Posts Tagged ‘fracking’
Last Rig Standing: the Stakes for February 7th Dallas Vote
Today, DMN Dallas City Hall reporter Rudy Bush wrote that the Exxon-Mobile gas drilling subsidiary XTO has decided to permanently withdraw its requests for gas drilling permits in the city. Previously, the company had said it was "suspending" activity on the permits.
With its decision, XTO becomes the second out of three gas companies to withdraw from drilling leases that were first signed with the City of Dallas in 2007. Chief Oil had already pulled out, apparently complaining that it was too hard to get a permit approved in Dallas.
That leaves only the three sites being pursued by Trinity East as the very last ones left over from the Wild West days of gas leasing in Dallas – the same sites that have been the subject of so much controversy since the Mayor unilaterally decided to push them through after Thanksgiving.
To summarize, Dallas citizens have beat back all but three pre-2008 gas drilling permit requests in order to make sure any drilling done in the city is implemented under a new, more protective, and as yet, unwritten, gas drilling ordinance.
That's why the February 7th "re-do vote" on the Trinity East permits at the City Plan Commission is a decisive one. That's why we keep asking for your help in winning it. We get rid of these three sites and we've managed to avoid the mistakes of just about every city west of Dallas over the past decade. We draw a line in the Shale.
We are three sites and one February 7th vote away from starting with a clean slate. Three sites and one February 7th vote away from not having to worry about "grandfathered" gas facilities. Three sites and one February 7th vote away from keeping Dallas responsible in its drilling.
All that's standing in our way is Dallas City Hall.
In contrast to what seems like a kind of nonchalant attitude by Mayor Rawlings in the DMN article, we know for a fact that he and the City Manager are launching a full court press to make sure the Trinity East permits get approved, despite their locations, pollutants and impact on public health. If the Plan Commission railroad job earlier this month didn't convince you, please look at what kind of legal back flips the city attorneys are doing to cover-up how bad the permits are.
Over this last week we've seen the city change its definition of what a compressor station is in reaction to discovering that it had one hiding in the Trinity East Elm Fork permit. What just last year had required a special zoning district to be built now no longer does. Now, the compressor station and refinery that Trinity East wants to operate are all just part of the "normal well head production" that every pad site has. Honest, that's what Dallas City Hall is saying – that a refinery and compressor station are now part of everyday normal pad site operation. Every well head needs one! But Dallas City Hall also says it has no way to distinguish between normal production equipment and anything bigger, including a miniature Texas City on the Trinity.
This interpretation of the current regulations was simply proclaimed by lawyers, not passed as policy. It has no basis in engineering or science or existing regulation. There are facilities much smaller than the planned Trinity East Elm Fork plant that are regulated as "compressor stations" and "processing plants" by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Dallas thinks it can downsize the pollution from these facilities just by changing what they call them.
That's how desperate they are to approve these Trinity East permits. It'd be laughable – if these things weren't being said by City of Dallas attorneys with straight faces in meetings with citizens.
It's about the process as much as the pollution now. City Hall is twisting the municipal machinery all out of shape in service to a single gas company. That's why we need you to come and stand with us on the 7th.
How Many Dallas Police Officers Does It Take To Approve An Illegitimate Gas Drilling Permit?
No punchline. Just wondering.
Thank You for Helping Us Show Some Green Muscle Last Thursday
Regardless of what else might transpire on the way to resolving the Trinity East gas permits, there is now one unintended, but indisputable, result. The environmental movement in Dallas is growing up.
Almost 100 of you came out during the middle of a weekday and made sure your public comments were heard, even as the City of Dallas used police to try and stifle them.
Tired of the Banana Republic abuse of government, the Orwellian hypocrisy, and the bold-faced lies used to explain the raw political power plays, you used your own bodies and voices to say enough is enough. You made your own raw political power play. You dared to push back. You publicly shamed the City. Out loud. You were so rude you had to be asked to leave the premises. Imagine!
