Washington (Platts)--10Aug2011/322 pm EDT/1922 GMT

On the eve of the first set of recommendations on hydraulic fracturing from a US government body -- a document that will probably drive any immediate federal action regarding the practice -- a group of 28 US scientists on Wednesday called for the Department of Energy's panel's chairman, former CIA Director and MIT professor John Deutch, to step down because he sits on the board of directors of two energy-related companies.

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu named a panel of seven experts to a Natural Gas Subcommittee to his own Scientific Advisory Board this spring, and tasked them with making recommendations to instill public confidence in fracking and shale gas extraction. Their recommendations will be released Thursday.

Those recommendations will mark the first time a federal body has looked at fracking's effects on the environment and on public opinion.

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A US Environmental Protection Agency study on the effects of fracking on drinking water commenced this spring but isn't scheduled to release interim results until 2012, with a final report scheduled for 2014.

The 28 scientists -- including Cornell University's Robert Howarth, who published a study this spring saying that methane leaks from gas extraction and transmission made the commodity a more potent greenhouse gas threat than coal -- echoed earlier arguments by environmental groups that Deutch and five of the other six members had financial ties to the energy industry and couldn't be relied upon to make objective decisions.

"In our work," the scientists said, "we believe in reducing individual biases in evaluating the merits of scientific of technological ideas. The current panel does not meet this standard. Six of the seven members have current financial ties to the natural gas and oil industry."

"The committee appears to be performing advocacy-based science and seems to have already concluded hydraulic fracturing is safe," they noted.

The scientists said that the experts EPA chose for its study were vetted to ensure those scientists had no ties to industry, "we would like to see similar standards for the Energy Department's Natural Gas Subcommittee."

They called for Deutch, who holds a seat on the board of oil service company Schlumberger, as well as a seat on the board of LNG terminal operator Cheniere Energy, to step down immediately.

They also demanded that the panel be expanded to include more "independent" members and rely less on testimony and more on peer-reviewed scientific research.

The subcommittee's report comes after a summer of quickly assembled public meetings in Washington to hear from industry experts, state regulators, and environmental groups; as well as a contentious public hearing in Washington County, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh, where panel members heard from residents in the booming southwest portion of the Marcellus Shale.

The Environmental Working Group, which from the subcommittee's first hearing objected to the composition of the group because of links to energy companies, released the scientists' letter Wednesday and renewed its call for Deutch to resign, saying he was paid more than $1.4 million by Schlumberger and Cheniere between 2006 and 2009.

Ironically, while Schlumberger has an obvious interest in the growth of fracking as a seller of field services, including fracking services, the huge amounts of US natural gas released by horizontal drilling and fracking have badly dented Cheniere's original business plan, which anticipated LNG imports making up what was, five years ago, the shortfall between US gas supply and consumption.

Cheniere is now in the process of revamping its operations to transform its Gulf Coast terminals so they can export US gas.

The only panel member the scientists and EWG had no difficulty with is Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp.

--Bill Holland, bill_holland@platts.com