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A top Environmental Protection Agency official is among those who will appear before a House panel next week regarding the agency’s controversial draft study suggesting a possible link between hydraulic fracturing and groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyo.
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee unveiled its witness list for the Wednesday hearing before its Energy and Environment Subcommittee. Paul Anastas, assistant administrator for research and development, will appear before the subcommittee, whose Republican members could grill him on the agency’s controversial draft study released in December.
EPA discovered synthetic chemicals associated with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids inside deep-water wells in the region. It immediately came under fire from Republicans and the oil and gas industry. Critics including Encana Corp., which owns the Pavillion gas field, called the study flawed and warned against overinterpreting it.
The EPA has warned its findings are far from final and are limited to the gas field it studied in Wyoming. The agency has put out a request for peer reviewers.
The hearing will come over a week after President Barack Obama vowed to support the ongoing natural gas boom but said he wants “to make sure that this is done properly and safely.” He said the Interior Department, in a new rule it’s currently writing, would require companies who fracture on federal lands to disclose the chemicals they use.
Administration officials say the rule also could set new requirements for well integrity on public lands that seek to protect groundwater supplies.
In hydraulic fracturing, mixtures of water, sand and chemicals are injected deep underground at high pressures to break up shale rock and free up trapped oil and gas. Environmentalists have long warned that the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing could contaminate local drinking-water supplies and that natural gas can pollute groundwater by leaking out of ill-designed wells.
The oil and gas industry has defended the practice, saying that there’s still no conclusive link between fracturing and drinking-water contamination and that the states should regulate the practice instead of the federal government. The industry has ramped up fracturing extensively in the U.S., helping fuel abundant natural gas supplies that have pushed prices below $3 per million British thermal units.
Here’s the list of other witnesses:
- Tom Doll, state oil and gas supervisor for the Wyoming Oil & Gas Conservation Commission. Doll is among those who raised concerns about the EPA draft study.
- Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs at the Western Energy Alliance, an industry group representing oil-and-gas companies that drill in the Western U.S.
- Bernard Goldstein, professor and dean emeritus at the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. He held Anastas’ position during the Reagan administration and has expressed concerns publicly about the safety of fracturing.