That wasn't very Dallas of you.
Or was it?
You may or may not know that the Civil Rights movement came late to Dallas, and then not as a part of any national campaign, but from the grassroots up. There's a reason the late Rev. Wright has a freeway named after him. It's because he, along with other members of the black establishment, kept MLK and the national movement from coming to town during the 1960's.
It was only after folks like Peter Johnson, Domingo Garcia, Al Libscomb, the Medranos, and Diane Ragsdale started raising hell, and started getting thrown out of the same City Council Chambers Dallas environmentalists were thrown out of last Thursday that progress came in the form of single-member council districts and city projects in minority neighborhoods. Closed off from the power structure and negotiated change, they didn't have anything to lose in engaging in confrontational tactics with the City. Indeed the city didn't take them seriously until they started doing so – and suing in federal court.
Very few out of the hundreds that came down to City Hall to protest were tossed out. But the hundreds that came supported those being tossed out. Because they knew they had to finally stand up for themselves.
Last Thursday's police escorts out of the City Council Chambers were only the latest in along line of such escorts for people who feel like they didn't have any choice left. But it was the first time environmentalists had been the escortees. It felt like the first time the they'd said "we're not going to take it anymore." Thanks for helping us show some muscle as a community. While we may have lost the actual reconsideration vote last Thursday, your actions made sure that we won the battle over public opinion. If you don't believe us, take a look:
Dallas Morning News : Amid Cries of Shame, Dallas Reconsiders Gas Permits
Channel 11: Protesters Oppose New Life for Drilling Fracking Project
Channel 5: Neighborhood Association President Callas City Un-democratic and Un-American
KERA: Dallas "Re-do" on Gas Drilling Permits OK'd
Last Thursday's outcry should spur more public acts of indignation, as well as a new focus on city politics. There are city council elections this May. There are pro-drilling incumbents running. There's a chance to send them a message that's even louder than the one chanted last Thursday: "You lost."
Thursday's vote means that the City Plan Commission will now "reconsider" it's December 20th rejection of the Trinity East gas permits at its Thursday, February 7th 1:30 meeting back at City Hall.
Citizens won that December vote 7-5 with two members absent. We lost the reconsideration vote 6-5 with three members absent. Two members who voted against the permits in December voted for reconsideration. Two members who voted for the permits in December voted against reconsideration because the politics were now so rank.
What does it mean? Anything could happen on the 7th.
A second rejection of the Trinity East gas permits by the Plan Commission would kill the Trinity East gas permits permanently because it would then take 12 Council members to override such a rejection and there are not 12 members willing to approve them.
An approval of the permits by the Plan Commission would give a green light to gas drilling in parks, flood plains and near schools, overrule its December rejection, and send the requests to the City Council, where it would only take 8 votes to approve them, not 12.
So – everything is at stake on the 7th. Please mark it on your calendar now. And yes, we'll be sending out reminders. Because this is where we're we're drawing a line in the sand. This is where the abuse stops. This is where we stand up for ourselves and say "enough is enough."
Where Were You?
When the City of Dallas Decided
….to either let a vote stand, or steal it
….to defend air quality, or approve a new refinery that will be a top ten polluter
….to protect parks and floodplains, or make them industrial sites
….to listen to its residents, or a single gas company
The City Plan Commission Can Decide All These Things Today
Thursday 1:30 pm 6th Floor City Council Chambers
Dallas City Hall
1500 Marilla
Now is the Time for All Good Breathers to Come to the Aid of Our Air – And Your Rights
Stand Up for the Right to Speak Out
The fight over gas drilling in Dallas is now as much a about the democratic process as it is about pollution:
– Public meetings scheduled five days before Christmas in hopes of lowering turnout
– Hiding a huge compressor station and gas processing plant that will be the 10th largest air polluter in Dallas inside a "drilling permit"
– And now, they want to steal a vote citizens won in December through "reconsideration" of that vote a tomorrow's Plan Commission meeting…without any opportunity for public comment.
