No Need to Regulate Gas Fracking, Says Incoming Republican

December 1st, 2010 by Susan Kraemer

The Utah Republican who will oversee the Interior Department next year took time today to bash potential new disclosure rules that would require, for the first time, that companies practicing the controversial drilling method called hydraulic fracturing will have to say what’s in the nasty stew they are injecting near major freshwater aquifers, to extract the gas.

Disclosure would finally end the “Halliburton exemption” that Cheney won, allowing the gas industry to keep secret from the public what they use to inject into shale in order to force out natural gas. If the EPA and the Dept of the Interior are successful, gas fracking companies like Exxon and Halliburton would have to begin to account for any potentially harmful action they take that might affect water supplies, just like any other company does.

There has been widespread news of of tap water lighting on fire as a result of aquifers becoming polluted with fracking liquids in regions like Pennsylvania. Gasland, a documentary about fracking has mobilized people to its dangers.

Recently protesters in New York were able to force the state legislature to put a six-month moratorium on issuing new permits for gas fracking in New York’s portion of the Marcellus Shale, and investigating the dangers first. And it is not just New York state. Both the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency are saying that they are about to begin requiring disclosure of the composition of fracking fluids.

Between the two agencies, it looks increasingly likely that the gas fracking industry is finally going to be regulated, just like any other industry that wants to put mystery ingredients dangerously close to major freshwater aquifers.

But one party is sticking up for polluter rights.

Today, Representative Rob Bishop (R-Utah), the incoming Republican on the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee held a press conference to forbid disclosure because “there is no reason the federal government should impose additional regulations and red tape on our nation’s domestic energy producers.”

It is not too long ago that Cheney was telling us to coweri in terror, certain that some foreign brown A-rab would come over here and poison up our water. But I guess it doesn’t matter if an oil company does it.

Image: Gasland
Susan Kraemer@Twitter

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Tags: Cheney, Fracking, Halliburton exemption, polluters, Rep. Rob Bishop, Republican

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

Pingback: Hydraulic Fracturing: The Dirty on Natural Gas « Being Green
Dory

of course the Gas-Oil-Petroleum (GOP) party members would pooh-pooh things like safety – following regulations will cost their master’s money, and that will mean less money for GOPers bribery – err, campaign coffers
pjc

I wonder how many of the shale gas haters routinely buy Liquid Plumber and pour toxic chemicals down their drain just to clean out a little clog.

Shale gas drilling is regulated at the state level. There is no need for Federal regulation, since there are far more polluting industrial and recreational activities that receive no Federal regulation as well.

Showing a picture of a flaming water tap is a nice stunt, and a good little piece of propaganda. But anyone who has ever lived in a rural area will tell you that all sorts of well contamination can occur without drilling, including methane contamination.

Bottom line – shale gas drilling, while not perfect, can generate electricity for more cleanly than coal. So long as coal is used for 50% of the electricity in this country, any reasonable enviromentalist would embrace any reasonable alternative to coal. Sadly, the environemental movement is more about grandstanding than it is about generating reasonable solutions.
- Ryan
  
  Watch the documentary, find the sources on the web, it’s not grandstanding, it’s real.
Bailey Condrey

Once again an emperial member of Congress puts his foot down to protect a hazardous practice that does nothing for the health and safety of this country’s people.

It is the same lack of regulation and forethought that brought us the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Perhaps Rep. Robert Bishop (R-UT) was in a coma for that four-month period.
- Ed Swanson
  
  Right on.
  Unfortunately it is over the head of the Boobgeoise.
http://www.ecogreenies.com Green Directory

We need to take this gas problem more seriously and take better steps.
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This goes to show how insane the the American public is, we are turning over the keys to the keys to same store, that in 2004 they robbed the store and then set fire to it as they left. America don’t squall when the republicans turn your state into a waste land.
David M

You never cease to amaze me with your pseuo-journalism. Good story until : “It is not too long ago that Cheney was telling us to coweri in terror, certain that some foreign brown A-rab would come over here and poison up our water.” You really spoil an otherwise very informative web site. Like dog shit on a golf green.

And, for god sake, get a spell checker or at least learn to use the one you have.