 0 for 2: Only one species of mule deer is considered “endangered”: the Cedros Island mule deer of Mexico (nowhere near Wyoming). The mule deer populations are so significant in Wyoming today that the state has a mule deer hunting season.
- 0 for 3: The sage grouse does not currently have a place on the endangered species list, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) – and “robust populations of the bird currently exist across the state” of Wyoming, according to the agency. Interestingly, FWS recently issued a press release identifying wind development as a critical threat the sage grouse’s habitat.
- That said, producers in the area have taken the lead on efforts to lessen their impact and reduce the number of truck trips required to service their well sites. As part of that project, operators have commissioned a series of independent studies examining additional steps that can be taken to safeguard the Anticline’s wildlife.
(8:07) “And now they’re coming east. They’re proposing 50,000 gas wells along a 75-mile stretch of the Delaware River and hundreds of thousands more across New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. From 1972 until now – my whole life – all of this has been protected.”
- Not even the most optimistic scenario for future development in the Marcellus Shale in general, or along the Delaware River in particular, comes anywhere close to 50,000 natural gas wells. A recent study by Penn State Univ. projects that by the year 2020, producers will have developed 3,587 shale gas wells. A study conducted for policymakers in the Southern Tier of New York predicted a maximum of 4,000 wells for that region.
- Where Fox comes up with his 50,000 figure is unknown. The protections to the area apparently in place since 1972 to which he refers are also unknown.
(19:27) “One thing was resoundingly clear: If the industry’s projections were correct, then this would be the end of the Catskills and the Delaware River Basin as we knew it. And it would mean a massive upheaval and redefinition of all of New York State and Pennsylvania.”
- According to the Energy Information Administration, Pennsylvania is already home to 55,631 active natural wells; New York, according to DEC, is home to roughly 14,000. Again, even assuming the most active development scenario, Marcellus wells are expected to account for less than 10 percent of all wells in these two states over the next 10 to 20 years – not exactly the type of dramatic “upheaval” and “redefinition” that Fox suggests in his film.
(31:32) “In 2004, the EPA was investigating a water contamination incident due to hydraulic fracturing in Alabama. But a panel rejected the inquiry, stating that although hazard materials were being injected underground, EPA did not need to investigate.”
- No record of the investigation described by Fox exists, so EID reached out to Dr. Dave Bolin, deputy director of Alabama’s State Oil & Gas Board and the man who heads up oversight of hydraulic fracturing in that state. In an email, he said he had “no recollection” of such an investigation taking place.
- That said, it’s possible that Fox is referring to EPA’s study of the McMillian well in Alabama, which spanned several years in the early- to mid-1990s. In 1989, Alabama regulators conducted four separate water quality tests on the McMillian well. The results indicated no water quality problems existed. In 1990, EPA conducted its own water quality tests, and found nothing.
- In a letter sent in 1995, then-EPA administrator Carol Browner (currently, President Obama’s top energy and environmental policy advisor) characterized EPA’s involvement with the McMillian case in the following way: “Repeated testing, conducted between May of 1989 and March of 1993, of the drinking water well which was the subject of this petition [McMillian] failed to show any chemicals that would indicate the presence of fracturing fluids. The well was also sampled for drinking water quality, and no constituents exceeding drinking water standards were detected.”
- For information on what actually did happen in Alabama during this time, and how it’s relevant to the current conversation about the Safe Drinking Water Act, please download the fact sheet produced last year by the Coalbed Methane Association of Alabama.
(1:28:06) “Just a few short months after this interview, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection suffered the worst budget cuts in history, amounting to over 700 staff either being fired or having reduced hours and 25 percent of its total budget cut.”
- DEP press release, issued January 28, 2010: “Governor Edward G. Rendell announced today that the commonwealth is strengthening its enforcement capabilities. At the Governor’s direction, the Department of Environmental Protection will begin hiring 68 new personnel who will make sure that drilling companies obey state laws and act responsibly to protect water supplies. DEP also will strengthen oil and gas regulations to improve well construction standards.”
