A letter (pdf) sent to Jackson by DeGette and Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Ed Markey states:

A natural gas rig at the entrance to Battlement Mesa in Garfield County on Colorado's Western Slope (David O. Williams photo).

“The companies’ errors … demonstrate the difficulty in obtaining accurate information about the contents of hydraulic fracturing fluids and reinforce the need for mandatory and uniform national disclosure of this information to EPA.”

The committee report in January revealed oil and gas service companies, including industry leader Halliburton, injected more than 32 million gallons of diesel fuel or hydraulic fracturing fluids containing diesel fuel in 19 states between 2005 and 2009, including more than 1.3 million gallons in Colorado.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the oil and gas drilling process of injecting mostly water and sand – with smaller amounts of undisclosed chemicals – deep into oil and gas wells to fracture tight rock and sand formations and free up more hydrocarbons.

The fracking process was exempted from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. DeGette and other members of Congress say diesel fuel, which is made up of some cancer-causing carcinogenic compounds, was never included in that 2005 exemption. In August they followed by asking the EPA to better define diesel fuel.

Oil and gas industry representatives, including the head of the state lobbying group Colorado Oil and Gas Association, agreed that diesel fuel was not part of the exemption but pointed out that the EPA never held an official rulemaking on the use of diesel fuel in fracking.

DeGette and other leading Democrats now want the EPA, which just announced it will regulate some aspects of fracking waste water disposal, to engage in a rulemaking process on diesel fuel.

DeGette and U.S. Rep. Jared Polis are two of the lead sponsors of a bill that would require full public disclosure of chemicals used in fracking. Most oil and gas companies oppose such a move for proprietary reasons, arguing that fracking occurs far below groundwater supplies and has never been shown to contaminate drinking water. That contention is disputed.

Hydraulic fracturing itself may not directly contaminate groundwater supplies, as the oil and gas industry has steadfastly maintained for years, but the wastewater associated with the controversial process can be very hazardous to forest life, at least according to a new study produced by a U.S. Forest Service researcher.

Conducted by researcher Mary Beth Adams and published in the Journal of Environmental Quality, the study is entitled “Land Application of Hydrofracturing Fluids Damages a Deciduous Forest Stand in West Virginia.”

The Fernow Experimental Forest in West Virginia (USFS photo).

“The explosion of shale gas drilling in the East has the potential to turn large stretches of public lands into lifeless moonscapes,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which reported on Adams’ study last week.

Ruch noted that land disposal of fracking fluids is a common practice and that Adams’ study was conducted with a state permit. “This study suggests that these fluids should be treated as toxic waste,” Ruch added.

In Colorado, U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette for several years has been pushing different versions of the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, which in its latest incarnation would require the national disclosure of chemicals used in the process.

The oil and gas industry maintains it must keep its formulas secret for proprietary reasons, and the process is exempt from federal regulation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

But state oil and gas regulators in Colorado, as well as state industry representatives, argue that chemical disclosure will not prevent spills from holding pits and pipelines and that those areas of concern should be the real focus of regulatory efforts.

Fracking typically injects water, sand and chemicals thousands of feet below the surface to crack open tight rock and sand formations in order to free up more natural gas. Those results occur far below drinking water wells and groundwater supplies. There is still debate, even among scientists, over whether fracturing itself can cause contamination of groundwater.

Colorado oil and gas regulators are touting a new website, set to debut in mid-April, that will allow operators to voluntarily register chemicals used in the controversial but commonly used process of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), under revised oil and gas drilling regulations that went into effect in 2009, already requires operators to disclose fracturing chemicals if requested by state regulators or by health professionals.

The new website, developed by Groundwater Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, will provide public access to those chemicals. Available April 11, it can be found at www.fracfocus.org.

Fracking involves injecting chemicals — largely undisclosed for proprietary reasons – water and sand deep into natural gas wells to fracture tight geological formations and thereby free up more gas. It is in widespread use, and industry officials say it occurs so far underground that groundwater supplies are never really in danger.

Critics of the process, including U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis (both Colorado Democrats), say it has led to drinking water contamination and that the chemicals used in fracking should be fully disclosed to the public. State regulators oppose federal oversight of fracking by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The new website appears to be one more step aimed at avoiding that possibility.

“We have actively supported this effort to make hydraulic fracturing information more accessible to the public, and we applaud the many Colorado operators who are participating,” Dave Neslin, director of the COGCC, said in a release announcing the new site on Thursday. “We think this will be a useful tool for citizens as well as an important step for industry in its efforts to better educate the public about energy development.”

