More than 5,000 wells were drilled in the Marcellus between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to the study, which was published in the journal Ground Water two weeks ago. Operators inject up to 4 million gallons of fluid, under more than 10,000 pounds of pressure, to drill and frack each well.

Scientists have theorized that impermeable layers of rock would keep the fluid, which contains benzene and other dangerous chemicals, safely locked nearly a mile below water supplies. This view of the earth’s underground geology is a cornerstone of the industry’s argument that fracking poses minimal threats to the environment.

A drilling protester in Boulder. (Photo by Troy Hooper)

But the study, using computer modeling, concluded that natural faults and fractures in the Marcellus, exacerbated by the effects of fracking itself, could allow chemicals to reach the surface in as little as “just a few years.”

“Simply put, [the rock layers] are not impermeable,” said the study’s author, Tom Myers, an independent hydrogeologist whose clients include the federal government and environmental groups.

“The Marcellus shale is being fracked into a very high permeability,” he said. “Fluids could move from most any injection process.”

The research for the study was paid for by Catskill Mountainkeeper and the Park Foundation, two upstate New York organizations that have opposed gas drilling and fracking in the Marcellus.

Much of the debate about the environmental risks of gas drilling has centered on the risk that spills could pollute surface water or that structural failures would cause wells to leak.

Though some scientists believed it was possible for fracking to contaminate underground water supplies, those risks have been considered secondary. The study in Ground Water is the first peer-reviewed research evaluating this possibility.

The study did not use sampling or case histories to assess contamination risks. Rather, it used software and computer modeling to predict how fracking fluids would move over time. The simulations sought to account for the natural fractures and faults in the underground rock formations and the effects of fracking.

The models predict that fracking will dramatically speed up the movement of chemicals injected into the ground. Fluids traveled distances within 100 years that would take tens of thousands of years under natural conditions. And when the models factored in the Marcellus’ natural faults and fractures, fluids could move 10 times as fast as that.

Where man-made fractures intersect with natural faults, or break out of the Marcellus layer into the stone layer above it, the study found, “contaminants could reach the surface areas in tens of years, or less.”

The study also concluded that the force that fracking exerts does not immediately let up when the process ends. It can take nearly a year to ease.

As a result, chemicals left underground are still being pushed away from the drill site long after drilling is finished. It can take five or six years before the natural balance of pressure in the underground system is fully restored, the study found.

Myers’ research focused exclusively on the Marcellus, but he said his findings may have broader relevance. Many regions where oil and gas is being drilled have more permeable underground environments than the one he analyzed, he said.

“One would have to say that the possible travel times for a similar thing in Arkansas or Northeast Texas is probably faster than what I’ve come up with,” Myers said.

Ground Water is the journal of the National Ground Water Association, a non-profit group that represents scientists, engineers and businesses in the groundwater industry.

Several scientists called Myers’ approach unsophisticated and said that the assumptions he used for his models didn’t reflect what they knew about the geology of the Marcellus Shale. If fluids could flow as quickly as Myers asserts, said Terry Engelder, a professor of geosciences at Penn State University who has been a proponent of shale development, fracking wouldn’t be necessary to open up the gas deposits.

“This would be a huge fracture porosity,” Engelder said. “So I read this and I say, ‘Golly, does this guy really understand anything about what these shales look like?’ The concern then arises from using a model rather than observations.”

Myers likened the shale to a cracked window, saying that samples showing it didn’t contain fractures were small in size and were akin to only examining an intact section of glass, while a broader, scaled out view would capture the faults and fractures that could leak.

Both scientists agreed that direct evidence of fluid migration is needed, but little sampling has been done to analyze where fracking fluids go after being injected underground.

Myers says monitoring systems could be installed around gas well sites to measure for changes in water quality, a measure required for some gold mines, for example. Until that happens, Myers said, theoretical modeling has to substitute for hard data.

“We were trying to use the basic concepts of groundwater and hydrology and geology and say can this happen?” he said. “And that had basically never been done.”

Republished with permission of ProPublica.

A deal to sell a controversial central Wyoming natural gas field has fallen apart amidst allegations that drilling there has caused water pollution.

Texas-based Legacy Resources backed out of a $45 million deal to buy the field near Pavillion, Wyo., from EnCana last week, soon after the Environmental Protection Agency said it had detected cancer-causing benzene at 50 times the level safe for humans and other carcinogenic pollutants during its latest round of sampling.

The cancelled sale could signal difficulty for companies trying to turn over aging gas fields if there are environmental or health concerns related to their operations.

“Although Encana retained responsibility for any outcome resulting from the ongoing groundwater investigation undertaken by EPA, due to the continued attention surrounding the investigation, and uncertainty regarding further development, Legacy is not prepared to go forward with the transaction,” said EnCana spokesman Doug Hock, in an email to ProPublica.

Legacy Resources did not respond to a call requesting comment.

