Tag: hydraulic fracturing

Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson today admitted the natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, comes with certain risks, telling reporters at the company’s annual meeting that the debate still needs to stay fact-based. “We know there are risks,” Tillerson said, according to Reuters. “We're not trying to characterize this as an activity that does not have risks.”

A new music video called “My Water's On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song)” by David Holmes and journalism students at New York University’s Studio 20 is making the rounds after being posted on the Pulitzer Prize-winning website ProPublica this morning.

A new scientific study conducted by researchers at Duke University for the first time shows drinking water wells closer to natural gas drilling activity contain higher levels of flammable methane gas that the federal government says could require “hazard mitigation” action.

Echoing sentiments expressed to the Colorado Independent by U.S. House Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., more than 49 percent of the shareholders of an oil and gas company in the Permian Basin of West Texas recently asked for more transparency in hydraulic fracturing operations.

In a sit-down interview with the Colorado Independent in Denver this week, U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette said the natural gas industry should support full public disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing as a “protection” from potential litigation.

Between 2005 and 2009, the nation’s 14 leading natural gas drilling service companies used hydraulic fracturing fluids containing 29 different chemicals regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) as potential human carcinogens, according to a new congressional report released Saturday. The investigation was spearheaded by a group of House Democrats that includes Colorado's Diana DeGette.

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 Colorado Petroleum Association (CPA) today dropped its bid to get the state to roll back its rule for proper disposal of pit liners used in the oil and gas drilling process. Rule 905 was one of the revised oil and gas drilling regulations most criticized by the industry after the new, more environmentally stringent rules went into effect in the spring of 2009. The CPA withdrew its petition at today’s Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) meeting, eliciting praise from the environmental community.

Colorado’s coal industry is on fire lately, going after natural gas producers with gusto in the wake of last year’s controversial Clean Air, Clean Jobs Act, which requires Xcel Energy to convert several coal-fired power plants on Colorado’s Front Range over to natural gas or alternative fuel sources such as wind and solar.

As The New York Times continues to expose infighting in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over its regulation – or the lack thereof – of the nation’s booming natural gas industry, county officials in Colorado are grappling with health impact assessments (HIA) of their own. Garfield County this week released a second draft of an HIA conducted by the Colorado School of Public Health (CSPH) and first released last fall. It looks at the potential health impacts of a proposal by Denver-based Antero Resources to drill up to 200 new natural gas wells in the Battlement Mesa community.