State environmental officials have scheduled a public hearing Tuesday in Baton Rouge to discuss a proposal to require oil and gas exploration and development companies to disclose the chemicals being used to extract natural gas from deep underground. The technique, called hydraulic fracturing, uses small explosives to create small cracks in underground geological formations thousands of feet below the ground.
A mixture of water, sand and chemicals is then pumped into the cracks to increase the flow of gas to the surface.
The proposal on the table would require operators to disclose the composition and volumes of those chemicals, either to the state or on a publicly accessible registry. State officials say the move is intended to boost transparency in the process, which has shaken public confidence in some parts of the country. Some environmentalists and scientists have voiced concerns about the potential of shallow drinking water aquifers becoming contaminated and the unknown effects of using millions of gallons of groundwater and surface water in the fracturing process.
"There's been kind of a national controversy about what's in the frack fluid, so it's a disclosure rule," Louisiana Commissioner of Conservation James Welsh, whose office regulates drilling, said in a recent interview.
State officials have spent six months pursuing the rule, Welsh said, while stressing that his office has not received reports of groundwater contamination problems in Louisiana from fracking operations.
After the hearing, conservation officials will review public comments and file a report with the state Legislature. Lawmakers could then review the rule and hold additional hearings, if deemed necessary. Welsh expects the process to wrap up by the fall.
The disclosure proposal, modeled after similar efforts in Texas and Arkansas, is "going to be, I think, fairly standard compared with other states," Welsh said. "Nothing that I know of stands out as being different."
The rule would apply to both new wells as well as those where a well has been drilled but fracking has yet to occur by the time the rule passes. It stipulates that operators disclose several aspects of the operation, including types and volumes of the fracking fluid; a list of additives used in the operation, such as acid or biocide; chemical ingredients contained in the fracking fluid; and concentrations of each chemical ingredient and the associated chemical families.
Under the proposed rule, in order to stake a claim that a specific chemical's identity is a trade secret, operators will need to include a statement saying so.
Welsh compared it to the secret ingredients in Coca-Cola. "It's easy to find out what's in Coke, but you don't know exactly how to mix the Coke," he said. "That's about what the situation is. Our rules require that we will know what chemicals are in the frack fluid."
In 2010, there were 817 wells drilled in the Haynesville Shale formation in northwestern Louisiana, according to the state, which the federal government said this year has become the nation's most productive gas field.
Source: Nola
No comments:
Post a Comment