Contrary to what passes for common knowledge, the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing has never been regulated by the federal government, asserts Chris Tucker, a spokesman for a pro-industry group.
Tucker works for for Energy In Depth, an educational campaign made up of about 20 independent oil and gas producers. Before he joined that outfit, he was the communications director for former US Representative John Peterson, the Pennsylvania Republican who made increasing offshore drilling a national issue.
Tucker's target is the Fracking Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act of 2009, aka the FRAC Act. The bill's two primary co-sponsors, Democratic US Representatives Diana DeGette of Colorado and Maurice Hinchey of New York, say the bill woud repeal a portion of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that exempted hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," from regulation under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
"Hydraulic fracturing has never been subject to the Safe Drinking Water Act, making it both physically difficult and semantically impossible to 'subject' it 'once again' to an act of which it was never the object of regulation in the first place," Tucker said in a statement this week. "Unfortunately, this error in understanding appears to be common, especially among those who believe that, since fracturing earned an 'exemption' from federal regulation in EPAct iit must be the case that fracturing was covered by federal statute previous to that."
EPAct "simply clarified the position of Congress with respect to whether hydraulic fracturing was ever intended to be regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act," he said. "It was not -- a judgment supported in full by the history of SDWA."
Tucker also pointed out that the proposed FRAC Act -- which arose out of concerns that chemicals used in fracking pollute drinking water -- "is about EPA regulation, not disclosure -- with section 2(a) of the bill clearly amending SDWA to include the regulation of hydraulic fracturing under its portfolio. With SDWA regulation comes EPA permit-authority of the process, a prospect that then-EPA administrator Carol Browner admitted was unnecessary in 1995."
Browner, incidentally, is now assistant to the president for energy and climate change in the Obama administration.
Leave a comment