Legacy Resources announced it had agreed to buy EnCana’s Pavillion-area wells, which produce an estimated 13 million cubic feet of gas a day, on Nov. 1. At the time, the company also said it planned to drill new wells in Pavillion to tap the 45 billion cubic feet of gas it believes lies underground.

But the prospects for future development have dimmed.

Residents had long complained of widespread water contamination and alleged that fracking was to blame. EnCana had trucked in replacement drinking water to some residents. The company faced increasing controversy when the EPA announced in late 2009 that it had found hydrocarbon contaminants in residents’ drinking water wells. The agency advised residents not to drink their water and to ventilate their homes when they showered or washed dishes. ProPublica began reporting on concerns about water contamination in Pavillion in 2008.

On Nov. 9 the EPA announced more test results from samples taken in Pavillion, this time from two water monitoring wells drilled to 1,000 feet – far below most drinking water wells in the area. It found benzene, along with acetone, toluene, naphthalene and traces of diesel fuel. It also detected a solvent called 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE) that is commonly used by the drilling industry to fracture wells. It also can be used for cleanup at well sites.

EnCana has maintained that the pollutants found in Pavillion-area wells occur naturally, and that drilling is not to blame. “Nothing EPA presented suggests anything has changed since August of last year – the science remains inconclusive in terms of data, impact, and source,” Hock wrote to ProPublica.

Hock said that the EPA’s monitoring wells were drilled into a zone known to contain methane gas, and suggested the pollutants would have been expected to be there. He said that the 2-BE was only detected in one sample and could have leached from the plastics used to drill many drinking water and monitoring wells. In previous statements to ProPublica, he has said that the 2-BE might have come from household cleaning agents, which can contain the chemical. Hock did not reply to questions about whether EnCana had used 2-BE in fracking or any other processes in Pavillion.

The EPA’s latest findings are consistent with previous samples taken from water wells at 42 homes in the area since 2008.

The agency has so far been careful not to draw conclusions about the cause of the pollution. EPA officials had said they planned to release a detailed report analyzing possible causes of the pollution by the end of November, but now say it will be at least a few more weeks.

Louis Meeks’ well water contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead and copper. The drilling company Encana supplies Meeks with drinking water. (Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)

The study, which is being conducted under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program, is the first time the EPA has undertaken its own water analysis in response to complaints of contamination in drilling areas, and it could be pivotal in the national debate over the role of natural gas in America’s energy policy.

Abundant gas reserves are being aggressively developed in 31 states, including New York and Pennsylvania. Congress is mulling a bill that aims to protect those water resources from hydraulic fracturing, the process in which fluids and sand are injected under high pressure to break up rock and release gas. But the industry says environmental regulation is unnecessary because it is impossible for fracturing fluids to reach underground water supplies and no such case has ever been proven.

Scientists in Wyoming will continue testing this fall to determine the level of chemicals in the water and exactly where they came from. If they find that the contamination did result from drilling, the placid plains arching up to the Wind River Range would become the first site where fracturing fluids have been scientifically linked to groundwater contamination.

In interviews with ProPublica and at a public meeting this month in Pavillion’s community hall, officials spoke cautiously about their preliminary findings. They were careful to say they’re investigating a broad array of sources for the contamination, including agricultural activity. They said the contaminant causing the most concern – a compound called 2-butoxyethanol, known as 2-BE  – can be found in some common household cleaners, not just in fracturing fluids.  

But those same EPA officials also said they had found no pesticides – a signature of agricultural contamination – and no indication that any industry or activity besides drilling could be to blame. Other than farming, there is no industry in the immediate area.

In Pavillion, a town of about 160 people in the heart of the Wind River Indian Reservation, the gas wells are crowded close together in an ecologically vivid area packed with large wetlands and home to 10 threatened or endangered species. Beneath the ground, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the earth is a complex system of folded crusts containing at least 30 water-bearing aquifer layers.

EPA officials told residents that some of the substances found in their water may have been poured down a sink drain. But according to EPA investigation documents, most of the water wells were flushed three times before they were tested in order to rid them of anything that wasn’t flowing through the aquifer itself. That means the contaminants found in Pavillion would have had to work their way from a sink not only into the well but deep into the aquifer at significant concentrations in order to be detected. An independent drinking water expert with decades of experience in central Wyoming, Doyle Ward, dismissed such an explanations as “less than a one in a million” chance.

Some of the EPA’s most cautious scientists are beginning to agree.

“It starts to finger-point stronger and stronger to the source being somehow related to the gas development, including, but not necessarily conclusively, hydraulic fracturing itself,” said Nathan Wiser, an EPA scientist and hydraulic fracturing expert who oversees enforcement for the underground injection control program under the Safe Drinking Water Act in the Rocky Mountain region. The investigation “could certainly have a focusing effect on a lot of folks in the Pavillion area as a nexus between hydraulic fracturing and water contamination.”