But we assure you. There will be public comment.
Help us protect your rights as citizens and breathers
Join us Tomorrow
Because some things just need protesting
Thursday 1:30 pm
6th Floor City Council Chambers Dallas City Hall
And Today… you can send an instant e-mail to the Dallas City Council and the Dallas Plan Commission telling them you don't want them to "reconsider" the gas permits that were denied in December
Do this right now. Please. Thanks
Guess What? That “Drilling” Permit is Really for a Refinery
Under the guise of "gas drilling," Dallas City Hall and industry are pressing for approval of a permit that would locate a gas refinery only 600 feet from the new Elm Fork soccer complex, and immediately give birth to one of the ten largest air polluters in the City of Dallas, as well as one of its most toxic.
"There's a huge toxic Trojan Horse hiding in what the City and Trinity East describe as just a gas drilling permit," charged clean air activist Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk. "In fact, the Elm Fork permit allows for the building of a gas refinery that houses at least three giant compressors as well as an entire acid gas removal unit that strips off hydrogen sulfide, one of the most dangerous substances in the gas patch."
A motion to "reconsider" the Dallas City Plan Commission's 7-5 December 20th rejection of the Elm Fork permit and two other Trinity East gas sites is being advocated by CPC Chair and Mayoral appointee Joe Alcantar at this Thursday's meeting. If successful, the "reconsideration" would require the CPC to hold a second hearing and re-vote on the permits less than a month after denying them.
Opponents say the move is an act of desperation on the part of the Mayor and City Manager to protect a secret deal that was made between the City and Trinity East when the company first paid for mineral rights leases on city owned land. In interviews, the Mayor himself has said that a "deal was cut." Residents say the public was left out of that deal.
But after making calls to City Hall, Schermbeck is convinced that no one in Dallas city government is aware that the "gas drilling permit" being proposed by Trinity East is actually a permit to build a large gas refinery in the Trinity River floodplains.
"They're in way over their heads. City attorneys are still describing this as a drilling permit, but that's not what takes up most of the acreage on this site – it's all about the refinery."
During the December 20th City Plan Commission hearing on the permit, Trinity East representatives stated that the three proposed compressors alone – huge locomotive sized diesel-powered engines that produce thousands of horsepower in order to move gas through pipelines – would release 25 tons of air pollution each every year for an annual total of 75 tons.
That number would immediately place the facility among the city's ten largest air polluters according to the latest state emission totals from 2010. It would join power plants, asphalt and roofing materials manufacturers, and chemical plants as one of the city's biggest "stationary sources" of pollution.
However, Schermbeck thinks Trinity is low-balling their total air pollution impacts by not including other on-site refinery sources like its battery of storage tanks and "acid gas removal" operation that's designed to strip dangerous hydrogen sulfide off of natural gas streams through a series of acid baths and heat.
Hydrogen Sulfide is a harmful and toxic compound. It is a colorless, flammable gas that can be identified by its "rotten egg" odor. This invisible gas is heavier than air, travels easily along the ground, and builds up in low-lying, confined, and poorly ventilated areas. It acts as a chemical asphyxiant through inhalation exposure and its effects are similar to cyanide and carbon monoxide, which prevent the use of oxygen.
The equipment to strip off Hydrogen Sulfide from raw gas is large, complicated and dangerous. Site plans show a 200 foot long "pipe rack" with at least 20 "point sources" or stacks, apart from the compressors, where pollution could be released into the atmosphere.
"This isn’t a facility you want near parks or kids," said Schermbeck. "Yet, the City of Dallas seeks to put it just 600 feet away from its new huge soccer complex that’s meant to attract thousands of kids for hours every week."
