Finally, no summary of energy events on Capitol Hill would be complete these days without mention of hydraulic fracturing.  Unfortunately, the news isn’t particularly positive with the introduction in both the House and the Senate of bills to repeal the exemption for hydraulic fracturing that the IOGCC worked so hard to get included in EPACT ’05.  The House Bill is HR 2766 and the Senate Bill is S. 1215.  They are both called the “Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act”.  Sponsored by Representative DeGette from Colorado in the House and Senator Casey of Pennsylvania in the Senate, the bills in addition to repealing Section 322 of EPACT ’05, would also require discloser of “the chemical constituents (but not the proprietary chemical formulas) used in the fracturing process.”  These bills were introduced within days of a hearing held on June 4, 2009, by the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources of the House Committee on Natural Resources.  The subject of the hearing was “Unconventional Fuels, Part I: Shale Gas Potential” at which our own Lynn Helms of North Dakota testified.  An audio recording of the hearing as well as a copy of all of the testimony presented, including Lynn Helms’ can be found at the Subcommittee website.