Gas fracking poses serious environmental risks, panel finds
By Jim Efstathiou Jr.
11 August 2011 Natural-gas companies risk causing serious environmental damage from hydraulic fracturing unless they commit to the best engineering practices, a task force named by Energy Secretary Steven Chu concluded. Regulations to protect public health will work best when drillers embrace techniques that avoid “undesirable consequences,” according to a draft report today by a subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. The increased use of fracturing, or fracking, which forces water and chemicals into rock, raises the potential for a “serious problem,” the panel found. The report offered recommendations for companies involved in fracking, such as Chesapeake Energy Inc. and Southwestern Energy Co. (SWN), to follow, and guidelines for state regulators that oversee drilling. “While many states and several federal agencies regulate aspects of these operations, the efficacy of the regulations is far from clear,” according to the report. “Effective action requires both strong regulation and a shale-gas industry in which all participating companies are committed to continuous improvement.” The Environmental Working Group in Washington, which advocates for clean air and water, questioned the findings of a panel it said was dominated by the gas industry. The Independent Petroleum Association of America in Washington, which represents oil and gas companies, said the report marks “a useful starting point,” for discussions. Communities “need to fully understand that there will be disruptive activities during drilling and industry needs to improve its response to local concerns,” Barry Russell, chief executive officer of the group, said in a statement. In fracturing, millions of gallons of chemically treated water and sand are forced underground to break up rock and allow gas to flow. Advances in the technology have, in a few years, pushed gas from shale to almost 30 percent of U.S. production from a “negligible amount,” according to the report, which will be given to Chu on Aug. 18. “What we’re recognizing in the report is the dramatic scale and speed which the growth of the industry has realized,” Kathleen McGinty, a subcommittee member who led President Bill Clinton’s Council on Environmental Quality, said in an interview. “Unless the imperatives that are sometimes articulated in regulation take deep root in every action out there, you will experience problems.” […] The report underscores differences in public perception of the potential consequences of gas fracking. Industry advocates say the technique hasn’t caused a major incident for more than 60 years, though current techniques were introduced less than a decade ago. Opponents cite failures and accidents that result in tainting drinking water. […] “There will be some in the environment community or in the anti-fracking community who will be disappointed because it has a message of frack-with-caution rather than don’t frack at all,” Ben Grumbles, president of the Clean Water America Alliance in Washington, a group that backs the technique with precautions, said in an interview. “The spin zone of the industry is going to be very concerned about what’s between the lines when the report is recommending that there be much more aggressive efforts to control ozone precursors and other emissions. It shows some balance.” The subcommittee, formed in January, is led by former CIA Director John Deutch and includes Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, and Daniel Yergin, co-founder of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. The group will hand up a full report in late November, Energy Department spokesman Tom Reynolds said. Deutch, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was paid more than $1.4 million by Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB), the world’s largest oilfield-services provider, and Cheniere Energy Inc. (LNG), from 2006 to 2009, and is on the board of Cheniere, the Environmental Working Group said in a statement before the report’s release. Six of the seven panel members have “substantial financial connections” to energy companies. […] “If effective environmental action is not taken today, the potential environmental consequences will grow to a point that the country will be faced a more serious problem,” according to the report.
Gas Fracking Poses Serious Environmental Risks, Panel Finds
CONTACT: EWG Public Affairs, 202-667-6982; leeann@ewg.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 11, 2011 Washington, DC – In a draft report on the increasingly controversial practice of shale gas drilling, the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board Subcommittee sidestepped the crucial question of whether hydraulic fracturing technology should remain exempt from most federal environmental regulation.
The panel, charged by Secretary Steven Chu with advising him on the safety concerns around the process known as “fracking,” called in general terms for more regulation of the rapidly expanding industry but did not address the seven exemptions granted by Congress from most of the nation’s major environmental laws. President Obama has said that he supports expansion of natural gas drilling as a relatively clean domestic energy source despite a rising tide of complaints about air and water pollution and community disruption caused by drilling activity across the country.
In calling for more transparency and better communication concerning the impact of fracking and horizontal drilling, which has allowed access to vast stores of gas locked in mile-deep shale and other rock formations, the 41-page report casts the environmental concerns over fracking as largely a public relations problem. In addition to its failure to address fracking’s unique freedom to operate free of federal laws that protect air and water quality and the safety of drinking water, the panel had nothing to say about the industry’s common practice of suppressing information about contamination incidents by requiring families seeking compensation or delivery of safe water to sign confidentiality agreements. A year-long investigation by Environmental Working Group this month revealed the existence of a long-forgotten federal report that documented cases of well water contamination and highlighted EPA investigators’ complaints that confidentiality agreements impeded their work. Homeowners whose well water has been contaminated have agreed not to discuss their situation publicly in return for getting the drilling company to provide them with clean water. “We will not see necessary changes in chemical transparency, air or water quality so long as the industry is able to keep playing by its own rules,” said EWG Chief of Staff and General Counsel Heather B. White. “Continuing to avoid federal environmental laws and allowing hush money to stand in the way of public understanding and thorough scientific investigation ultimately brings us nowhere.”
The message to voters in key swing states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Colorado, and North Carolina, appears to be that the Administration is not as concerned with the real problems their communities face as a result of fracking as it is with maintaining the industry’s growth and improving its ineffective communication.
