Waxman broadens onshore gas drilling probe, says companies don’t track key info

House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats are expanding their probe of a controversial natural-gas drilling method and alleging that drilling services companies do not track whether wells are located in underground drinking water supplies.

Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) sent letters Monday to some of the nation’s biggest energy producers — such as Exxon Mobil Corp. — asking about their use of “hydraulic fracturing.”

The letters to the 10 oil-and-gas producers say that service companies the producers employ did not have vital information the committee requested.

The letters are the latest step in the Democratic duo’s months-long probe of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which involves high-pressure injections of chemicals, water and sand to break apart rock formations and enable trapped gas to flow.

The technique has helped enable a boom in development of gas from shale rock formations in a number of states. The viability of shale gas has helped boost U.S. proven gas reserves to their highest level in more than 30 years, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

But the boom is also creating fears — which the industry calls overblown — about contamination of water supplies.

Waxman and Markey months ago sent letters to drilling services companies asking about their practices, and on Monday the lawmakers said the responses revealed information gaps.

“The Committee asked that each recipient of our February 18 and May 6 letters provide data on whether it has performed hydraulic fracturing in or near underground sources of drinking water as defined by the Safe Drinking Water Act. The hydraulic fracturing service companies informed us that they do not track whether the wells they fracture are located in underground sources of drinking water. They said that the operators of the oil and gas wells would be more likely to maintain the requested information,” Waxman and Markey said in a memo to other committee members.

The memo adds that they had also asked the service companies about recovery and disposal of water and other fluids that flow back to the surface of the wells.

“The recipients informed us that the well operators, not the service companies, are responsible for any flowback or water produced from the wells and therefore do not maintain information on the volumes or chemical contents of this waste,” the memo states.

The probe comes as several Democrats are floating measures that would tighten regulation of fracking. Bills introduced in both chambers would require EPA regulation of the practice under the Safe Drinking Water Act and disclosure of chemicals used.

But the industry says state regulations provide adequate oversight, and that a suite of new federal requirements would make many operations uneconomical. 

EPA has launched a major study of the water quality and health effects of the practice.

Update: Energy in Depth, an industry-backed group fighting new regulation of fracking, had this to say about the new Waxman letters:

“The basic geological reality of shale gas exploration is the formations we fracture are separated from the formations carrying potable underground water by thousands and thousands of feet — and millions and millions of tons — of solid, impermeable rock. If the chairman is looking for some additional information on that scientific phenomenon, or on the steps that operators take at every wellsite in America to ensure what happens inside the wellbore has no way of communicating with what occurs outside it, that’s a conversation we look forward to being part of,” spokesman Chris Tucker said.