Neslin in the past has told the Colorado Independent he thinks DeGette and Polis’s FRAC (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) Act, which would remove a 2005 Safe Drinking Water Act exemption granted during the Bush administration, is unnecessary.

Groundwater Protection Council Executive Director Mike Paque said in a release that he expects a “significant majority” of operators conducting fracturing in Colorado to participate in the voluntary website. “Although we have had terrific participation from many states, the COGCC has been in the forefront and helped our team brief congressional committees and federal agencies on the registry’s potential value to the public,” Paque said. The website will only contain information for wells drilled after Jan. 1 of this year.

Neslin maintains the COGCC has never documented any cases of hydraulic fracturing contaminating groundwater in the state. However, the agency is looking into possible diesel fuel contamination. A congressional probe found widespread use of diesel fuel in fracking all over the United States and in Colorado – an apparent violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

“Although the COGCC believes that its regulations should have prevented the contamination of drinking water supplies from the use of diesel fuel or other substances for hydraulic fracturing, it is currently collecting information on the use of diesel fuel for this purpose and will assess whether this activity affected drinking water,” the COGCC said in a release.

Meanwhile, Republican state lawmakers are seeking to increase industry participation on the COGCC board via House Bill 1223 (pdf), which passed out of the House Agriculture Committee on Monday and is now being weighed by the House Appropriations Committee.

Sponsored by Rep. Ray Scott and Sen. Steve King, both Grand Junction Republicans, HB 1223 would add two more industry seats to the COGCC board and make representatives of the Department of Natural Resources and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment non-voting members. In 2007, during the administration of Gov. Bill Ritter, the COGCC board was expanded to include community stakeholders and environmental and public health representatives.

“I want to know that the people creating the rules for oil and gas development have considered the impacts to Western Slope residents like me and that our public health and property are protected,” said Dave Devanney, a Battlement Mesa resident and member of Battlement Concerned Citizens (BCC). “Adding more industry to the COGCC doesn’t sound like an effort to protect public health, safety or welfare.”

Devanney has in the past told the Colorado Independent that decreasing concern by state and county officials about the impacts of natural gas drilling on Western Slope communities is driving grassroots activism and potential litigation. Battlement Mesa and Silt residents have been in contact with a New York City law firm looking into potential mass torte litigation against Denver-based Antero Resources.

That firm is currently representing at least one Silt-area family, and now another New York firm, Weitz & Luxenberg, is meeting with potential litigants today at 1 p.m. at the Battlement Mesa Activity Center community room.

“Natural Gas Operations From a Public Health Perspective [pdf],” co-authored by Paonia’s Dr. Theo Colborn, who runs the Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TDEX) there, calls for the full disclosure of all chemicals used in the natural gas drilling process called “hydraulic fracturing,” or “fracking” for short.

Fracking involves injecting sand and water, mixed with a small percentage of undisclosed chemicals, deep into natural gas wells to fracture tight underground geological formations and free up more gas.

Critics claim the process can contaminate water supplies and have been calling for full disclosure of all the chemicals involved, which many gas companies keep secret for proprietary and competitive reasons.

“We demonstrated that toxic chemicals are used during both the fracturing and drilling phases of gas operations, that there may be long-term health effects that are not immediately recognized, and that waste evaporation pits may contain numerous chemicals on the [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] Superfund list,” Colborn writes in her synopsis.

“Our findings show the difficulty of developing a water quality monitoring program. To protect public health we recommend full disclosure of the contents of all products, extensive air and water monitoring, a comprehensive human health study, and regulation of hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act.”

Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette, D-Denver, introduced legislation that would remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for fracking that was granted during the Bush administration in 2005. The EPA is currently studying the process.

In Wyoming, where regulators this summer passed new oil and gas drilling regulations for the oversight of hydraulic fracturing, the website ProPublica is reporting Colorado’s neighbor will have the best idea of any state in the nation of what’s being injected into the ground if the rules work as written.

In Colorado and heavily drilled Garfield County, oil and gas drilling regulations that went into effect in the spring of 2009 require a list of chemicals to be kept onsite at drilling locations and made available to emergency responders within 24 hours if requested.

It’s estimated that more than 90 percent of natural gas wells are fracked for maximum production. The fracking issue has become a political hot potato in more populous East Coast states like New York and Pennsylvania, where Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell is pushing for a 5-percent tax on natural gas production.

The Philadelphia Inquirer last week reported Rendell is not confident a compromise can be reached with Republican lawmakers on a taxing structure to help pay for the rising costs of natural gas production in his state and help also fill “recession-ravaged coffers.”