Recycling Discredited Points from the Past
Weston Wilson (EPA “whistleblower”): “One can characterize this entire [natural gas] industry as having a hundred year history of purchasing those they contaminate.” (33:36)
- Mr. Wilson, currently on staff at EPA’s Denver office, was not part of the team of scientists and engineers that spent nearly five years studying hydraulic fracturing for EPA. That effort, released in the form of a landmark 2004 study by the agency, found “no evidence” to suggest any relationship between hydraulic fracturing and the contamination of drinking water.
- Wilson has a well-documented history of aggressive opposition to responsible resource and mineral development. Over his 35-year career, Mr. Wilson has invoked “whistleblower” status to fight dam construction in Colorado, oil and gas development in Montana, and the mining of gold in Wyoming.
- Wilson in his own words: “The American public would be shocked if they knew we make six figures and we basically sit around and do nothing.”
Dunkard Creek: Fox includes images of dead fish along a 35-mile stretch of Dunkard Creek in Washington Co., Pa.; attributes that event to natural gas development. (01:23:15)
- Fox’s attempt to blame the Dunkard Creek incident on natural gas exploration is contradicted by an EPA report – issued well before GasLand was released – which blamed the fish kill on an algal bloom, which itself was fed by discharges from coal mines.
- EPA report: “Given what has been seen in other states and the etiology of this kill, we believe the toxin from this algae bloom led to the kill of fish, mussels, and salamanders on Dunkard Creek. … The situation in Dunkard Creek should be considered a chronic exposure since chloride levels were elevated above the criteria for long periods of time.” (issued 11/23/09)
- Local PA newspaper calls out Fox: “One glaring error in the film is the suggestion that gas drilling led to the September fish kill at Dunkard Creek in Greene County. That was determined to have been caused by a golden algae bloom from mine drainage from a [mine] discharge.” (Washington (Pa.) Observer-Reporter, 6/5/10)
Mike Markham: Fox blames flammable faucet in Fort Lupton, Colo. on natural gas development
- But that’s not true according to the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC). “Dissolved methane in well water appears to be biogenic [naturally occurring] in origin. … There are no indications of oil & gas related impacts to water well.” (complaint resolved 9/30/08, signed by John Axelson of COGCC)
- Context from our friends at ProPublica: “Drinking water with methane, the largest component of natural gas, isn’t necessarily harmful. The gas itself isn’t toxic — the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t even regulate it — and it escapes from water quickly, like bubbles in a soda.” (Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica, 4/22/09)
Lisa Bracken: Fox blames methane occurrence in West Divide Creek, Colo. on natural gas development.
- That assertion has also been debunked by COGCC, which visited the site six separate times over 13 months to confirm its findings: “Stable isotopes from 2007 consistent with 2004 samples indicting gas bubbling in surface water features is of biogenic origin.” (July 2009, COGCC presentation by Margaret Ash, environmental protection supervisor)
- Email from COGCC supervisor to Bracken: “Lisa: As you know since 2004, the COGCC staff has responded to your concerns about potential gas seepage along West Divide Creek on your property and to date we have not found any indication that the seepage you have observed is related to oil and gas activity.” (email from COGCC’s Debbie Baldwin to Bracken, 06/30/08)
- More from that email: “These samples have been analyzed for a variety of parameters including natural gas compounds (methane, ethane, propane, butane, pentane, hexanes), heavier hydrocarbon compounds including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes (BTEX), stable isotopes of methane, bacteria (iron related, sulfate reducing, and slime), major anions and cations, and other field and laboratory tests. To date, BTEX compounds have not been detected in any of the samples.”
Calvin Tillman: Fox interviews mayor of DISH, Texas; blames natural gas development, transport for toxins in the air, benzene in blood.
