The Texas Railroad Commission approved a rule Tuesday requiring oil and natural gas drillers to disclose most of the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing.
The rules also will require companies to disclose the amount of water used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process in which chemicals, water and sand are pumped at high pressure into underground rock formations to aid the flow of oil and gas to the surface.
Drillers will be required to disclose fracking chemicals and water volumes on a website, www.FracFocus.org.
Drilling companies, however, don’t have to list chemicals deemed trade secrets unless the Texas attorney general or a court determines otherwise, the commission said in a statement.
Landowners also can seek to have “trade secret” chemicals disclosed, the new rule says.
The new rule will be required for wells permitted on or after Feb. 1.
“Texans can be assured they will know more about what is going into the ground for fracturing than what goes into a can of soda,” Railroad Commission Chairwoman Elizabeth Ames Jones said.
Environmental groups praised the measure.
“We’re especially pleased with how quickly the commission has moved to adopt these rules,” said Scott Anderson, senior policy adviser in the energy program at the Environmental Defense Fund. “The legislation didn’t require the Railroad Commission to be this far along until 2013. They moved much more quickly than they were required to by the legislation.”
In hearings on the pending rule, one environmental group recommended that the website www.FracFocus.org be searchable.
The commission agreed, and said it will work to improve the site.
“We commended them for that,” Anderson said.
David Weinberg, executive director of the Texas League of Conservation Voters, called the new rule “a critical step.”
“We still need to do a better job of drilling safety and making sure that we’re capturing as much emissions coming out of wellheads and other places in the transmission system. But this is a very important step that will allow scientists and public health officials to know what’s going into wells.”
The new rule drew industry support, perhaps to ease Texans’ concerns. As drilling has expanded, including in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas, landowners have voiced concerns about the effect of fracking chemicals on drinking water and the quantity of water used in fracking.
Also Tuesday, Colorado approved fracking disclosure rules Tuesday that are more stringent than Texas’ rule.
Colorado will require energy companies to disclose the concentrations of all chemicals in hydraulic fracturing.
In Texas, drillers have to disclose concentrations only for chemicals that the federal government judges to be hazardous in the workplace.
Also, if Colorado drillers claim a trade secret, they still must disclose the ingredient’s chemical family. In emergencies, companies would have to tell health care workers what those secret ingredients were.
Colorado’s rules take effect in April.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Stoopid libruls. OH WAIT!
“The three-member commission was initially appointed by the governor, but an amendment to the state’s constitution in 1894 established the commissioners as elected officials serving overlapping six-year terms. No specific seat is designated as Chairman; the Commissioners choose who among them will serve as Chairman. As of June 2011, the commission’s members are Chairman Elizabeth Ames Jones and Commissioners David J. Porter and Barry Smitherman. All three members are Republicans. There is currently one vacancy resulting from Michael L. Williams’s resignation from the commission in March 2011 until Governor Rick Perry appointed Smitherman to Williams’ seat in July 2011.”
The active language here is that the operators “don’t have to list chemicals that are deemed trade secrets” unless the Attorney general (whose campaign contributions are generously made by those operators) or a friendly court (usually a Midland court) determines the information is not subject to trade secrete protection! It is a step in the right direction but how is it going to be enforced? What about the oversight?
What about oversight? Go on to the website, and do the oversight!!
Complain publically if someone pumps something you don’t like. (I doubt many people even know what people pump, much less what is in a can of soda but hey)
Don’t worry. In fact, prepare to be bored. There really isn’t anything nasty or unusual in this stuff (if memory serves, it’s mostly diesel)