The Superfund investigation follows a series of complaints by residents in the Pavillion area, some stemming back 15 years, that their water wells turned sour and reeked of fuel vapors shortly after drilling took place nearby. Several of those residents shared their stories with ProPublica, while other information was found through court and local records. Several years ago, one resident’s animals went blind and died after drinking from a well. In two current cases, a resident’s well water shows small pooling oil slicks on the surface, and a woman is coping with a mysterious nervous system disorder: Her family blames arsenic and metals found in her water. In two of those cases, the Canadian drilling company EnCana, which bought most of the area’s wells after they were drilled and assumed liability for them, is either supplying fresh drinking water to the residents or has purchased the land. In the third case, a drilling company bought by EnCana, Tom Brown Inc., had previously reached an out-of-court settlement to provide water filtering.

Though the drilling companies have repeatedly compensated residents with the worst cases of contamination, they have not acknowledged any fault in causing the pollution. An EnCana spokesman, Doug Hock, told ProPublica the company wants “to better understand the science and the source of the compounds” found in the water near Pavillion before he would speculate on whether the company was responsible. 

Precise details about the nature and cause of the contamination, as well as the extent of the plume running in the aquifer beneath this region 150 miles east of Jackson Hole, have been difficult for scientists to collect. That’s in part because the identity of the chemicals used by the gas industry for drilling and fracturing are protected as trade secrets, and because the EPA, based on an exemption passed under the 2005 Energy Policy Act, does not have authority to investigate the fracturing process under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Using the Superfund program gave the agency extra authority to investigate the Pavillion reports, including the right to subpoena the secret information if it needs to. It also unlocked funding to pay for the research.

EPA officials have repeatedly said that disclosure of the fluids used in fracking – something that would be required if the bill being debated in Congress were passed – would enable them to investigate contamination incidents faster, more conclusively and for less money. The current study, which is expected to end next spring, has already cost $130,000.

About 65 people, many in jeans, boots and 10-gallon hats, filled Pavillion’s community hall on Aug. 11 to hear the EPA’s findings. They were told that a range of contaminants, including arsenic, copper, vanadium and methane gas were found in the water. Many of these substances are found in various fluids used at drilling sites.

Of particular concern were compounds called adamantanes, a natural hydrocarbon found in gas that can be used to fingerprint its origin, and 2-BE, listed as a common fracturing fluid in the EPA’s 2004 research report on hydraulic fracturing. That compound, which EPA scientists in Wyoming said they identified with 97 percent certainty, was suspected by some environmental groups in a 2004 drilling-related contamination case in Colorado, also involving EnCana. 

EPA investigators explained that because they had no idea what to test for, they were relegated to an exhaustive process of scanning water samples for spikes in unidentified compounds and then running those compounds like fingerprints through a criminal database for matches against a vast library of unregulated and understudied substances. That is how they found the adamantanes and 2-BE.

An EnCana representative told the crowd that the company was as concerned about the contamination as the residents were, and pledged to help the EPA in its investigation.

Some people seemed confounded by what they were hearing.

“How in god’s name can the oil industry dump sh*t in our drinking water and not tell us what it is?” shouted Alan Hofer, who lives near the center of the sites being investigated by the EPA.

“If they’d tell us what they were using then you could go out and test for things and it would make it a lot easier, right?” asked Jim Van Dorn, who represents Wyoming Rural Water, a nonprofit that advises utilities and private well owners on water management.

“Exactly,” said Luke Chavez, the EPA’s chief Superfund investigator on the project. “That’s our idea too.”

Now that the EPA has found a chemical used in fracturing fluids in Pavillion’s drinking water, Chavez said the next step in the research is to ask EnCana for a list of the chemicals it uses and then do more sampling using that list. (An EnCana spokesman told ProPublica the company will supply any information that the EPA requires.) The EPA is also working with area health departments, a toxicologist and a representative from the Centers for Disease Control’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to assess health risks, he said. 

Depending on what they find, the investigation in Wyoming could have broad implications. Before hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2005, the EPA assessed the process and concluded it did not pose a threat to drinking water. That study, however, did not involve field research or water testing and has been criticized as incomplete. This spring, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson called some of the contamination reports “startling” and told members of Congress that it is time to take another look. The Pavillion investigation, according to Chavez, is just that.

“If there is a problem, maybe we don’t have the tools, or the laws, to deal with it,” Chavez said. “That’s one of the things that could come out of this process.”

This story was produced by ProPublica.

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U.N. Foundation president and former Colo. Sen. Timothy Wirth. (IISD)

They were tough words for the natural gas industry to hear. In a blunt speech before the Colorado Oil and Gas Association last week, Timothy Wirth, a former Colorado Democratic senator and Under Secretary of State for global affairs in the Clinton administration, warned industry leaders that they need to pay attention to the environmental and climate concerns that are shaping national policy, or risk being left behind.