- Tillman in the press: “Six months ago, nobody knew that facilities like this would be spewing benzene. Someone could come in here and look at us and say, ‘You know what? They’ve sacrificed you. You’ve been sacrificed for the good of the shale.’” (Scientific American, 3/30/10)
- A little more than a month later, Texas Dept. of State Health Services debunks that claim: “Biological test results from a Texas Department of State Health Services investigation in Dish, Texas, indicate that residents’ exposure to certain contaminants was not greater than that of the general U.S. population.” (DSHS report, May 12, 2010)
- More from the agency: “DSHS paid particular attention to benzene because of its association with natural gas wells. The only residents who had higher levels of benzene in their blood were smokers. Because cigarette smoke contains benzene, finding it in smokers’ blood is not unusual.”
Anything we miss? Guess we’ll be seeing you at the movies. Maybe not this one, though.
China’s rapacious appetite for economic growth, job creation and overall global dominance is no secret, nor is its playbook for achieving those goals. Affordable, stable supplies of energy – more than anything else – are the foundation of strong and competitive economies. Leaders in China understands this full-well, and is moving forward aggressively – with the help of the White House – to put their nation a path toward prosperity and unmatched growth.
While shale gas has been termed a “game-changer” in the United States, this clean-burning resource is also making waves in the global energy markets. In a report today from People’s Daily Online, under the headline “Sinopec to boost unconventional gas production capacity by 2015,” the news outlet reports this:
Sinopec Group (Sinopec), the country’s second-largest oil company, plans to increase its unconventional gas production capacity to more than 2.5 billion cubic meters annually by the end of 2015, a move in line with China’s efforts to diversify its energy mix.
Sinopec will speed up the development of unconventional gas including shale gas and coalbed methane during the central government’s 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-15).
Development of unconventional oil and gas will become an important growth engine for the company’s business in the next five to 10 years, the company said in a statement on its website Tuesday.
The report highlights the critical role American-created hydraulic fracturing technologies will be for the Chinese to unlock their shale gas reserves and the role those resources will play in fueling its economic future:
Analysts said using more advanced foreign technology in the sector would accelerate the exploitation of China’s gas reserves.
Tight gas is natural gas contained in rock that must be fractured or broken open before it can flow easily to production wells.
Use of unconventional gas would be an effective substitute to meet China’s rising natural gas demand, said analysts.
You see, at the same time the White House is lending a hand to the Chinese to help tap their job-creating shale gas reserves, some in Congress (and other out-of-the-mainstream advocacy groups) are working to make it more difficult – or altogether impossible – for American energy resources to be safely leveraged into jobs, security and competitiveness. Hard to believe, isn’t it.
Maurice Hinchey, a senior member of the U.S. House whose district encompasses much of the Marcellus Shale along New York’s southern tier, is working feverishly – along with Rep. Dianna DeGette (Colo.) and Sen. Bob Casey (Pa.) – to effectively strip energy-producing states of their ability to regulate fracturing. Their bill – the FRAC Act – would for the first time in the history of the Safe Drinking Water Act give the EPA in Washington outright authority to regulate (not to mention permit) every aspect of the fracture stimulation process.
How come? Glad you asked. Are energy-producing states – who tightly regulated this practice – not pulling their weight? Not according to the EPA’s water regulator, and growing chorus of congressional Democrats, Republicans and governors.
Would there be any added environmental benefit should the FRAC Act become law? Afraid not.
But don’t these FRAC Act-backers just want to know what fluids are used in the process? Well, that’s already well-known, actually – 99.5 percent water and everyday playground sand, along with other additives commonly found in ice cream, gummy bears and peanut butter (scary stuff, huh).
The aim of the FRAC Act is not to make our water resources any cleaner or more secure. It’s aims is to make domestic energy production more burdensome.
China understands the benefits to stable and affordable energy supplies. If you do as well, then send Congress a message that the FRAC Act will cost jobs, increases our foreign energy dependence and put America in a weaker position in the global economy.
FRAC Act Author Bob Casey Served By PA DEP
FRAC Act Author Bob Casey Served By PA DEP
Faced with Opportunity to Get the Fact Straight on HF in Letter to EPA, Casey Strikes Out Again
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EID Fact Check: Congressman Hinchey Talks HF on CNBC, Checks Facts at the Door
CNBC’s Cramer on EPA’s new HF study: “Even though we can’t find a single documented case of groundwater contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing, I’m concerned this could be the beginning of process that creates more regulatory hurdles for natural gas companies, and makes it more difficult to drill in the United States.”
