hydraulic fracturing

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.

A bill mandating stricter handling of oil and gas brine that was passed in 2008 by strange bedfellows Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, in the state Senate and Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, in the House was upheld by a Denver District Court judge Tuesday, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

Colorado oil and gas industry officials continue to fall back on new state drilling regulations to fend off more county or federal scrutiny, even as their trade association challenges the Colorado rules in court. The irony appears lost on the Garfield County commissioners.

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.

ExxonMobil’s acquisition of natural gas giant XTO Energy – the hot topic in the gas-field communities of Colorado’s Western Slope this week – has implications far beyond an industry typically dominated by smaller, independent operators.
According to National Public Radio, ExxonMobil, the largest, most powerful lobby in Washington, is now conflicted on the climate change legislation [...]

Analysts are calling ExxonMobil’s $31 billion acquisition of natural-gas giant XTO Energy a much safer bet than a similar leap made by energy conglomerate ConocoPhillips into natural-gas production when it purchased Burlington Resources for $36 billion in 2005.

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.