“The surge [in gas production in the Marcellus Shale, which underlies most of the state] has sparked water-pollution and safety concerns from environmentalists, along with worries from municipalities that fear being overburdened,” the Inquirer reported. “Pennsylvania remains the largest gas-producing state not to collect any tax on those natural resources.”

Speaking at the Governor’s Energy Policy forum in Denver Tuesday, hosted by 9News and the Denver Petroleum Club, the former geologist turned restaurant mogul took a definitive stance on the controversial process, which is used to increase production in the majority of natural gas wells drilled in Colorado.

“I am a believer that the oil and gas industry should reveal what chemicals are in that frack solution,” he said, adding that because there appears to be no real issue with the solution, revealing fracking chemicals would help the public accept the process more readily. “We can build trust.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes did not attend the event, and his GOP primary opponent, former congressman Scott McInnis, attended and spoke but did not discuss his position on fracking. His spokesman did not return calls requesting comment Wednesday.

Industry officials argue the chemical formulas are proprietary and that revealing them could destroy a company’s competitive edge. Plus they say fracking has never been proven to contaminate groundwater despite decades of ongoing use.

However, industry critics claim fracking has contaminated groundwater and presents a major health risk to residents of heavily drilled areas. The process, which involves injecting mostly water and sand, as well as undisclosed chemicals, deep into wells to fracture tight geologic formations and free up more gas, is exempted from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Colorado and the FRAC Act

U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, and Jared Polis, D-Boulder, last summer introduced the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, which would remove that exemption. Both cited a public right to know when it comes to injecting chemicals deep into the ground and dealing with the “produced water” used in fracking.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), which regulates oil and gas drilling in the state, does not support the FRAC Act, claiming it may add an unnecessary layer of environmental regulation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is conducting a study on the process.

COGCC regulations adopted more than a year ago call for an inventory of chemicals to be kept onsite of drilling operations and made available to emergency responders or government officials within 24 hours in the event of a spill, but some regulators and environmentalists say that’s not good enough.

“I have done a cursory look but I can’t find a case where a fracking caused the contamination of shallow ground water sources,” Hickenlooper said.

Pennsylvania environmental regulators last year shut down fracking operations by a Texas company because of concerns about possible chemical contamination of groundwater stemming from the process.

Critics say the lack of definitive evidence stems from the nondisclosure of exactly what chemicals are being used. Increasingly, the industry itself – including such heavy hitters as Exxon – is beginning to reconsider whether the frack battle is one worth fighting.

Shareholder calls for disclosure

As You Sow, a nonprofit environmental shareholder advocacy group, has been pushing for reform from within, citing the suspension of shareholder dividends at BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The group filed shareholder resolutions at 12 oil and gas companies, calling for improved disclosure of the risks associated with fracking. At the companies where the resolutions went to a vote, the proposals received a high level of support for first-time environmental resolutions, garnering between 7 to 14 times the percent of votes required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to re-file the proposals next year.

The highest vote total was at Williams Companies Inc., the largest producer of natural gas on Colorado’s Western Sloper, where 42 percent of the shares voted supported the proposal.

“This impressive result is one of the highest on record for a first-year environmental proposal and sends a very clear message to all companies dependent on hydraulic fracturing that investors are concerned about the risks associated with the process and demand increased disclosure,” As You Sow’s Michael Passoff said in a release.

[Flickr photo via HickforCo]

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The committee passed the “Assistance, Quality, and Affordability Act of 2010 (pdf),” which amends the Safe Drinking Water Act to increase funding to states, water systems and “disadvantaged communities,” step up EPA enforcement and encourage better environmental and financial management of water systems, among other things. But the committee did not accept DeGette’s hydraulic fracturing amendment.

Hydraulic fracturing is the widely used process of injecting water, sand and undisclosed chemicals under high pressure into natural gas wells to fracture tight formations and free up more gas. Critics in Colorado and elsewhere are concerned it can lead to contamination of groundwater supplies, and DeGette wants to remove a 2005 exemption for the process under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

As the Safe Drinking Water Act bill moves through Congress, environmentalists want to see the hydraulic fracturing issue revisited.

“Congress has an opportunity to address the growing threats to our drinking water coming from dangerous gas drilling practices. We encourage our representatives in Congress to make certain that drilling for natural gas does not come at the expense of our drinking water. And we support all efforts to make sure that toxic chemicals aren’t coming out of our taps,” Piper Crowell, Clean Water Advocate for Environment America, said in a release.