Cramer: “Steve Heare is the EPA’s director of drinking water protection. He recently said that the states our ‘doing a good job already regulating hydraulic fracturing,’ and he added that there is no evidence to suggest the process contaminates water … He would seem to be a knowledgeable figure. He’s the drinking water protection person at the EPA.”
WASHINGTON – Now we know why they call it “Mad” Money. Yesterday afternoon, U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y) appeared on Jim Cramer’s CNBC financial show to discuss shale gas exploration, hydraulic fracturing, and his ongoing and very active efforts to prevent clean-burning, American made shale gas resources from being produced in New York, or anywhere else.
Actually, Rep. Hinchey disputed that characterization of his intent, offered up throughout by the host. In reality, he said, he’s just interested in “making sure that drilling occurs” and that the exploration process “is not impinged upon” – notwithstanding that his bill, known as the FRAC Act, would impede efforts to safely explore for natural gas in the very best case, and outright ban those efforts in the worst (and most plausible) case.
Keep in mind, this is the same congressman who suggested to one online writer that “very substantial economic elements,” and sinister ones at that, were involved in exploiting the shale gas revolution “for their own economic advantages.” And oh yeah, this is also the fella who once famously said: “I do not think that relying on foreign oil impacts our security. I would hope…that there might be a new approach to this whole issue and that approach would essentially mean let us import as much [energy] as we possibly can.” Yikes.
That aside, let’s see how the congressman’s latest performance holds up under an EID fact check:
HINCHEY CLAIM
“A significant portion of the Clean Water Drinking Act [sic.] was repealed in 2005. And that provision in 2005 said that people who are drilling don’t have to tell anybody what they’re putting into the ground.”
FACT
The bipartisan 2005 energy bill, supported by then Sen. Barack Obama, clarified that Congress never intended hydraulic fracturing to be regulated under Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). If Congress ever intended the SDWA to extend beyond its original scope and cover the fracturing of energy wells, it certainly had plenty of chances to make that view known.
Passed in 1974, SDWA has been amended a whopping eight separate times over the past 35 years (’74, ’77, ’79, ‘80, ‘86, ‘88, ’96, ‘05), but at no time during that extended run was the concept of regulating fracturing under the Act a significant component of the debate. And that’s true even though at the time of the bill’s passage in ‘74, fracturing had already been in commercial use for 25 years.
What’s changed in 35 years? Not a whole lot on the technological side, with the notable exception of exciting advancements in horizontal drilling techniques that allow producers today to access 10 times the energy by drilling 1/10 the number of wells.
So again: Fracturing was never regulated under SDWA – and, by that definition, could never have been granted an “exemption.” How can you be exempt from something that never covered you in the first place?Dennis Lathem, executive director of the Coalbed Methane Association of Alabama, sheds some additional light on the 2005 bipartisan legislation:
“Hydraulic fracturing has never been regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The 2005 Energy Policy Act contained language clarifying this intent. The language was necessary because a federal circuit court ruled (incorrectly in my opinion) the temporary process of hydraulic fracturing is the same as the permanent disposal of wastes underground and is therefore covered by the SDWA.
“The fact is, if the language clarifying hydraulic fracturing had not been in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, every state in the union would be in exactly the same regulatory posture as they are today, except Alabama.”
Also, click HERE to view a comprehensive timeline illustrating fracturing’s long and clear record of effective regulation.
HINCHEY CLAIM
“It was one of the drillers that put 12 homes into jeopardy [in Pennsylvania], and which caused a lot of contamination of drinking water supplies.”
FACT
PA DEP: “Responding to recent concerns expressed by residents of Dimock Township, Susquehanna County, the Department of Environmental Protection has collected dozens of water supply samples in the Carter Road area and determined that nearby gas well hydro fracturing activity has not impacted local wells.” (Release, 3/27/09)
HINCHEY CLAIM
“I don’t think what I’m doing is going to cause the drilling in New York to be hesitated in any way, or stopped or done more slowly.”
