New West Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
Wyoming, a bastion of conservative politics long influenced by the energy industry, is now the first state in the nation to say that the ingredients in hydraulic fracturing fluids used to rupture rock blocking oil and gas reserves will be public information.
In June, the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission unanimously ruled that ingredients would be reported to the commission – at the insistence of Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, a member of that body. At the time, it was unclear how that would work and whether ingredients would be public.
In late August, Commission Supervisor Tom Doll clarified the situation, saying the ingredients will be public information and on Sept. 15, the commission’s new rules will go into effect, forcing companies to reveal new details about the chemicals used in a range of drilling fluids, including fracking fluids.
In a phone interview with New West, Freudenthal said he’d pushed a straightforward argument – that the actual formula or recipe for fracking fluid could remain a commercial secret, but that the ingredients had to be revealed to the state and, by extension, the public.
Several energy companies were not enthusiastic about this approach, said the governor, but none of them pushed back as hard as Halliburton, the leading developer of hydraulic fracturing technology.
“Halliburton sent a big-time lawyer to talk to us, but it didn’t go well for him,” Freudenthal said.
There’s an element of irony here. Halliburton, once led by Wyoming’s own Dick Cheney, provides fracking fluid and services to much of the oil and gas industry. In 2005, at the urging of then-Vice President Cheney, Congress exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act as part of the 2005 Energy Act. In crafting what environmentalists dubbed the “Halliburton loophole,” Congress relied on a 2001 energy task force chaired by Cheney, which reported on the many advantages of hydraulic fracturing, and that most fracking fluid is recovered.
Not so, according to investigators associated with ProPublica, the nonprofit journalism outfit that has been looking into the effects of hydraulic fracturing for more than two years. According to its experts, “as much as 85 percent of the fluids used during hydraulic fracturing is being left underground after wells are drilled.”
Gov. Freudenthal confirmed Wyoming is the only state to require that fracking ingredients be made public. “What other states do is up to them,” he said. “What’s important is that we got ahead of this. This big play on the Niobrara shale (in southeast Wyoming) is going to mean a lot of fracking.” From now on, said the governor, Wyoming will have the necessary records and data to determine the least-harmful methods of future fracking.
Why Frack?
Hydraulic fracturing is a 60-year-old technique used by the oil and gas industry to either enhance or initiate the flow of oil and gas from rock formations. Using proprietary recipes of water, silica sand and chemicals, fracking fluid is pumped under high pressure into rock, causing it to fracture. The fractures, kept open with the particles of silica and sand, allow oil and gas to emerge from tight formations like sandstone and shale.
The energy industry credits hydraulic fracturing with a dramatic expansion of natural gas reserves – as much as 35 percent. Before hydraulic fracturing became widely used, hydrocarbons locked in sandstone and shale were deemed inaccessible. Now they’re targets of a drilling frenzy as the energy industry pursues oil and, especially, natural gas reserves in Texas, Colorado, Wyoming and back East in the Marcellus Shale, with drilling operations in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.
According to Cindy Wertz, spokeswoman for the Wyoming Bureau of Land Management, fracking is extremely common.
“Of the 16,811 federal wells that have been completed in Wyoming since fiscal year 2000, 95 percent have had hydraulic fracturing,” she said.
Indeed, Wyoming BLM sources indicate that hydraulic fracturing is essentially standard operating procedure for oil and gas wells anywhere in the state, whether or not tight rock formations are involved. Fracking might be done to maximize flow efficiency at the beginning, middle or late in the productive life of a well. Some wells might need just a little shot of fracking fluid, while others might need dozens of truck loads.
Heretofore, industry has reported the use of hydraulic fracturing to the BLM and the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, but not the ingredients, nor the amount used.
That’s all going to change at the insistence of Gov. Freudenthal and the commission. Individual well reports will now include whether fracking was used, the ingredients, how much was pumped in and how much was recovered.
“This is huge,” said Deb Thomas, an organizer for the Powder River Basin Resource Council. She and her group have been working for years to get state and federal agencies to investigate a growing number of complaints from Wyoming citizens about water contamination that occurs near drilling sites.
Because the ingredients of fluids have been shielded from the public as commercial secrets, it has proved impossible to link water problems back to hydraulic fracturing operations, said Thomas.
Her colleague, Pavillion resident John Fenton, agrees. “The public needs to have access to the chemicals being used,” he said, “whether something goes wrong during the actual fracking episode, spills occur during transport or companies improperly dispose of fluids. People need to know what they’re being exposed to. If the fluids are safe, why won’t companies tell the public what chemicals are in them?”
Industry’s Take
At national, state and company levels, the uniform stance is that hydraulic fracturing is safe.
Kathleen Sgamma, director of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States (now Western Energy Alliance) noted in a 2008 op-ed piece for the Denver Post, that “fracking is a safe, well-tested technology that has been used to develop energy for over 60 years. This technology is used thousands of times each year with an exemplary safety record.” She emphasized that fracking fluid is typically 99 percent water and sand and 1 percent chemicals.
John Robitaille, vice-president of Petroleum Association of Wyoming, said he’s somewhat comforted that the commission is willing to look at industry claims of confidentiality if requested.
He said it is “too early” to know whether industry can live with these new regulations or not: “We’ll just have to get some experience with this under our belt.”
Okay, but not good enough. It’s the formula that needs to be known — the mixtures, quantities and interactions of the chemicals, per individual drill site, not a wholesale “shopping list.” Otherwise, it’s still too easy for the drillers to call the chemicals “naturally occurring” or otherwise deny their fingerprints that are all over the crime scenes.