Such a gas facility also challenges regional smog goals. A 2012 study from the Houston Advanced Research Center found that "routine emissions from a single gas compressor station can raise ozone levels by 3 parts per billion (ppb) as far as five miles downwind, and sometimes by 10 ppb or more as far as 10 miles downwind."
The Trinity East numbers don't reflect the release of greenhouse gas pollution either, which could be enormous from a facility the size of the refinery being proposed. Gas processing plants can release 20 to 80,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. By comparison, the entire inventory of greenhouse pollution from all Dallas industrial sources in 2005 was 25,000 tons a year.
None of this information was brought up at the December 20th CPC hearing on the Elm Fork permit because the permit request in its current form was only a couple of weeks old when it went to the CPC and the compressors were a last-minute addition to an older, pending request.
Citizens were lucky to get a crowd to even show up five days prior to Christmas, and Schermbeck believes no one at Dallas City Hall bothered to notice that one of the so-called drilling permits was a refinery permit.
"Because it had no expertise of its own, and it was ignoring citizens, City Hall was completely reliant on the company's version of what the permit was for, and Trinity East probably didn't want to admit they were stuffing one kind of permit inside of another. The City didn't perform its due diligence. The result is that it's been completely played by the company."
Schermbeck recounted that he could find no one at City Hall who had any idea of how Trinity East arrived at their "25 tons a year" air pollution figure, knew what kind of specific pollutants that tonnage included, or, most importantly, thought it would be good to know this information before the city handed the company a permit to operate an inner-city gas refinery.
"Mayor Rawlings and the City Manager seem content to give Trinity East a blank check to pollute Dallas air," he said.
A closer look at the refinery site plans also reveals equipment that is fundamentally at odds with the way Trinity East and the gas industry has been portraying what kind of gas Dallas has underneath it.
Up to now, gas operators have been saying Dallas gas is "dry" and without a lot of extra hydrocarbons found in "wet gas" further west. But the acid gas removal units and Glycol conductors proposed for the Elm Fork refinery are built for wet gas.
Schermbeck suggests that perhaps either the City has been mislead about the nature of the gas it owns or the nature of the Trinity East site. He theorized that instead of the Dallas refinery being built for dry Dallas gas, it might be aimed at wet gas coming from the west.
"Dallas would get none of the royalties, but all of the pollution."
Mad? Go to this link now and send an e-mail to the Dallas City Council and City Plan Commission that says you oppose these gas permits and the "reconsideration" of their denial by the Commission:
https://www.downwindersatrisk.org/featured-citizen-action
Do it Now.
Another Win for Your Lake of Air
 Late Thursday night Downwinders at Risk, as part of the Dallas Residents at Risk alliance, won a victory that citizens weren't supposed to win.
Immediately after Thanksgiving, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and City Manger Mary Suhm had plotted to speed the approval of the first gas drilling permit in Dallas. One left over from 2008 that would be exempt from the new drilling ordinance now in the works. One that included a compressor station and allowed for the drilling in city parks and flood plains. City Hall believed it had greased the tracks with threats of gas company lawsuits and given the City Plan Commission no choice but to approve the permit. Just to be sure, they scheduled the Plan Commission vote for December 20th, a time guaranteed to result in smaller crowds of opposition at City Hall. But something happened to make things go a little off-script. Responding to calls for help, enough Dallas residents showed up to articulately speak against the permit for more than an hour. They represented hundreds of neighborhood groups, the environmental community and public interest organizations like the League of Women Voters. If the raw numbers didn't match earlier attendance, the people that did show up represented real constituencies numbering in the thousands. When the vote was finally called at 7:30 pm Thursday evening, we won 7 to 5. The "grandfathered" gas drilling permit would not be approved by the Plan commission. To overturn this decision, the City Council must find 12 votes – a super majority – in favor of the permit at its mid-January meeting. This was not the result Dallas City Hall was counting on the Thursday night before Christmas. But thanks to supporters like you, it was the result that happened. Just as we mobilized opposition to Midlothian cement plant pollution, and helped organize Frisco residents to close down an obsolete and dangerous lead smelter, Downwinders is drawing a line in the Shale in Dallas and leading a push back against irresponsible urban drilling. And, against very long odds, we're winning….again. We do this to protect your lake of air. You ingest an average of 200 gallons of water every year, or about five bathtubs' worth. But you inhale approximately two million gallons of air every year – your own small lake of air.