FACT
The FRAC Act could give EPA outright authority to regulate fracturing in energy-producing states, stripping states of their ability to closely and effectively regulate this technology. In an editorial entitled “Power play: Fracturing plan wrong, indefensible,” The Oklahoman writes this:
“The latest power grab is an attempt to switch regulation of hydraulic fracturing from the states to the Environmental Protection Agency. … Some believe the technique poses harm to drinking water supplies. U.S. Rep. Dan Boren, D-Muskogee, disagrees and says the regulatory shift would be “disastrous for the industry.” … Legislation has been introduced in Congress to require companies to disclose the chemicals used in the process and allow the EPA to ensure compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act. This is a solution in search of a problem.” (6/15/09)
HINCHEY CLAIM
“There’s a lot of examples where drilling has caused damage to drinking water supplies.”
FACT
At a recent Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) asked senior EPA and USGS officials if “Any one of you know of one case of ground water contamination that has resulted from hydraulic fracturing?” Here are the answers:
Peter Silva (EPA Water Chief): Not that I’m aware of, no.
Sen. Inhofe: Ms. Giles?
Cynthia Giles (EPA Compliance Administrator): I understand there’s some anecdotal evidence, but I don’t know that it’s been firmly established.
Sen. Inhofe: So the answer is no, you don’t know of it.
Cynthia Giles nods.
Sen. Inhofe: Alright, Mr. Larsen?
Matthew Larsen (Assoc. Director for Water, EPA): I’ll have to respond in writing, I don’t, I’m not aware of all of our studies on that topic.
Click HERE to view this exchange online.
If you’re one of the few who happen to oppose the responsible development of shale gas general, and the key technology needed to produce it — hydraulic fracturing — in particular, chances are you’ve spun yourself around one or both of the following talking points: 1) That the solutions used in the fracturing process are “secret,” and 2) notwithstanding that apparent “secrecy,” you happen to know for a fact that they’re dangerous. And further: that their mere existence equals instant water contamination.
Be honest: Do you fall into one of these categories? If so, please, read on. Turns out a recent memo to Congressman Henry Waxman – chairman of the powerful House Energy & Commerce Committee – from the co-chairs of the bipartisan House Natural Gas Caucus gives an unvarnished overview of fracturing’s long and clear record of safety and transparency. In the memo authored by Congressmen Dan Boren (Okla.) and Tim Murphy (Pa.), the duo writes this at it relates to fracturing fluids:
“[C]ertainly you must know that federal law mandates that Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) be kept on-hand at every wellsite in America when chemicals are present, and further, that those sheets include an accounting of the identities of those chemicals with identified risks used in the fracturing process. Indeed, the vast majority of these information sheets can be found readily and easily on the Internet. As you indicate, a number of states today post this information in full view of the public online.”
Shale gas development, enabled by properly-regulated hydraulic fracturing, continues to be a potent job-creation engine, even during this generational economic downturn. To that, the congressmen write:
“Consider that in just the past few years, more than 100,000 high-wage jobs have been created in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania alone, all of them tied to the responsible development of American natural gas, and every bit of that made possible thanks to the safe and steady deployment of fracturing technology.”
“At a time of unprecedented economic uncertainty, and in a year in which four million Americans lost their jobs, shale gas exploration represents a proven and powerful engine of economic growth – and one this Congress idles at the peril of those it represents.”
As for the FRAC Act – that would for the first time in U.S. history give the federal government carte blanch to regulated hydraulic fracturing – the Natural Gas Caucus co-chairmen lay out these facts:
“Unfortunately, those who support the FRAC Act appear to believe the mere existence of small amounts of chemical additives in the fracturing solution represents a circumstance sufficient for public drinking water supplies to become contaminated.
