FRAC Act

Backers of the controversial FRAC (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) Act, including co-sponsor Diana DeGette (D-Denver), were quick to caution Thursday that a proposed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study of hydraulic fracturing shouldn’t be seen as an alternative to legislation.

Green investment groups representing shareholders in the cleaner-than-coal natural gas industry are pressuring the nation’s major drilling companies to come clean on the process of hydraulic fracturing, which is the subject of a controversial bill introduced last summer by Colorado Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis.

Colorado oil and gas regulators have admitted to the Colorado Independent they’re spread too thin to handle a new set of EPA rules if proposed federal hydraulic fracturing legislation is passed by Congress, but a new ProPublica investigation suggests staffing may even be inadequate to handle current levels of state oversight.

New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection last week issued a report that casts serious doubts on the common natural gas drilling process of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which injects water, sand and chemicals deep underground to free up more gas.
A looming drilling boom in the Marcellus Shale of New York and Pennsylvania has regulators [...]

Using chemical tracers to make sure hydraulic fracturing fluids aren’t contaminating groundwater supplies may be off the radar of Colorado officials who regulate the state’s natural gas industry, but the concept is contained in what could be a precedent-setting watershed plan crafted by the cities of Grand Junction and Palisade.

Regime change is in the wind for the Colorado oil and gas trade association, which apparently has been conflicted for a while now. The association is challenging environmentally stricter drilling regulations while simultaneously touting those regs as adequate to oversee the industry in the face of looming federal legislation.
Tisha Conoly Schuller was named the new [...]

Environmental activists are calling on Colorado officials to require oil and gas companies to chemically tag the fluids used in hydraulic fracturing, an increasingly controversial natural gas drilling process. Many suspect that “fracking” may be contaminating ground water and chemical tags would make it possible for regulators to identify the source of any contamination. The idea is a hot topic among those favoring increased federal oversight of the process, but industry officials won’t even discuss the idea, and state regulators say it’s barely on their radar screens.

State Rep. Kathleen Curry, a Western Slope Democrat who in the past has spearheaded legislation aimed at the state’s oil and gas industry, told the Colorado Independent recently that she’s not looking to introduce new regulations this session. Instead, she will seek to strengthen the Mineral Audit Program, which is tasked with making sure the industry is paying all of the taxes it owes to Colorado.

A study by an association representing the oil and gas industry – not surprisingly – found Interior Secretary Ken Salazar engaged in political gamesmanship when he pulled back leases on 60 parcels of BLM land sold in a heavily protested and fraud-marred auction last December in Salt Lake City.
Salazar, who outright pulled eight of the [...]

A group of citizen activists in the Western Slope retirement community of Battlement Mesa is hoping a type of health-impact study used successfully in the oil fields of Alaska’s North Slope can help them curtail pollution, traffic and noise from a looming natural gas drilling plan in their Garfield County town of 5,000.

They have their work cut out for them. In conversations with the Colorado Independent, citizens say they have little faith that county commissioners elected to protect public health but backed by oil and gas money will put residents’ interests before those of the energy companies.