Drilling method's exemption challenged by bill

June 5, 2009

Drilling method's exemption challenged by bill
June 5, 2009
By: Michael Riley
U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette plans to introduce a bill next week that will regulate a widespread drilling technology that uses benzene and other toxic chemicals but also has been a main driver of the West's natural-gas boom.

Drilling method's exemption challenged by bill
June 5, 2009
By: Michael Riley
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette plans to introduce a bill next week that will regulate a widespread drilling technology that uses benzene and other toxic chemicals but also has been a main driver of the West's natural-gas boom.
The legislation is meant to address growing concern over the technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," which pumps tens of thousands of gallons of the chemicals deep into the ground. It is the only large-scale industrial process currently exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act.
The proposal, which would probably make the drilling of natural-gas wells more expensive, has split Democrats in Colorado's delegation. It has also drawn howls from an industry that has transformed the economies of much of Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and western Colorado.
To hammer home the point, industry officials released figures Thursday showing that natural-gas producers and their workers — with headquarters in Denver, DeGette's district — contribute $11 billion annually to the state's economy.
"Oil-and-gas companies are running a scare campaign," DeGette, a Democrat, said after a testy hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill in which industry officials warned that the impact of regulating hydraulic fracturing could be severe.
"I don't know why they are so opposed to it if the fluid is so safe," she said.
But other Democrats at the hearing strongly supported the current regulatory framework, in which states are left to regulate the process themselves. And Rep. John Salazar, D-Manassa, who co-sponsored an earlier version of the bill, now appears to be wavering.
"We need to recognize that developers also have legitimate concerns about maintaining their ability to extract this resource," Salazar said in an e-mail Thursday, suggesting that he might not support the bill in its current form.
Used for close to 90 percent of gas wells drilled in the U.S., fracking has been the subject of a growing number of anecdotes that show the chemicals can be highly toxic. DeGette said a nurse in Grand Junction became seriously ill after coming in contact with a worker sprayed with the chemicals, and ground spills have produced significant contamination in some states.
The chemicals used in the process are kept secret by many of the companies that use the process, including Halliburton, the massive oil-field services company. Evidence suggests that common components are diesel fuel and industrial solvents.
But Scott Kell, president of the Ground Water Protection Council, said that after media reports had suggested more than 1,000 incidents of contamination in six states, checks with state regulators in five of them couldn't confirm a single one. (Colorado regulators said they didn't have time to reply.)
Industry officials point out that the chemicals are injected at depths of more than 8,000 feet, several thousand feet below the water table, providing a massive buffer to contamination.
DeGette's legislation would remove the exemption under the Safe Drinking Water Act instituted under the Bush administration, effectively requiring new natural-gas wells to obtain permits from the Environmental Protection Agency to use the process.
That could cost operators $150,000 per well and take as long as two years, given the current permitting backlog, said Kathleen Sgamma, a spokeswoman for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States.
EPA studies under both the Clinton and Bush administrations found the process to be safe. But critics say it is hard to link potential impacts with what is such a widely used process because regulators don't have a firm idea what chemicals are being used and in which amounts.
"The problem is not natural gas or even hydraulic fracturing itself but the unregulated and unnecessary use of dangerous chemicals in the 'fracking' process," said Rep. Jared Polis, the Boulder Democrat who is sponsoring the bill along with DeGette. "We need to make sure that as the industry grows, it does not endanger the health of our communities or our precious water supplies."