“The reality, however, is that these materials are well known to those who regulate the process, and are managed in a way that eliminates virtually any risk of those components coming into contact with shallow reservoirs bearing potable water. Wells drilled today incorporate thousands of feet (and many layers) of steel casing, and thousands of pounds of cement – every bit of that installed using a time-tested engineering process and precise instrumentation to ensure what’s happening inside the wellbore remains in complete isolation from what naturally exists outside of it.”
So what are other independent professionals, regulators and major newspapers saying about hydraulic fracturing? In a Buffalo News column today entitled “We must take full advantage of Marcellus Shale,” petroleum geologist David Copley writes this:
“Notwithstanding exaggerated fears of damage to ground water systems, the ramp-up in shale-gas production has been the best economic and environmental news in years. Thanks to the use of new drilling techniques combined with a decades-old process known as hydraulic fracturing, energy companies are now able to access deposits of shale gas that were considered out of reach a few years ago. … New York State is also beefing up its regulation of hydraulic fracturing to ensure that the risk to ground water supplies is extremely remote. In fact, there have not been any documented cases of ground water contamination from hydraulic fracturing, according to Steve Heare, director of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Drinking Water Protection Division.
In yesterday’s Gillette (WY) News Record, Tom Doll, supervisor of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, says “Federal regulation is unnecessary because Wyoming already closely regulates it.” This from the article:
“We feel that we should administer our rules and regulate this and we don’t need the help of the federal government in this regard,” Doll said. “We’re doing a good job.” Federal regulations on top of state regulations would cause a lot more time and money for drilling companies that is unnecessary. Strengthening Wyoming’s rule might help keep that from happening.
And today’s Houston Chronicle, under the headline “The natural gas story,” the paper editorializes that fracturing can help “create jobs, lessen dependence on foreign energy, cut our defense costs, change our balance-of-payments picture for the better and make our air cleaner.”
Hydraulic Fracturing: Read (And Watch) All About It
Shale gas, hydraulic fracturing, jobs, revenues, energy security. There’s a lot of chatter these days about these important issues — especially just over the past few days.
While some maintain that hydraulic fracturing is a new technology and is not effectively regulated (or regulated at all), such claims are unsupported by the facts. Energy-producing states closely and tightly regulate this technology, which has been in use for more than 60 years. In fact, 9 out of 10 wells produced nationwide use this technology. And it’s never – not once – contaminated groundwater.
But what exactly is hydraulic fracturing and why is to so important to America’s long-term energy and economic security? Great question.
Are you a “visual” learner, or just interested in seeing exactly how the fracturing process actually works? Well, you’re in luck. Chesapeake Energy has produce an informative web video about this critical process. And the American Petroleum Institute (API) also has an excellent web video explaining the fracturing process, and the steps taken to ensure minimal environmental and land disturbance occurs. Both videos, and other helpful resources, are available on Energy In Depth’s multimedia page.
But despite this technology’s long and clear record of effectiveness and environmental safety, some in Washington are working to impede the production of homegrown, job-creating energy.
Fortunately, many leaders in Washington appreciate how vital fracturing is to the nation, how it’s well regulated by the states, and how it’s helping to create jobs and economic activity throughout the country. And they’re fighting hard to see that Washington does not strip states of their ability to manage and regulate this technology, knowing that jobs, economic growth and energy security are at risk.
In a recent Shreveport Times op-ed (which was cross-posted on EID’s blog) entitled “Misguided policies threaten job creation,” Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise – a member of the House Energy and Commerce – writes this:
“Thanks to fracturing, which has been safely used for 60 years, Louisiana’s energy industry created almost 33,000 jobs and generated $3.2 billion into our state’s economy.
“Some in Washington are even working to strip energy-producing states of their ability to regulate fracturing. Turning this authority over to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would threaten energy production altogether and could severely hurt job creation and economic activity at a time when we absolutely need it.
“Fracturing is not only a safe way of increasing our nation’s domestic energy supply, but it is a proven way to reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, create good American jobs and keep energy prices stable for struggling families, senior citizens and small businesses.”
Congressman Scalise has a strong congressional delegation partner in Congressman John Fleming, who’s be a fierce supporter of shale gas development enabled by hydraulic fracturing. The folks at The Hayride, a Louisiana policy and politics blog, noticed this strong partnership, too.