In DFW, chances are your lake of air is going to have smog in it, along with some soot, some Sulfur Dioxide, Volatile Organic Compounds, as well as an assortment of other manufactured If your tap water was dirty brown and had lots of particles in it, you'd probably choose to drink bottled water. But when the air is dirty brown and has lots of particles in it, your lungs don't have a choice about the air they can use. Downwinders at Risk is here for one reason and one reason only: to defend your lake of air. Whether your air is threatened by smelters, gas rigs, cement plants or too-common smog, we're working to clean it up. For our efforts, Downwinders was proud to receive the first-ever GreenSource DFW award for Outstanding Grassroots Group in 2012. Looking ahead to 2013, your lake of air faces new threats, including worsening new permits by the Midlothian cement plants to burn large volumes of industrial garbage, and indiscriminate aerial spraying of pesticides by local governments. Downwinders at Risk will fight these threats with the combination of good science and citizen activism that's made us the foremost clean air group in DFW. But we need your help to do it. Our work depends on contributions from folks like you who appreciate what we do. Our annual budget is usually only around $30-50,000. We do all the work we do with an amount of money larger groups spend annually on office furniture or travel. We don't get money from a parent group in Washington or New York. Our board members are all from DFW. They're ordinary citizens like you, not rich patrons. Small donations make up a very large percentage of what we take in every year. We couldn't do what we do without you. In the time it took you to read this message, you've inhaled a couple of more gallons of air. Don't you think it should be clean air? You keep supporting us; we keep working for you – and surprising the opposition with victories that citizens in Texas just aren't supposed to be able to pull-off. That's our promise. Thanks for your consideration and Please click here to safely and securely donate online, or send checks to Downwinders at Risk, PO Box 763844, Dallas, TX 75376. Your donation is greatly appreciated and will be wisely spent. Thanks.
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Australian Study: Fracking Releases 3X Normal Greenhouse Gases
S
cientists from Southern Cross University in Australia found levels of greenhouse gases in that country's largest fracking play that were three times normal background levels, and higher than those recorded anywhere else on the planet.
“The concentrations here are higher than any measured in gas fields anywhere else that I can think of, including in Russia,” Damien Maher, a biochemist who helped conduct the tests, told the Sydney Morning Herald."
Air contaminants being monitored included methane ad carbon dioxide.
"Some scientists surmise that the excess levels are due to seepage of the gas through displaced soil and aquifers that carry “fugitive” emissions released by fracking a mile or more below ground. Carbon cycle expert Peter Rayner of the University of Melbourne told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the elevated gas levels were probably due to “emissions that escape from the intended process of production.”
Not surprisingly, there are health complaints form residents living in and near the wells in the play.
"Helen Redmond, a physician with the New South Wales chapter of Doctors for the Environment, cited rising complaints of rashes, nausea, headaches and nose bleeds among people living close to the Tara gas fields.”Hydrocarbon exposure cannot be ruled out as a cause without much more comprehensive investigation,” she told the Sydney newspaper…."
Back here in DFW, Dallas is still stalling on writing a new gas drilling ordinance that citizens want to prompt the nation's first local policy of off-setting greenhouse gas pollution. And many observers believe DFW just failed its second clean air plan in five years because of the impact of rising gas industry pollution.
“You got your fracking fluid in my cement!” Kiln Disposal of Drilling Wastes.
It was inevitable. Like chocolate and peanut butter. Like rats and the plague.
