Tag: hydraulic facturing

Oil and gas industry lobbyists in Colorado still have not commented to The Colorado Independent on the results of a congressional investigation earlier this week that revealed more than 32 million gallons of diesel fuel had been used in hydraulic fracturing operations in 19 states, including 1.3 million gallons in Colorado.

As the debate over hydraulic fracturing and health issues related to natural gas drilling has heated up in Garfield County in recent weeks, KJCT News 8 in Grand Junction today is reporting an early morning fire at a Williams’ well eight miles south of Rifle. The fire was reportedly put out in about an hour and half, with minimal damage and no injuries, but the incident is sure to prompt even more calls for tighter local regulation of the oil and gas industry. Williams is the most active drilling company in Garfield County, which saw the second most drilling permits issued in the state in 2010.

Despite three Republican county commissioners seen as largely supportive of the oil and gas industry, one of the most heavily drilled counties in Colorado claims the state’s oil and gas drilling regulations “fail entirely” to address the cumulative impacts of increasing the concentration of natural gas wells, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

Forty-six members of Congress, including Colorado Democratic Reps. Jared Polis and Diana DeGette, sent a letter to former Colorado senator and current Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Thursday backing the disclosure of secret chemicals used in the controversial natural gas drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Some of the biggest natural gas producers in Colorado are part of a coalition of operators in the massive Marcellus Shale play in the eastern United States that is backing “full disclosure” of chemicals used in the controversial drilling process called hydraulic fracturing. But critics say those same companies – specifically EnCana and the Williams Companies – have a different standard when it comes to hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in Colorado.

Wyoming oil and gas regulators are poised to vote today on hydraulic fracturing rules that appear to have a surprising level of both industry...

The Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act - climate change legislation at long last introduced in the U.S. Senate Wednesday - calls on oil and gas service companies like Halliburton to divulge chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing of natural gas wells.

A grass-roots citizen’s group troubled by air and water pollution from natural gas drilling in Garfield County expressed “extreme disappointment” Monday when the county commissioners voted 2-1 to oppose more federal oversight of the industry.

Using some rather pointed language aimed at Bush administration energy policies in general and former Vice President Dick Cheney in particular, Colorado Rep.’s Diana DeGette, D-Denver, and Jared Polis, D-Boulder, Tuesday introduced the FRAC Act aimed at closing a natural-gas drilling loophole in the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Officials for the natural gas industry are quick to point out that a process called hydraulic fracturing has been in use for more than 60 years without a single documented case of groundwater contamination by the chemicals used to make gas flow more freely from wells. But U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette is just as quick to respond that it’s hard to document contamination when no one outside of the industry knows exactly what kinds of chemicals are being injected along with high-pressure water into wells to force open rock formations thousands of feet below the surface.