Wirth took the industry to task for not engaging in the climate legislation being debated in Congress — a bill he said every other energy industry was deeply involved in — and for fighting the changes taking place in energy policy rather than participating and seeking fresh opportunities.

Wirth, who today is president of Ted Turner’s United Nations Foundation, is no enemy of the oil and gas industry. He described clean-burning natural gas as the single most important component of a new energy supply chain that can help cut greenhouse gas emissions, and he said the use of nation’s bountiful natural gas reserves is essential to curbing climate change. But he also said the industry is preoccupied with the wrong priorities and is off message.

“The time has come for the natural gas industry to get organized, take the gloves off, and get thoroughly engaged in helping our country advance rapidly toward a low-carbon economy,” Wirth said.

In his speech he offered some advice: The industry should identify its key priorities, work to get its regulatory house in order and recognize the big picture rather than complain about details in legislation like the climate bill.

“What are the options?” he asked the industry executives in a question and answer session after his speech. “You can stay where you are today. … Your industry is going to continue to wallow. That’s your own choice.”

Watch a video of Wirth’s July 8 speech or read the entire text here (PDF).

This story produced by ProPublica.

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Williams' natural gas facilities in the Piceance Basin. (Energy Tomorrow, Flickr)

The two key arguments that the oil and gas industry is using to fight federal regulation of the natural gas drilling process called hydraulic fracturing — that the costs would cripple their business and that state regulations are already strong — are challenged by the same data and reports the industry is using to bolster its position.

One widely-referenced study (PDF) estimated that complying with regulations would cost the oil and gas industry more than $100,000 per gas well. But the figures are based on 10-year-old estimates and list expensive procedures that aren’t mentioned in the proposed regulations.

Another report (PDF) concluded that state regulations for drilling, including fracturing, “are adequately designed to directly protect water.” But the report reveals that only four states require regulatory approval before hydraulic fracturing begins. It also outlines how requirements for encasing wells in cement — a practice the author has said is critical to containing hydraulic fracturing fluids and protecting water — varies from state to state.

One recommendation in that report flies in face of industry’s assertion that its processes are safe: hydraulic fracturing needs more study and should be banned in certain cases near sensitive water supplies.

Hydraulic fracturing — where water and sand laced with chemicals is injected underground to break up rock — is considered essential to harvesting deeply buried gas reserves that some predict could meet U.S. demand for 116 years.

In 2005 hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act, based on assurances that the process was safe. But a series of ProPublica reports has identified a number of cases in which water has been contaminated in drilling areas across the country, and EPA scientists say they can’t fully investigate them because of the exemption.

Now, Congress is considering legislation to restore the Environmental Protection Agency’s oversight of the process. And industry — leveraging its money and political connections — is using the recent reports to fight back.

Since January at least five studies have been published making the case that state laws (PDF) are adequate and that new regulations could hamper exploration (PDF), raise fuel prices and eliminate jobs. Three of the studies were paid for by the Department of Energy and produced by consulting firms that also work with the industry. One of the DOE reports (PDF) was written by the same person who authored a study for the Independent Petroleum Association of America (PDF)

The industry argues (PDF) that federal oversight would amount to a redundant layer of bureaucracy that is not needed because states already require the same environmental safeguards that might be required by the EPA, and that those safeguards are effective.

“We don’t think the system is broke, so we question the value of trying to fix it with a federal solution,” Richard Ranger, a senior policy analyst at the American Petroleum Institute, told ProPublica in May. “So proceed with caution if you are going to proceed with regulating this business because it could make a very significant difference in delivering a fuel that is fundamental to economic health.”

Industry reports say that if federal regulations are applied to hydraulic fracturing, more than a third of onshore gas wells would be closed and oil and gas companies would spend $10 billion complying with the law in its first year. The federal government would lose some $1.2 billion in revenue.

But advocates for the federal legislation say the industry is misleading the public into a false choice between the economy and the environment.

“We are all for using science-based information,” said Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But the underlying information doesn’t really tell the story they claim it does.”

Nonetheless, the arguments have gained traction in Congress and have eroded support for new regulation.

Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., told his fellow members in a recent hearing that “these folks are laying people off — people are hurting in my district.” Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., who sponsored legislation to regulate fracturing in 2008, but declined to add his name to this year’s bill, told ProPublica that “developers may have legitimate concerns about the impact that removing the exemption may have on their ability to find and extract oil and gas.”

To keep the legislation alive, Diana DeGette, D-Colo., its main sponsor, has shifted gears to seek environmental studies and hearings rather than a quick passage into law.

“The opposition has been throwing out scare tactics and mischaracterizations of what she is trying to do,” said DeGette’s spokesman, Kristofer Eisenla. “Unfortunately the oil and gas guys came out of the barn storming.”

