The House Energy and Commerce Committee announced Thursday it is investigating the impacts of hydraulic fracturing in gas drilling, due to concerns about potential contamination pf drinking water with brine and chemicals. The committee will examine both potential impacts on the environment and human health, Ayesha Rascoe and Tom Doggett of Reuters report. "As we use this technology in more parts of the country on a much larger scale, we must ensure that we are not creating new environmental and public health problems," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the committee chairman, told the reporters. "This investigation will help us better understand the potential risks this technology poses to drinking water supplies and the environment, and whether Congress needs to act to minimize those risks."
Some members of Congress are pushing for legislation that would give the Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate fracking, a drilling process that injects a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into rock formations at high pressure to force out oil and natural gas, Rascoe and Doggett report. The committee asked for information from eight companies: Halliburton, BJ Services, Schlumberger, Frac Tech Services, Superior Well Services, Universal Well Services, Sanjel Corporation and Calfrac Well Services, that use the technique. (Read more)
The committee is particularly interested in the use of diesel fuel after documents from BJ Services and Halliburton showed they continued to use diesel even after reaching a voluntary agreement with the EPA to stop using it, Ben Casselman of The Wall Street Journal reports. BJ Chief Financial Officer Jeff Smith told Casselman the company had "inadvertently used diesel on a couple of jobs" but had since fixed the error. "You wonder what the real purpose is here when the track record on natural-gas operations has been stellar," Erik Milito, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, told Casselman. (Read more)
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