the fracking mixture used by oil compa- nies is not clear-cut because it involves proprietary issues, said Hull with WSPA. An inquiry by WSPA revealed 628 wells in California where fracking occurred in 2011. Hull acknowledged the charge by industry to get after the oil and natural gas in existing wells has caused a rift in some areas. “Clearly it has caused dramatic changes in communities,” he said. “Change upsets people.”
Fracking is done responsibly and has not caused any documented cases of contaminated groundwater thanks to the oil industry’s due diligence, Hull said. “Industry has a lot experi- ence regulating and dealing with water and oil,” he said. “There is a lot of experience in how to safely handle the material.”
Fracking protest in Culver City.
NRDC, which in July released an issue brief critical of the current fracking disclosure rules, says maintain- ing the status quo is not an acceptable option.
Watch a presentation from NRC’s 2012 conference on health impact assessments of shale gas extraction, www.iom.edu
“It is essential that the public, and health and safety professionals, have full access to information on the constituents of hydraulic fracturing fluids and waste, and the details of how and where fracturing was performed,” says the brief, State Hydraulic Fracturing Disclosure Rules and Enforcement: A Comparison. “Often fracking takes place in close proximity to homes, schools, and workplaces. Yet, without require- ments for disclosure, members of the communities in which it occurs have no right to information about the pro- cedures or chemicals involved.” Bills that would have placed a moratorium on fracking and required the disclosure of the chemicals used in the process failed this year in the Legislature. Fremont Democratic Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, whose bill would have required disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking, said at the GRA symposium his intent was to make sure “basic information is avail- able to the public.”
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“It’s apparent to me we need comprehensive understanding of the entire process so it seems that fracking disclosure is long overdue,” he said. Several states have enacted regulatory oversight of fracking or are proposing to do so. In Wyoming, companies are required to report the list of chemicals used in the fracking mixture, though any parts that are considered trade secrets are protected from public disclosure under the state’s open records law.
A Shaky Situation? In addition to the concerns about potential impacts to water quality, opponents of fracking say the disposal of fracking wastewater through under- ground injection causes minor earth- quakes.
The National Research Council (NRC) has investigated the issue, concluding in a June study that frack- ing “has a low risk for inducing earth- quakes that can be felt by people but underground injection of wastewater … has a higher risk of causing such earthquakes.” The study, Induced Seismicity Potential in Energy Technologies, was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. It says that “although only a very small fraction of injection and extraction activities at hundreds of thousands of energy development sites in the United States have induced seismicity at levels that are noticeable to the public,” seismic events “caused by or likely related to energy develop- ment” have been recorded in several states, including California, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.
The earthquakes referred to have not been in any way catastrophic but “they raise some concern about additional seismic activity and its consequences in areas where energy development is ongoing or planned [and] further research is required to better understand and address the potential risks associated with induced seismicity,” according to the study. The NRC study notes that while the mechanics of induced seismic activity