Fuzzy Numbers

The study that has received the most publicity (PDF) is also among the most misleading.

The report, which evaluates the costs of regulations for the oil and gas industry, was written for the Department of Energy by a consulting company also used by the energy industry, Advanced Resources International, or ARI. It contains a table (PDF) listing seven specific processes it says would be mandated under the proposed federal regulations, and what those processes would cost — a total of $100,505 per well. Among the listed items is “state of the art” fracture imaging, at a per-well average cost of $37,500, and three-dimensional fracture simulation, at a cost of $7,500.

But a footnote reveals that these figures are based on memo sent to a DOE official by another consulting firm in 1999. The report’s author said they haven’t been updated to reflect technological advances or substantial shifts in the drilling business over the last decade.

Furthermore, none of the tests listed in the table are mentioned in the text of Safe Drinking Water Act, the federal law that would apply to hydraulic fracturing, according to an EPA spokesperson in Washington. And they aren’t mentioned in the bill being floated in Congress either.

“It’s a sense of magnitude of the impacts, not a sense of absolute accuracy,” said Michael Godec, Vice President of ARI and author of the report. The regulatory requirements were interpolated on a “bad-case” scenario, he explained, because the federal laws are not specific. “We took some liberties. You have to make some assumptions about what might be required.”

Godec believes that many of the processes listed in the report are already being practiced to a greater degree than they were in 1999, meaning that even if they were required they may not be additional burdens at all. But he said that anecdotal conversations with drilling companies confirm that the report’s conclusions are still “about right.”

Godec said he did not obtain recent cost figures from drilling companies, which are closely guarded. Halliburton — one of the largest hydraulic fracturing service providers — did not return calls from ProPublica for comment about the expense of the procedures listed.

Asked whether the age of the data was a concern, Godec said it had been discussed with Nancy Johnson, the DOE official who commissioned the report. He said he was instructed that the report was needed quickly, that the budget was limited and that he should move forward because “this is a hot topic and people are testifying.”

Nancy Johnson did not return calls for comment and the Department of Energy’s office of fossil energy did not make its officials available for an interview after repeated requests. It said, through a spokesperson, that the Department did not author the report.

Godec also produced a similar report on costs and state gas regulations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America that was published in late April. Titled “Bringing Real Information on Energy Forward,” (PDF) that report also makes the case that state regulations of drilling practices are effective. Godec says his company’s work is impartial and his conclusions would have been the same whether he was contracted by the oil and gas industry, or the federal government.

Even if the costs Godec laid out in the DOE report were up-to-date and accurate, it’s doubtful they would have the devastating financial impact the industry claims.

The estimated expense of regulating hydraulic fracturing amounts to between one and three percent of the total cost of drilling a new well when factored into operating costs estimated by financial analysts at Deutsche Bank. If all the testing that Godec includes is factored out, the regulations would cost the industry just $4,500 per well, according to his report, or just six hundredths of a percent of the cost of establishing a typical new well.

“I think at the end of the day it’s unlikely to have a real huge impact,” says John Freeman, a senior vice president for energy equity research at the investment bank Raymond James. “It’s a lot of fuzzy stuff that I can’t get my hands around. This just seems to be more of a soft number that I frankly have more of a hard time connecting the dots on.”

State Regulations Leave Gaps

In May the Ground Water Protection Council, a group made up mostly of industry representatives and state oil and gas regulators, released the first comprehensive review (PDF) of oil and gas regulations across 27 of 31 drilling states it surveyed. The report, paid for by the DOE, concluded that most states have requirements to encase wells in cement and protect groundwater, and that a majority also require they be notified after hydraulic fracturing takes place.

“The study confirms what the industry has been saying (PDF): that regulation of oil and gas field activities, including hydraulic fracturing, is best accomplished at the state level,” the American Petroleum Institute said a press release about the study.

But the GWPC report — which focuses on what regulations are in place, rather than what may be missing — raises important points that are downplayed in its summary. It reveals that regulatory oversight is inconsistent from state to state and has substantial gaps. It also says hydraulic fracturing requires “comprehensive” further study “to determine the relative risk” and to determine best practices.

In fact, the report calls for some of same measures found in the congressional bill the industry is so hotly contesting.

Regarding fracturing in areas close to the surface or near shallow aquifers, the report reads: “States should consider requiring companies to submit a list of additives used in formation fracturing and their concentration.” It also says that shallow fracturing very close to certain drinking water aquifers “should either be stopped, or restricted to the use of materials that do not pose a risk of endangering ground water and do not have the potential to cause human health effects.”

A close examination of the appendices (PDF) attached to the research also showed that 21 of the 31 states listed do not have any specific regulation addressing hydraulic fracturing; 17 states do not require companies to list the chemicals they put in the ground; and no state requires companies to track how much drilling fluid they pump into or remove from the earth — crucial data for determining what portion of chemicals has been discarded underground.