Under the headline “Scalise, Fleming, La. House To Waxman, Markey: Go Away And Leave Us Alone,” The Hayride reports:
While the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce awaits responses to letters it sent to natural gas producers as a precursor to hearings later this month on whether federal regulation is warranted on hydraulic fracturing, Louisiana’s congressional delegation and state legislators are taking a very vigorous and aggressive stance in fighting Washington’s attempts to interfere with the promise of the mammoth Haynesville Shale natural gas play and the coming energy boom it can mean for the state.
Local PA Audubon Society Chief Grouses over Responsible Shale Gas Exploration – His Cardinal Sin? No Facts
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Comments by EPA’s Steve Heare aligns with past statements from agency, directly contradicts arguments in support of FRAC Act
WASHINGTON – States are doing “a good job already” when it comes to regulating a 61-year-old energy technology known as hydraulic fracturing, a top EPA water official said yesterday – directly contradicting those who support re-writing the Safe Drinking Water Act to impose EPA regulation over the process for the first time in the agency’s (or Act’s) history. Following comments made yesterday from Steve Heare, EPA’s director of EPA’s drinking water protection office, Energy In Depth executive director Lee Fuller issued the following statement:
“These comments from a key EPA drinking water protection official underscore the tremendous work that state regulators have done for decades, and continue to do today, to ensure the proper balance between responsible energy exploration and the safeguarding of our land, air and water. They also align seamlessly with every single official pronouncement that EPA has ever made on hydraulic fracturing; namely, that fracturing technology is safe, it’s incredibly effective, and that it poses no risk to drinking water supplies as currently regulated.”
In particular, Fuller pointed to testimony offered in December by several EPA water and compliance officials to a committee of the U.S. Senate, a hearing in which EPA’s Peter Silva, Cynthia Giles and Matthew Larsen were asked if they were aware of a single instance of water contamination tied to hydraulic fracturing. None were able to identify a single such case, according to the hearing transcript – a reality confirmed by EPA itself in 2004 when it found “no evidence” of alleged contamination after conducting an exhaustive study of the issue over the course of nearly five years.
Fuller also noted that EPA’s latest comments on hydraulic fracturing present a direct challenge to those who support the so-called FRAC Act currently being considered in Congress – legislation that would fundamentally re-write the 36-year-old Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) with an eye on shoehorning hydraulic fracturing into a potentially unworkable federal regulatory regime. Sponsors of the FRAC Act premise their support for the bill on the assertion that states cannot effectively regulate the fracturing process as currently constituted – a notion that stands in direct contradiction to comments made by Mr. Heare yesterday.
“It seems we have a bit of a disagreement to resolve here,” Fuller added. “If supporters of the FRAC Act believe that EPA’s drinking water official is wrong, they should say so – and be ready to defend that assertion. Alternatively, if they think he may right, they ought to take a second look at the legislation they’re trying to pass, and perhaps do a bit more research into how their individual states are effectively handling this important responsibility. I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised by how aggressively this process is being managed by experts on the ground and in the community.”
READ MORE
- EPA Report on HF: “No credible evidence” that hydraulic fracturing endangers groundwater
- Senate Hearing: Top Brass from Obama Admin Tell Congress They’re “Not Aware” of Even “One Case” of HF-Related Contamination
- Fact Sheet: HF Opponents Say the Darndest Things
- Issue Alert: When Gummy Bears Attack
- Graphic: What’s In Frac Fluids?
- Browner Memo: Letter of Support for Hydraulic Fracturing from Carol Browner, Fmr. EPA Administrator
Should state officials remain in charge of regulating fracturing activity in their communities? Yes. And EID counts the reasons why
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As Congress examines critical role that shale gas can play in securing America’s energy future, U.S. Energy Secretary renders his scientific judgment on key technology needed to produce it
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NY Times – America’s “paper of record” – re-writes history of hydraulic fracturing, uses schoolyard attacks to defend endorsement of DeGette’s FRAC Act
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