Energy groups and environmental activists are staunch adversaries in the hydraulic-fracturing debate, but some from the two sides are banding together in hopes of stepping up industry safety and regulation. "For environmentalists, it’s an opportunity to stiffen standards for a technique that is increasingly used nationwide and could help boost domestic supplies of a cleaner burning power source," Jennifer A. Dlouhy of the Houston Chronicle reports. "For the industry, it’s a chance to counter a major PR problem that threatens to undermine support for domestic natural gas production through this method and could drive bans on its use."
"The new project is still in the very beginning stages, with the Environmental Defense Fund and Houston-based Southwestern Energy at the core," Dlouhy writes. "More than a dozen other companies and environmental groups have been approached about joining the discussion, and several are now part of the talks to develop model regulations that participants say will be 'as environmentally protective as reasonably possible.'" The discussions build on months of talks between Mark Boling, executive vice president of Southwestern Energy, and Scott Anderson, a senior policy adviser for EDF.
Boling and Anderson expect "a final proposal, which could be ready next year, will deal with a raft of subsurface issues, from the composition of fracking fluids to the integrity of underground wells," Dlouhy writes. The coalition has included developing new standards to ensure the integrity of wells, given explosions and groundwater contamination linked by some to natural gas wells, high on its priority list. A similar coalition helped craft guidelines for the capture and storage of carbon dioxide, but Anderson notes CCS was a new technology. "It wasn’t polarized," he told Dlouhy. "This is much harder to do in a collaborative way." (Read more)
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