EPA wants chemical info from 9 service providers
http://www.timesleader.com/news/EPA-wants-chemical-info-from-9-service-providers.html
September 10, 2010
EPA wants chemical info from 9 service providers
MATT HUGHES mhughes@timesleader.com
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday it has requested information about chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process from nine leading service providers involved in operations in the Marcellus Shale natural gas region.
The EPA said it is preparing a study of whether a link exists between hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” and a health hazard from contaminated drinking water.
“This scientifically rigorous study will help us understand the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water – a concern that has been raised by Congress and the American people,” EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in a statement Thursday.
The federal agency has requested information about the contents of hydraulic fracturing fluids used by BJ Services, Complete Production Services, Halliburton, Key Energy Services, Patterson-UTI, RPC Inc., Schlumberger, Superior Well Services and Weatherford, all of which are involved in fracking the Marcellus Shale.
The announcement comes as Congress debates two bills, introduced in June 2009, and collectively dubbed the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals, or FRAC Act, which would amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to require drillers to disclose the contents of hydraulic fracturing fluids and which would subject the hydraulic fracturing process to federal regulation.
The study also follows a November 2009 request by Congress that the EPA undertake a new study of the process. The EPA said it plans to announce initial results of the study in late 2012.
Hydraulic fracturing is a process in which water, sand and additives are pumped into underground geological formations to create fractures, and, in the case of shale gas drilling, unlock natural gas deposits.
A spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a group advocating Marcellus Shale gas extraction, said his group is eager to assist the EPA in any way it can with its study, as he believes it will verify the safety of the fracking process.
Coalition spokesman Travis Windle said the fracking process has a more than 60-year record of safe operations and a 2004 EPA study of hydraulic fracturing in much shallower coal bed methane reservoirs found no link between fracking and aquifer contamination.
“We’re confident that a study, which is grounded in facts, and is straightforward and methodical, is going to prove what the EPA said in the past,” Windle said “It’s going to underscore the long and clear record that fracturing does not pose any threat to groundwater contamination.”
However, the coalition strongly opposes the EPA regulation that Congress is considering, Windle said, stating federal regulation “would devastate job production.”
“The 44,000 jobs that our industry has created in Pennsylvania alone in the last four years would be dramatically undercut if this misguided legislation was enacted,” Windle said, explaining that under the proposed FRAC Act legislation, drillers would be required to apply for EPA permits before beginning hydraulic fracturing, which would slow the drilling.
Windle said chemicals used in fracking fluid in Pennsylvania are publicly available information and the industry is monitored by the state Department of Environmental Protection.
A spokesman for gas-extraction company Cabot Oil and Gas, which is active in Susquehanna County, said the company is not involved in the EPA study, but welcomes the opportunity “to partner with the EPA to show them that it’s a safe technology.”
Cabot is involved in a lawsuit brought in 2009 by Dimock residents, who claim Cabot’s drilling operations polluted their drinking water.
Cabot spokesman George Stark would not comment on the subject of an active lawsuit, but said generally of Dimock that “the Department of Environmental Protection has stated that the situation there is not the result of hydraulic fracturing.”
“In the operations that Cabot has been involved with, we have not seen that there has been a threat to drinking water through the hydraulic fracturing process,” Stark said.