A House panel Wednesday grappled with concerns that chemicals used in 'hydraulic fracturing,' a process to boost oil and gas production, could pollute nearby drinking water or be released into the air and sicken local residents. 'Oil and gas companies can pump hundreds of thousands of gallons of fluid -- containing any number of toxic chemicals -- into sources of drinking water with little or no accountability,' said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. In hydraulic fracturing, a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is injected into a well at high pressure to crack underground rock formations and allow trapped oil or -- more typically -- natural gas to escape. The technique is commonly used in coal bed methane, shale and tight sand fields, where getting to the hydrocarbons can be difficult. Hydraulic fracturing already has been used on more than a million wells nationwide, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group. And industry experts estimate oil-field-services firms will use this technique on up to 80 percent of new gas wells drilled over the next decade. In 2004, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency examined the use of hydraulic fracturing fluids in coal bed methane wells and concluded they posed a minimal threat to underground sources of drinking water. Since coal bed methane deposits typically lie relatively close to the surface, they were thought to be the most likely to cause a problem for drinking supplies. A critic within the EPA, however, called the study 'scientifically unsound,' Amy Mall, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the panel Wednesday. David Ivanovich reports in the Houston Chronicle Oct. 31, 2007.
Read it here: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/5262979.html (VIA sej.org)
Read it here: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/5262979.html (VIA sej.org)