Natural-gas industry unhappy with proposed broad scope of EPA study of hydraulic fracturing

An Environmental Protection Agency study into the effects of hydraulic fracturing on drinking-water supplies could examine the entire "lifecycle" of the process, say preliminary documents outlining the study's scope. The oil and gas industry has voiced strong disapproval, saying the plan goes too far, Abraham Lustgarten of ProPublica reports. Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, is a drilling technique where thousands of gallons of a pressurized mixture of water, sand and other materials are injected into wells that turn horizontal, creating small cracks in dense shale and releasing gas.

Fracking has garnered attention as the process has been used to open vast U.S. shale gas reserves while reports of drinking water contamination associated with the drilling have popped up across the country. In the documents EPA said looking at the impact from the start to the end of the process "can help policymakers understand and make decisions about the breadth of issues related to hydraulic fracturing, including cross-media risks and the relationship to the entire natural-gas production cycle." Lee Fuller, vice president of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said a formal response to EPA that the plan "goes well beyond relationships between hydraulic fracturing and drinking water."
EPA began public hearings today in Washington to nail down the scope of the study. Under the Bush administratiion in 2004, it examined fracking in a study that has been criticized for its limitations. "When we did the 2004 study we were looking particularly for potential for impacts from hydraulic fracturing fluid underground to underground sources of drinking water," Cynthia Dougherty, EPA’s director of the Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water, told Lustgarten. "So it was a much narrower focus." The new study is to be completed by the end of 2012. (Read more)