In other hydraulic fracturing, or fracking news, investors holding 26.3 percent of the stock of ExxonMobil – set to become the nation’s largest natural gas producer with the acquisition of XTO Energy – supported a proposal asking the company to disclose fracking chemicals.

Put forth by the shareholder advocacy group “As You Sow,” which holds nearly 17,000 ExxonMobil shares, the proposal received five times the usual level of support for a first-time environmental resolution put forth to the board of a major energy company, according to the group.

“Today’s vote sent a strong message to ExxonMobil that shareholders are concerned about how it is dealing with hydraulic fracturing, especially in light of the expansion that will make it the nation’s largest natural gas company,” As You Sow’s Michael Passoff said in a release.

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HR 5320 (pdf), the “Assistance, Quality, and Affordability Act of 2010,” was introduced May 10 by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.

The bill would amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to increase funding assistance for states, water systems and “disadvantaged communities,” strengthen EPA enforcement and improve the financial and environmental management of water systems.

DeGette, who last summer introduced the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, has been trying to remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for hydraulic fracturing – a processed used by oil and gas companies – that was granted in 2005 during the Bush administration.

Dubbed the “Halliburton Loophole” for the oil and gas drilling services company that perfected hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the 2005 exemption allows companies to keep secret the chemicals injected deep into natural gas wells, along with water and sand, to fracture tight geological formations and free up more gas.

Industry officials claim the process has been used for decades with no known cases of groundwater contamination and that the chemical formulas are proprietary. Environmentalists, some residents of energy producing area and an increasing number of politicians say the process is tainting drinking water and needs to be more closely regulated.

The Obama administration EPA is now studying the process, but some say federal legislation and oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act is still needed. Colorado oil and gas regulators feel their own rules, which require a list of chemicals used in fracking to be kept on site of drilling operations and made available upon request to emergency responders, are adequate to address the process.

Disclosure of fracking chemicals is also in the recently introduced Kerry-Lieberman climate change bill, but critics say that legislation comes up short by failing the remove the Safe Drinking Water Act exemption.

“Certainly what’s going on in the Gulf reminds us all that we need to be making sure that we’re doing this energy exploration safely, so [DeGette] saw a good opportunity to move forward on the disclosure piece [with the amendment],” DeGette communications director Juliet Johnson said.

A mixture of salt water, fracking chemicals and hydrocarbons, brine was seen by Penry and Buescher as a potential source of groundwater contamination. Their bill required it be stored in non-permeable synthetic pit liners at facilities at least a half mile away from homes. Two Moffat County storage operations challenged the rules as unconstitutional and usurping local authority.

According to the paper, Judge William W. Hood III ruled that the Colorado Solid and Hazardous Waste Commission correctly interpreted that the intent of Penry (an ardent oil and gas industry backer) and (now Secretary of State) Buescher’s bill was to mandate synthetic pit liners over more permeable clay liners.

Hood cited a comment by Penry to fellow lawmakers that the liners are the “best technology available to protect ground water from any undesirable consequences [associated with the pits.]”

Conservationists agreed. Frank Smith of the Western Colorado Congress praised the ruling: “Pit liners, absolutely that helps protect people and water.”

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Drilling pads on the Roan Plateau

The FRAC Act, introduced by Colorado congressional members Diana DeGette (D-Denver) and Jared Polis (D-Boulder), as well as New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey, seeks to regulate the drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Critics say the process, which injects water, sand and chemicals deep into gas wells, can contaminate drinking water supplies.

According to a story in Saturday’s Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation has recorded 270 incidents of “wastewater spills, well contamination, explosions, methane migration and ecological damage related to gas production in the state since 1979.”

Only 60 of those incidents were discovered by the DEC, with the rest reported by residents or other public safety officials. In a refrain similar to Colorado, DEC officials in New York say current state regulations are adequate to police the industry even in the face of a looming drilling surge to tap into the massive Marcellus Shale – the nation’s largest gas field.

Colorado officials, with some of the toughest drilling regulations in the nation, say they can handle fracking and don’t need Congress to lift a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the process that was granted during the Bush administration in 2005. But critics here say there have been too many cases of water contamination by unknown chemicals related to fracking.

Public disclosure of the chemicals is unnecessary and would compromise valuable trade secrets, oil and gas industry officials claim.

Walter Hang, president of Toxic Targeting, put together the list of New York incidents. According to the Press & Sun-Bulletin, Hang directs an environmental research firm that provides information to engineers, consultants and municipalities. “We’re students of how you clean this crap up,” he told the paper. “That’s what we really care about.”

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