“The tone is that in general states do an adequate job of protecting water,” said Michael Nickolaus, the report’s author, special projects director for the GWPC and former director of Indiana’s state Oil and Gas Division. “There are certain gaps in certain states … it’s not a hundred percent world.”

The GWPC report does not name the states that lack more stringent regulations, a detail that is important because one or two states can account for a large proportion of the drilling in the United States. To extract that information from the report would require analyzing all the state regulations included in the appendices (PDF) and repeating much of the GWPC’s original research. Nickolaus also declined to name the states in an interview with ProPublica, saying that the GWPC was obliged to protect its members.

Nickolaus says well construction — especially the cementing process that keeps drilling fluids and gas from seeping into groundwater — is more important than the fracturing issue. But according to the report, state regulations about cementing are sometimes vague and often don’t specify standards that makes the protection fool-proof.

While most states have regulations that protect drinking water near the surface, a third don’t require that the cement casing extends far enough to completely isolate wells from geologic layers and the deepest aquifers, according to the report. Twenty-two percent don’t require the cement to harden before the well is used for fracturing, and don’t test cement quality and consistency — one of the surest ways to protect against contamination.

–
This story originally ran at Pro Publica.

(Photo/U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Manassa)

With growing evidence that the drilling can damage water supplies, Democratic leaders in Congress are circulating legislation that would repeal the extraordinary exemption and for the first time require companies to disclose all chemicals used in the key drilling process, called hydraulic fracturing.

The proposed legislation has already stirred sharp debate.

The energy industry has launched a broad effort in Washington to fend off this proposed tightening of federal oversight, lobbying members of Congress and publishing studies that highlight what it says are the dangers of regulation. In mid-May, the industry released a detailed report asserting that the changes in current law would cost jobs and slash tax revenues. A key advocate of past efforts to regulate gas drilling, Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., has declined to support the legislation, expressing concern about how it would affect the energy companies.

However, with a strengthened Democratic majority in Congress and the party’s capture of the White House in last year’s election, the fracturing legislation is viewed as having its best chance at passage in years. Its House sponsor, Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., aims to attach a bill to a larger piece of legislation with broad support — possibly a bill on climate change or a new energy policy measure – where it would be shielded from industry resistance. On the Senate side, according to congressional staff close to the effort, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn., has a companion bill ready to follow.

The drilling process involves injecting millions of gallons of water and sand mixed with tens of thousands of gallons of chemicals — some that are known to cause cancer — deep into the ground, where as much as a third of those fluids typically remain after the gas is removed.

Global companies including Halliburton and Schlumberger have fought hard to shield from public view the chemical recipes they use to drill, saying that the formulas are valuable trade secrets. Scientists say that is precisely the information they need to determine if drilling caused the water pollution that has been reported in Colorado and elsewhere.

“The regulatory loophole for hydraulic fracturing puts public health at risk and isn’t justified,” Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which will offer the bill, said in an e-mail. “The current exemption for the oil and gas industry means that we can’t even get the information necessary to evaluate the health threats from these practices.”

The industry argues that state laws and regulators are doing an adequate job of regulating the hydraulic fracturing process, and that more layers of regulation would be burdensome and expensive.

“We don’t think the system is broke, so we question the value of trying to fix it with a federal solution,” said Richard Ranger, a senior policy analyst at the American Petroleum Institute. “So proceed with caution if you are going to proceed with regulating this business because it could make a very significant difference in delivering a fuel that is fundamental to economic health.”

Proponents of regulation, including DeGette, the author of the bill, say protecting water resources is worth the slightly higher gas costs that might come with regulation, but that the industry’s assessment of those costs is dubious. The exemption, they say, has artificially lowered drilling costs because it means the companies don’t always have to follow the safest practices.

“I find it kind of a novel argument that it will be burdensome to comply with one federal law when they could potentially have to comply with 50 state laws,” she said. “I just think that they don’t want to have to do it.”

A key question for proponents and opponents alike is how strong a stance President Barack Obama’s administration will strike on this legislation. A White House spokesman said that the administration hasn’t yet taken a position.

The Safe Drinking Water Act, enacted in 1974, governs what chemicals can be injected underground and applies to essentially every industrial activity in the United States. It limits what levels of pollution are allowed, but then permits states to create more detailed regulations if they choose. The law also sets minimum standards for well design and other protections of health and safety.

“We are not aware of any other industries that have an exemption,” said Stephen Heare, director of the Drinking Water Protection Division at the Environmental Protection Agency.

(Illustration/Al Granberg for ProPublica)

States often look to the federal agencies for guidance on how to craft environmental rules. And hydraulic fracturing is an especially complicated process that scientists say warrants more study. The current regime leaves state agencies — which are often understaffed and underfunded — to do their own research and develop their own best practices, according to EPA scientists.

