January 15, 2011 06:58 PM UTC

Opponents to Fracking Disclosure Taking in Big Money

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• by: Mike Collins

Disclosure seems a no brainer, I mean what could the natural gas industry possibly have to hide?  Mike Coffman is singing the tune of “no” for a mere $44,250.  Flushing twice on the West Slope should dilute the toxins just fine.

Congress isn’t going to regulate hydraulic fracturing any time soon. But the Department of Interior might. [1] For starters, Interior is mulling whether it should require drilling companies to disclose the chemicals they use to frack wells drilled on public lands, and already the suggestion has earned Interior Secretary Ken Salazar an earful.

On January 5, a bipartisan group of 32 members of Congress, who belong to the Natural Gas Caucus, sent Salazar a letter imploring [2] him to resist a hasty decision because more regulations would “increase energy costs for consumers, suppress job creation in a promising energy sector, and hinder our nation’s ability to become more energy independent.”

The article goes on to say that to maintain a competitive advantage they must keep it secret.  The fact that they are exempt from federal regulation under the Safe Water Act raises a big red flag for me.  Like why do they need an exemption?

Traditionally, the exact recipes of chemicals used in the fracturing process have been kept secret by the companies to protect their competitive advantage, and the fracturing process itself is exempt from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The disclosure issue has become a rallying point against natural gas development in the United States because scientists have repeatedly said that they can’t thoroughly examine water contamination cases for links to drilling because they don’t know what to test for.

Source:

http://www.planputnam.org/ntm/…