New Gas Supplies Fracturing Policy

• Author: Margaret Kriz Hobson
• Position: Environment and energy writer for the National Journal
• Pages: 8-8

Page 8 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2010, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, Jan./Feb. 2010

New Gas Supplies

Fracturing Policy

A

promising new technology for

pulling natural gas out of deep

underground rock formations has

triggered a battle in Washington,

D.C., over whether federal regulators

or the states should oversee the meth-

od’s impacts on local drinking water

supplies.

Environmental advocates and local

citizens groups charge that the tech-

nology, called hydraulic fracturing,

has the potential to contaminate riv-

ers and aquifers. ey want Congress

to give the Environmental Protection

Agency the authority to set minimum

standards for the extraction process.

“ey don’t monitor local groundwa-

ter or do sampling so we really don’t

know if this process is safe,” says Bruce

Baizel, staf‌f attorney in the oil and gas

accountability project at Earthworks,

a public interest group. “e states are

uneven in how they regulate,” he says.

“We need a baseline from the EPA.”

Natural gas industry lobbyists and

the states oppose ef‌forts to increase

federal oversight of their business.

ey argue that federal controls would

cause energy prices to skyrocket, slow

down development of new gas f‌ields,

and block millions and possibly tril-

lions of dollars in economic benef‌its.

Despite industry assurances, Con-

gress recently called on the agency to

study the safety of hydraulic fractur-

ing. e request, authored by Repre-

sentative Maurice Hinchey (D-New

York), was including in an Interior

Department appropriations bill that

was signed into law. At the same time,

the House and Senate are considering

legislation that would allow EPA to

regulate the drilling technology under

the Safe Drinking Water Act, though

no action is expected during this Con-

gress.

e debate has heated up as the

natural gas industry is beginning to

tap into an enormous northeastern

f‌ield known as the Marcellus shale

formation, which stretches from New

York, through Pennsylvania and West

Virginia, and into three other states.

According to an Energy Department

report, the Marcellus f‌ield contains

an estimated 262 trillion cubic feet

of that can be extracted using current

technologies — enough to f‌ill national

needs for 10 years. “It’s a world-scale

gas formation,” says Lee Fuller, vice

president for government relations at

the Independent Pe-

troleum Association

of America. Fuller is

also head of Energy

In Depth, an industry

coalition that is f‌ight-

ing new regulations.

Ef‌forts to tap into

the Marcellus f‌ield are accelerating.

Natural gas companies drilled 257

wells in Pennsylvania from the time

hydraulic fracturing began there in

2005 through 2008. But this year

alone, the Pennsylvania Department

of Environmental Protection has is-

sued 446 drilling and 1,632 explora-

tion permits for the Marcellus f‌ield.

New York has imposed a drilling

moratorium until state regulations are

put in place. But natural gas compa-

nies are already lining up for drilling

permits in that state.

Getting natural gas out of the Mar-

cellus f‌ield isn’t easy. e formation

is located one to two miles under the

surface of the earth. Extraction com-

panies must bore down to the shale

and then angle the drill horizontally

for another mile. To dislodge the

natural gas from pockets in the hard

rock, the companies crack the shale

by forcing massive quantities of a wa-

ter-chemical mixture underground.

Despite the complexity, horizontal

drilling and hydraulic fracturing tech-

niques have paved the way for devel-

opment in areas that were previously

inaccessible.

Opponents charge that hydrau-

lic fracturing could potentially taint

nearby drinking water and contami-

nate river water. e water mixture

that natural gas companies pump into

the ground contains special “frack-

ing f‌luids” made up of chemicals that

some f‌irms have refused to disclose.

Residents living near the drilling sites

are concerned that those f‌luids could

cause health hazards.

But state regulators and industry

lobbyists insist that the safety issue

was put to rest in 2004 when the Bush

administration issued a report con-

cluding that hydraulic drilling “poses

little or no threat” to drinking water

supplies. Based on

that study, Congress

in 2005 barred EPA

from policing the

natural gas extraction

process.

Critics say that the

study was based on

limited research and erred on the side

of the industry. “ey conducted an

initial literature search and solicited

anecdotal comments,” says Earth-

works’ Baizel. “ere was supposed

to be a phase-two study that actually

examined the industry practices. But

that was never conducted.”

Kelvin Gregory, assistant professor

for civil and environmental engineer-

ing at Carnegie Mellon University,

said that the rhetoric about the safety

of hydraulic drilling is becoming in-

creasingly vitriolic. “e banter on

both sides is unhealthy. ey’re whip-

ping rocks at each other from across

the parking lot. ere is a need for

independent and objective science to

put the hyperbole to rest.”

By Margaret Kriz Hobson

Margaret Kriz Hobson is t he en vir on me nt an d

energy writer for the National Journal. She can

be reached at mkr iz@nationaljournal.com.

T F B

“ere is a need for

independent and

objective science to put

the hyperbole to rest”