Natural gas, used for heating, electricity and manufacturing, supplies a fifth of the energy used in the United States and is an increasingly valued resource. According to the Energy Information Administration, domestic gas reserves, including those held in vast shale deposits that underlie the Appalachian states, could meet the country’s natural gas needs for more than 100 years. Without hydraulic fracturing, which is now used in almost all new gas wells, much of this supply would remain beyond reach, according to the American Petroleum Institute.

Natural gas is also widely viewed as an important transitional fuel in American climate and energy policy — emitting 23 percent less carbon dioxide per unit of energy than oil. Its development has spurred jobs and economic activity in some of the poorest and most rural parts of the U.S.

But as gas drilling has expanded, a wave of reports have emerged that the drilling is affecting water. In Colorado and Wyoming, state and federal officials have concluded that benzene and other contaminants have made their way into aquifers, streams and well water as a result of drilling accidents or spills of drilling fluids. Officials have linked methane gas in groundwater to drilling in Colorado (PDF), Ohio (PDF) and Pennsylvania. Fracturing may or may not be to blame, EPA officials say; it’s hard to tell because they don’t oversee the process and can’t trace chemicals that are unidentified.

“We’re not talking about banning fracking here. What we’re for is regulating it,” said Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., a co-sponsor of the House bill, emphasizing that his hope is to give scientists the tools to measure, and to control, its impact on the environment. “Other than oil and gas companies, I am not aware of anyone that supports allowing that to continue in an unregulated way.”

Even so, DeGette will need to gather support from some representatives in states that stand to reap substantial economic benefits from drilling. The retreat of Salazar, a prominent moderate whose co-sponsorship helped draw support for a similar measure in the House last year, is a warning sign that the passage is not preordained.

“I think Salazar is a very strategic target on all of this,” said Sarah Tucker, an analyst for Trout Unlimited, a sportsmen’s group that is lobbying for more oversight of drilling. “He is from an oil and gas district … that gives him a lot more credibility when working on these issues. … Those moderate Democrats are always the sticking point as to whether or not a bill actually moves.”

In an e-mailed response, Salazar said he would still consider voting for the bill, but that he may pursue a compromise.

“I believe that developers may have legitimate concerns about the impact that removing the exemption may have on their ability to find and extract oil and gas,” he said. “But … the current regulatory approach is probably not sustainable and will probably need to be revised in some way.”

Passing such legislation has proved difficult in the past. This year’s efforts to reverse the exemptions will constitute at least the fourth effort by Democrats to shore up protections against hydraulic fracturing since it became a focus of the White House’s Energy Task Force in 2001. According to records of committee debates from 2003, the exemptions were forced through against objections, without hearings by a Republican majority and eventually tucked into the 2005 Energy Policy Act (PDF). Ever since, in the face of intense lobbying, any efforts to address the topic have stalled in committee.

Last year the bill’s authors, including Salazar, received a flurry of letters and phone calls urging them not to pursue the legislation. One, addressed to DeGette from Jerry McHugh, president of Denver-based San Juan Resources, said: “Now is not the time to impede development of any domestic resources. Please pull your sponsorship.”

The industry has spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress on issues including fracturing since 2008, according to disclosure forms filed with Congress. Now it’s circulating new research to bolster its arguments.

The industry — which has long argued that fracturing has never been proven to have contaminated water — points to a study published in April by the Department of Energy, which asserts that state laws adequately regulate hydraulic fracturing. But that report, titled “Modern Shale Gas Development in the United States: A Primer” (PDF), and written by the Ground Water Protection Council, a broad consortium that includes industry groups, contains several questionable statements. One passage notes that “the Safe Drinking Water Act regulates the injection of fluids from shale gas activities,” without mentioning that the exemptions have created significant exceptions, and that on the whole the act does not regulate all injections.

“You have very substantial economic elements that are concerned about their abilities to do whatever they want to for their own economic advantages,” said Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-NY, who is also sponsoring the bill. “They are going to do whatever they can to ensure that there is not a majority of the members here voting for something like this bill.”

(Photo/Abrahm Lustgarten)

Using carefully culled quotations and selected statistics, Kopel asserts “indisputably false facts” in ProPublica’s reporting.

In fact, it is his column that is indisputably misleading.

Kopel quoted a press spokesperson for New Mexico as saying the state had never compiled “numbers about groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing” — the actual forcing of water into rock. He cites a similar remark from a Colorado official.

These are classic examples of framing a precisely tailored question to elicit a misleading response, much as the tobacco industry used to ask scientists whether smoking could be conclusively identified as a cause of lung cancer.

Here are the facts.

(Illustration/Al Granberg for ProPublica)

Colorado records cite some 1,500 cases from 2003 to 2008 in which drilling companies reported a hazardous spill [PDF], with 300 instances leading to what state officials determined was a measurable impact on water supplies. A tally of Colorado data was performed by the advocacy group Oil and Gas Accountability Project.