Two notoriously polluting industries find solace in each other's ability to scratch each other's dirty, irritating itches.
Cement plants are always looking for ways to get paid to burn other people's garbage. It takes a lot of energy to fire a 20-foot flame at 2000 degrees 24/7 in order to cook rock. It also takes a lot of "additives". That's why cement plants started burning other companies' hazardous wastes in the 70's and 80's. Because of a loophole in federal law, 50-year old cement plants with no modern pollution controls were allowed to charge for burning highly toxic wastes from refineries and chemical plants that were otherwise supposed to be going to fully-regulated hazardous waste disposal sites.
But those official sites cost more to use, and the cement plants cost so little. That's right, cement plants charged these polluters to dispose of their wastes, but not more than the incinerators or landfills with all the bells and whistles of "regulation." In this way, cement plant operators double dip – they don't have to shell out as much for fuel they'd have to buy, and they get paid a profit to be a Dispos-All for industry. And by the way, industry calls this "recycling."
Because of the persistence of Downwinders at Risk and other citizens' groups, this loophole has been slowly but surely closing, meaning less and less hazardous waste is being burned in US cement kilns. From a peak of almost 30 kilns burning toxics in the in the 1990's, we're now down to less than a dozen. But to take the place of this lucrative lost market, cement plants across the country are turning to "non-hazardous" waste to burn. Tires, but also municipal garbage, plastic wastes, used oils, shingles, car parts and other kinds of wastes. TXI's new permit allows the burning of a dozen different kinds of industrial wastes at its huge kiln in Midlothian.
While these wastes are classified as "non-hazardous," when they come in the front gate of a kiln, it turns out they can release a lot of toxic pollution when they're incinerated. Metals like lead and cadmium and arsenic that don't burn (consult your High School physics textbook) are present. So are PCB's that have Dioxin. But burning plastic or chlorinated wastes means you can generate Dioxins even without having them present in the wastes to begin with. There's also Mercury in some of the wastes from cars that TXI and other kilns wants to burn.
So you have the release of exactly the same kinds toxic pollution you were concerned about with the burning of officially-classified hazardous wastes. But now, it's taking place "legally," – or at least it is until the law hasn't catches-up with the consequences of this kind of low-rent disposal operation. Have a waste you want to get rid of? Send it to your local neighborhood cement plant. They'll burn anything.
Enter the Natural Gas industry. They've been getting a lot of bad PR lately about their own waste problems. They have billions of gallons of what they like to call "fracking fluid," and what the rest of us would call "hazardous wastes" that's so toxic it must be disposed of in a deep underground injection well after only being used once, isolated from the rest of the earth's environment forever. But because of some well-placed loopholes, this "fracking fluid" is not considered "official" hazardous waste under federal rules. It will just unofficially injure you with its toxins.
As it turns out, injecting billions of gallons of "non-hazardous" toxic liquid under extremely high pressure near deep underground faults is a sure way to generate earthquakes. And that's what's been happening. Not only in North Texas, but other places where there are lots of injection wells. There was another small one last night in Midlothian, right down the highway from a large deep injection well near Venus. Along with the fact that most fracking fluid cannot be or is not "recycled" now and can only be used once before disposal, the fracking fluid generated by the gas industry has turned into an embarrassing sore point.
If only there was some other way the gas industry could dispose of their drilling wastes. If only they could appear to be more environmentally-friendly and save money at the same time……
And there you have the genesis of a happy marriage made in polluter heaven. I have a facility that needs stuff to burn and mix, and I'm not that particular about what the stuff has in it. You have lots of stuff that needs to be burned, er, "recycled" and you spend less when you send it to a facility like mine not specifically built to do that job. Everybody wins!
"The use of drilling wastes and muds is most preferable in cement kilns, as a cement kiln can be an attractive, less expensive alternative to a rotary kiln. In cement kilns, drilling wastes with oily components can be used in a fuel-blending program to substitute for fuel that would otherwise be needed to fire the kiln.