Actually, what we really need is a national moratorium, like the one now working through New York’s legislature, until the Halliburton loophole is repealed through the FRAC Act. And then the outrageous practice should be ended entirely.
The “Industry’s Take” is so laughable. 1) These chemicals used in fracking have NOT been used for 60 years. 2) The “1 percent chemicals” figure is wrong, but even so, 1 percent of 5 million gallons of fracking mud per drill site is 50,000 gallons of pure chemical soup making its way into our ground water!
Curtis: points well taken.
Industry can try to game the system, but I imagine Theo Colburn can make good use of that ingredient list, even if she doesn’t have the exact formula.
Wyoming Oil & Gas Conservation Commission will get those formulas if there is an accident, but there is no single formula that is used by every company in every drilling situation. Formulas vary widely, and the chemical additives vary widely by kind and amount. While water and sand have been used in hydraulic fracturing for decades, it is the horizontal drilling and chemical additives that have made fracking so productive in tapping natural gas.
Still, this is the first crack in the exemption wall surrounding fracking. If it could happen in Wyoming, it can and will happen in other states.
David Freudenthal for president! Way to go Wyoming! Send Freudanthal to Texas, will ya?
The first time I heard of fracking was from a truck driver who had worked the oil fields in Oklahoma in the 1970s and ’80s. His description of the work was very interesting, however he was not up on what was in the fracking fluids.
Years later I’m living in Southern Colorado and Shell Oil has “discovered” massive natural gas deposits in the county and at some point will be working to get it out. This county sits on the Front Range and is the site of not only natural gas “deposits” but coal bed methane as well. We also have very good wind with which to produce clean energy.
Folks out here, after having problems with a company that has been going after the coal bed methane, are understandibly concerned about the arrival of Shell Oil. Many watched the HBO film “Gasland” and are politically active with their state representatives in trying to pass laws that will require companies such as Shell Oil to list the make up of fracking fluids that will be used.
However there in is the problem. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the regulatory body and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, the industry lobbists, seem to have similar viewpoints. “Oil and gas good. Anything that tries to stop exploration of resources, bad.” This thought coupled with the economically depressed situation of the state leads many to accept the statements of the companies and regulators while they have their eyes on the money.
We have been fighting for nearly a decade to stop the coal bed methane issue and now here come the natural gas boys. All of this activity will continue to degrade the area’s water and as such any water that flows downstream to any of the 11 states who receive water from the rivers whose headwaters are in Colorado.
The issue of fracking so as to harvest the natural resources is an issue that not only affects the locals near the operations. In this case the issue of fracking and harvesting the resources also affects, in the long run, the millions who live downstream.
Thank you, Mr. Farquhar for an informative and well written piece that offers a glimmer of hope to an otherwise depressing subject.
Ya know, with all the fancy technology we have these days, maybe the thing to do is to have all those with objections to fracking for gas use only unfracked products and pay accordingly.
If 25 percent of Company X’s consumers demand such a thing, then the company can buy 25 percent of its volume from unbroken rock and pass through the costs accordingly. Fair enough?
Sure, Dave, and you can pay for their unpoisoned water, medical care, dead livestock, worthless property, ruined roadways, etcetera, etcetera. Fair enough? Or we could put an end to it all and call it even.
Curtis, if it can be proven that the fracking causes problems, then the lawyers take care of the costs by finding the producers liable, who then pass their costs of compensation on to the consumer.
The real issue here is that people who have enjoyed natural gas or propane products extracted from “other backyards” for decades now have a problem with seeing their consumption manifest.
I have blood in New York and visit once in a while. Every time I go, I am struck by all that infrastructure, all that consumption, all that, um, everything from elsewhere. You should see what the sand rats are doing on the west side of Manhattan…to secure water from elsewhere.
Never has so much been done by so few for so many ignorant ungratefulniks.
If one has clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and an income sufficient to buy wholesome food, then it is rather easy to sit back and smugly say “I’ve got mine, Jack,” and the devil take the hindmost.
It becomes more complicated if your tap water turns brown and burns, if the air triggers asthma in your child, if industrial/corporate food producers sell salmonella-tainted eggs or e-coli tainted veggies.
The “real” problem, David, is that the real costs of cheap energy and cheap food are finally becoming manifest and many of us are waking up to these hidden and deferred costs.
How is it that people who’ve lost access to clean groundwater (due to energy development) are supposed to be grateful for cheap energy?
Dave, I understand some of your frustration. It seems though that at some given point, with our own population growing, that it makes little sense for our government to WELCOME 10 million new citizens upon this land in the last decade. This figure does not include those who chose to come here illegally. But no matter how you slice it, injecting known carcinogens into the earth and its aquifers is not a sound practice. It takes between seven and ten years for rain water to trickle down to those aquifers. A direct shot of chemicals just cannot be healthy.
For those that do not drink this water, do you think they maybe eating these chemicals when they buy their meat that was raised on feed grown from land irrigated by said water could and will cause problems?
Oh, and Dave, do you in any way work for an oil or gas company?
Dave, I’ve heard this talking point before, about New Yorkers importing their energy needs from Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and it hasn’t become any less ridiculous. Ingrates?! So they should buck up and ruin their own land, water and air in contributing their own natural gas? You want to shame them into that? Devilish. This is the very definition of a false choice.
This isn’t the first nor will it be the last story of this kind:
http://thetimes-tribune.com/private-lab-finds-toxic-chemicals-in-dimock-water-1.1014476
You must ask how else would ethylene glycol, propylene glycol, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene find their way into water wells if it’s not injected deep into the ground?