The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“Trade secrets” loophole causes concern
Gunnison County is taking a seat at the table with “party status” in the discussion about the disclosure of hydraulic fracturing fluid components and will have a chance to comment as the state starts a new rule-making process related to the disclosure issue with a hearing on December 5.
The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) started talks with representatives of the industry and conservation groups this fall about drafting disclosure requirements that would give the public some insight into the components of the fluid, which is forced with extreme pressure into gas-bearing rock thousands of feet underground, to extract the gas.
While the concoctions serve many functions in the extraction of natural gas and their composition can change based on the make-up of the gas-bearing rock, the ingredients of hydraulic fracturing fluids have run the gamut from the benign to the caustic and carcinogenic, like benzene and diesel fuel, according to industry and environmental groups.
While the COGCC and industry officials contend the practice has been a means of getting natural gas out of the ground for more than 40 years, new technology is forcing the fluids farther underground. According to the COGCC, without recent breakthroughs in fracking technology, natural gas wouldn’t be available in any viable quantity.
But the greatest advances of the last ten years that have made natural gas accessible, and its extraction lucrative, have gone hand-in-hand with an increasing number of anecdotes from around the county related to well water going bad amid encroaching natural gas development.
While the Environmental Protection Agency wrestles with its own understanding of the impacts hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has on groundwater with an initial study due in 2012, fracking fluids continue to be exempted from the reporting requirements in several federal laws and remain largely held by service companies like Halliburton and BJ Services as “proprietary.”
Under mounting public pressure, the COGCC is answering calls to produce the list of chemicals that may someday find their way into the public’s water supply.
In a “statement of basis,” the COGCC says, “Members of the public have expressed interest in learning the identity of chemicals in hydraulic fracturing fluids,” adding that the commission is following the lead of members of industry, which have voluntarily released the components of its fracking fluids, and other states, like Texas, that have already implemented reporting requirements of their own.
And while the COGCC says it will “require service companies and vendors [such as DuPont] to disclose all known chemicals in hydraulic fracturing fluids to operators and require operators to disclose such chemicals to the public via the website FracFocus.org,” it gives industry the opportunity to share that information directly with the COGCC or health professional, showing “respect to an operator’s trade secrets.”
At a meeting Tuesday, November 15 Gunnison County Commissioner Hap Channell expressed his frustration at the “trade secrets” caveat, which he referred to as a “gap you could drive a locomotive through.”
“This commissioner is very distressed over the trade secret loophole,” he said. “I see, as a result of that portion of the proposed rule changes, that virtually [the entire disclosure requirement is] ineffective … But that’s just one commissioner’s view.”
It was also the view of High Country Citizens’ Alliance (HCCA) public lands director Matt Reed, who told the commissioners, “Governor Hickenlooper’s intention [in this rulemaking] was to bring transparency to oil and gas operations and it’s HCCA’s position that this proposed rule fails and undercuts that objective with ‘trade secrets’ being the most glaring example of why.”
Those comments will be passed along when local governmental designee and county attorney David Baumgarten weighs in on the discussion at the hearing on December 5.