Cement kiln temperatures (1,400 to 1,500 degrees C) and residence times are sufficient to achieve thermal destruction of organics. Cement kilns may also have pollution control devices to minimize emissions. The ash resulting from waste combustion becomes incorporated into the cement matrix, providing aluminum, silica, clay, and other minerals typically added in the cement raw material feed stream.
Recent studies have shown that it is feasible to use such drilling waste as substitute fuel in a cement plant. The drilling mud can be processed by a centrifuge to separate remaining water, compressed by a screw into a solid pump and conveyed.
The cement companies can contribute to sustainability also by improving their own internal practices such as improving energy efficiency and implementing recycling programs. Businesses can show commitments to sustainability through voluntary adopting the concepts of social and environmental responsibilities, implementing cleaner production practices, and accepting extended responsibilities for their products."
For veterans of The Cement Wars of the 1990's this rhetoric is certainly recycled. Cement Plants are Long, Hot and Good for America! Cement plants are the best disposal devices ever. They just make everything go "poof." That's why they were built specifically to dispose of wastes of all kinds – oh wait. nope. They were built to make cement. But how great is it that they can make an entire sideline business out of dealing with, and spewing toxic chemicals into the environment?
Even though the specific article deals with the Middle East, is there any question that a cement plant in Texas or Pennsylvania, or Ohio won't try to make the case for accepting drilling wastes, if they haven't already? The permit modification TXI received to burn plastics and car wastes from the State of Texas required no public notice at all. Citizens only found out after the fact. There are only about a dozen players left in the international cement market. If they're discussing this in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, chances are they're talking about it in Zurich, Heidelberg, and Midlothian too.
Developments like this are why its important to tell the EPA it's making a big mistake to delay and change its cement plant toxic emission rules. The industry's "inputs" are changing rapidly. Two years is too long. We need the protection of those new rules now. If you haven't already clicked and sent EPA an e-mail saying you oppose this delay, the "official" comment period is over, but it couldn't hurt for the folks in DC to see your "unofficial" opposition.
It's also a lesson in why "everything is connected." Don't live near a gas well? If you live in DFW, chances are you live downwind of a kiln that could be burning the wastes of gas wells.
When the Gas Industry Says “Full Disclosure,” It Only Means 65%
According to an EneryWire analysis, "at least one chemical was kept secret in 65 percent of fracking disclosures" by companies that publicly disclosed the ingredients in their hydraulic fracturing fluid.
The study supports the claims of critics including Downwinders, that companies who say they're fully disclosing the contents of their fracking fluids aren't really doing so. Downwinders has joined other members of the Dallas Residents at Risk alliance in calling for the City of Dallas to require true full disclosure of all fracking fluids in order to better protect first responders.
Industry claims it has a right to prevent the public, including doctors, firefighters, and police from knowing certain "trade secret" ingredients in their fracking fluids and every clearinghouse for ingredient information – including the much-heralded one established in Texas – allows for the use of this exemption. This trade use exemption is what the EnergyWire analysis tracked.
"It's outrageous that citizens are not getting all the information they need about fracking near their homes," said Amy Mall, who tracks drilling issues for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Companies should not be able to keep secrets about potentially dangerous chemicals they're bringing into communities and injecting into the ground near drinking water."
But companies say they spend millions of dollars researching and developing new formulations of frack fluid and shouldn't have to give away their secret recipes.
"In just the past 18 months, the industry has spearheaded an effort that took us from an idea on paper about disclosure to a fully functional and user-friendly disclosure system," said Steve Everley of Energy in Depth, a campaign of the Independent Petroleum Association of America. "That kind of commitment and progress cannot be overstated in a discussion about industry disclosure."
This is very simple. If your a Dallas firefighter responding to an accident at a gas facility site, you need to know what chemicals are on site, how much of those chemicals are there, and where they're stored. No exceptions.