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November 17, 2011 10:42 PM UTC

Industry Says: "Trust Us"

  • 8 Comments
  • by: OurColorado

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

As profitable as it is, the oil and gas industry is getting killed on the public relations front. The culprit, as everyone knows, is fracking. When fracking is in the news, oil and gas companies are on the defensive. It’s hard to win when you’re pumping toxic chemicals into the ground and not even telling the public what they are.

In August Gov. Hickenlooper stepped into the fray, speaking up in support of industry telling the public what chemicals they’re using for fracking:

[T]he industry needs to be transparent. It needs to demonstrate, beyond a doubt, that [contamination] doesn’t happen. [Transparency] creates a tremendous show of good faith and shows that the industry cares.

With a new fracking disclosure regulation now under review at the oil and gas commission, we have an opportunity to demand industry disclose the harmful chemicals they use. But an odd thing is happening on the way to full disclosure: a huge trade secret loophole threatens to cloud transparency.  

Under the current proposal, companies technically have to make public the names of their fracking chemicals, but if they simply declare them trade secrets, they’re off the hook. Companies don’t have to justify or certify their trade secret claims, and no one is going to review them. Trade secret exemptions are automatic for each and every claim that is made.  

If the chemicals frackers are using truly cause no harm to the water we’re drinking and air we’re breathing, it should be easy for industry to let us know what they are. The oil and gas commission should insist on full disclosure and not simply allow industry to bully their way into the role of arbiter on what citizens have a right to know in the name of public health. Disclosure on the honor system just isn’t going to get the job done.      

 

Comments

8 thoughts on “Industry Says: “Trust Us”

  1. Knock your socks off.

    https://www.hydraulicfracturin

    note:  

    All FracFocus well site information is voluntarily provided by participating oil and natural gas operators. Wells hydraulically fractured after January 1, 2011 will be added to the database over time.

    See the full list of participating production companies

    1. but it doesn’t really solve the problem — it’s still industry trying to quiet complaints by voluntarily disclosing some of the chemicals they’re using…they’re still not telling us everything, and under current rules (and this proposed rule) there’s nothing to compel them to disclose anything they decide they don’t want to tell us. We could just…trust them…but history and common sense tell us reasonable disclosure requirements are probably a better way to go.

  2. then the regulation is just a cover for O&G continuing to take a crap on residents near their wells.

    If trade secrets are really a problem, then a non-industry commission (any group of chemist types should do) should be set up to review the trade secrets in secret and release a simple “does or does not contain toxic chemicals” result.  No numbers, no names of substances – pass or fail.

  3. Now that big-time drilling is coming to the Front Range, I think we’ll see some real action. It doesn’t matter so much when it happens to the Western Slope, but when it’s close to home for metro residents, it stirs things up.

    When even El Paso County is making noises about imposing its own oil and gas regulations, it shows the issue is fast reaching a policy-changing critical mass.

    1. Yup.  An analogy:  Cotter Corp has been fouling the water, air and soils near Canon City since the late 1950’s.  But now that they’re messing with a major Denver-area water supply by contaminating tributary water at the Schwarzwalder mine in Jefferson County, well, hey, we have a problem!

  4. The O & G industry should not, nor should any other industry, be trusted to police itself.  Capitalism only works well when there are some external controls.  

    And, if there is really no problem with frack fluids, why is there not just a control that says that each fracking company has to apply a chemical ‘marker’ in all the frack fluids they pump into the ground… a marker that would last, say, 100 years.

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