April 13, 2011. Published in The Oklahoman, by Chris Casteel. Senate committee holds hearing on fracking. WASHINGTON - States have stepped up their oversight of hydraulic fracturing as the natural gas drilling boom in several regions of the United States has raised citizen concerns that drinking water may be endangered, officials told a Senate committee on Tuesday.
The most stringent restrictions are being put into place in states such as New York and Maryland, which have little experience with oil and gas drilling or the hydraulic fracturing process that the industry says has been used safely for 60 years.
"We are proceeding cautiously and deliberately and do not intend to allow drilling and fracking in the Marcellus Shale until the issues are resolved to our satisfaction," Robert Summers, acting secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
New York has a moratorium on drilling in the Marcellus Shale pending the development of state rules on hydraulic fracturing.
But officials from Oklahoma and Colorado told the panel that their states have been able to ensure the safety of the water supply without halting or slowing the unconventional drilling and hydraulic fracturing used to tap vast natural gas reserves.
Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Jeff Cloud said more than 100,000 wells in the state have been hydraulically fractured in the past 60 years.
During that time, he said, "there has not been a single documented instance" of contamination to groundwater or drinking water as a result of hydraulic fracturing.
Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, praised Oklahoma's regulations - updated in 2008 - and said Oklahoma had provided a model that could be used in other states.
David Neslin, director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, said the state updated its rules in recent years to provide more protection for drinking water and that other states were taking similar action.
Inhofe comments
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, said hydraulic fracturing was first used in Oklahoma in 1949. The process involves injecting water, sand and chemicals into rock to free trapped oil or gas.
Inhofe, the top Republican on the committee, read statements Tuesday from several state environmental officials that there had been no documented cases of contaminated water in their states because of hydraulic fracturing.
In order for hydraulic fracturing fluids to contaminate groundwater, Inhofe said, they would have to travel through a mile of solid rock.
"That fluid migration can't happen, and it doesn't happen," he said.
"Given these facts, what can possibly explain calls to regulate fracking from Washington, D.C.? It's simple: the Obama administration wants to regulate fossil fuels out of existence."
Fracking has received national attention and scrutiny in the last couple of years because of the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing that have tapped huge reservoirs of gas in the Marcellus Shale in the Northeast and other formations in Oklahoma and Texas and some Western states.
The process itself is exempted from some requirements of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, and some citizens, lawmakers and environmental groups have called for federal intervention to complement state regulations.
The Environmental Protection Agency is currently studying the process, but the agency already does have authority over the process when diesel fuel is used. And it has authority over the wastewater from oil and gas wells under varying circumstances.
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Link to the article here.