In New Mexico, Mark Fesmire, director of the Oil and Gas Conservation Division, said his state had documented some 800 cases in which water has been contaminated by oil and gas operations, half of them from waste pits that had leaked chemicals into the ground.

As ProPublica has reported, it’s difficult for scientists to say which aspect of drilling — the hydraulic fracturing, the waste water that accidentally flows into the ground, the leaky pits of drilling fluids or the spills from truckloads of chemicals transported to and from the site — causes such pollution.

Here’s why: The industry has adamantly refused to make public the ingredients of the chemicals it forces into the ground and later stores in the waste pits near drilling sites. Scientists say that information is crucial to tracing the source of pollution. Without those data, environmental officials say they cannot conclude with certainty when or how certain chemicals entered the water.

Ask officials in New Mexico and Colorado: Are there any cases in which we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that hydraulic fracturing caused water contamination? Answer: No, we’ve never studied that question.

Ask those same officials: Are there hundreds of cases of water contamination in drilling areas, the vast majority of which use hydraulic fracturing? Answer: Yes.

The drilling industry, echoed by Kopel, cites three documents when asserting the environmental safety of hydraulic fracturing. They are a 2004 EPA study (PDF), a 2002 survey of state agencies (PDF) by the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission and a similar survey in 1998 by the Ground Water Protection Council (PDF).

In its Nov. 13 article [8], ProPublica detailed flaws in the EPA study and reported that the two surveys were “anecdotal,” meaning that they included none of the basic data required to qualify as a scientific study. The “results” were drawn from questionnaires sent to state officials. ProPublica did misstate the date on one of these surveys, referring to it as more than a decade old when it had been published in 2002.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.

(Photo/Jason Kosena)

Since burning gas emits 23 percent less greenhouse gas than burning oil, finding new resources here at home targets two important priorities: climate change and energy independence.

But it turns out drilling for gas may not be as clean as burning it. And it may come at the expense of another vital resource: water.

Last summer, ProPublica began an investigation into the environmental safety of the drilling boom. That investigation has led to a series of articles, published in the Albany Times Union, Scientific American, BusinessWeek, the Denver Post and the San Diego Union-Tribune. We found that the processes that make all this new drilling possible can — if not carefully studied and rigorously regulated — have disastrous effects.

All this gas — much of which lies as far as 13,000 feet underground in tightly packed sand and rock layers — has become accessible because of an innovative technology developed by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing, which shoots vast amounts of fluid underground to break up the rock and release that gas.

Click the image to enlarge. (Illustration/Al Granberg for ProPublica)

But ProPublica found that drinking water supplies — streams and aquifers and even residential wells — had been contaminated in at least 1,000 cases across the country where there has been intensive drilling. We also discovered that the scientific study done by the EPA was incomplete and based in large part on the input of companies including Halliburton, with which the EPA negotiated before publishing its findings.

Now lawmakers in several states and in Washington are taking an array of actions aimed at tightening industry oversight. In New York state, Gov. David Paterson placed a moratorium on drilling and ordered his environment department to re-examine drilling’s impacts and hold public hearings across the state. New York City has become an outspoken opponent to drilling because it could occur within the city’s watershed. New York’s City Council has held two emergency hearings to discuss the matter.

In Washington, several members of Congress have introduced a bill that would reverse the gas industry’s exemptions from environmental protection laws, and subject it to the same federal oversight that other industries face.

In Colorado and New Mexico — where drilling is most intense and where much of the contamination has been documented — state officials are rewriting their own laws for the gas drilling industry. They are addressing everything from the secrecy of the chemicals used in fracturing to the laws mandating that waste is properly treated.

Since ProPublica began exploring the costs of gas drilling, the subject has prompted headlines across the nation, especially as the outgoing Bush administration moved to open up still more lands across the country to drilling before January.

This month, ProPublica extended its series — now more than 10 articles — with an examination of how energy developments in the Western United States may affect the Colorado River, the drinking water source for one in 12 Americans and much of Mexico. That story broadened the discussion of the trade-offs of energy development and found that scientists and water managers who depend on the river’s water are alarmed by the lack of planning for the river, and that governance of the river is haphazard and inconsistent. Two bills now before Congress would create a central water authority and begin to address these issues.

Decisions on these issues are very much in flux. In 2009, several pieces of federal legislation addressing hydraulic fracturing, water and energy exploration will come up for a vote. The incoming Obama administration will also have to decide how to proceed with dozens of energy exploration projects across the country. Last week, 58 members of Congress wrote (PDF) to the president-elect urging him to reverse many of President Bush’s rules and recent decisions regarding gas and oil drilling in the West.

It remains to be seen what the new administration can do legally, or even what form its domestic energy policy will take.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.

Read more of The Colorado Independent’s coverage of the natural gas debate.