New West Feature

Greens, Oil & Gas Rep Agree: Wyoming’s Groundbreaking Fracking Rules Working Relatively Well

By Brodie Farquhar, 10-22-10

	Drill rig on Pinedale Anticline gas field. Photo by Marty Maxwell/International League of Conservation Photographers.

A month and a few days after Wyoming started requiring drillers to list the ingredients of hydraulic fracturing fluids with drill permit applications, the process is, for the most part, going smoothly.

That’s the consensus opinion of conservation groups, an industry representative and of Tom Doll, supervisor of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

“It is working pretty well,” said Doll. “Most operators were well-prepared to comply with the new regulations.”

One hiccup in the process occurred when major drilling service companies operating in Wyoming got briefly caught between the state and their own suppliers wanting to keep ingredients a proprietary secret, said Doll. Two of the biggest service companies are Halliburton and Schlumberger.

“We’ve been doing a bit of educating,” Doll said, noting that two companies that specialize in blending fracking fluids for specific requirements are now applying for trade secret status before the commission.

“If the commission grants that status,” said Doll, “we’ll get disclosure on the ingredients and hold them confidentially.” If the state Department of Environmental Quality asks for the list, it will be released to DEQ, said Doll.

And industry doesn’t seem to be having problems with the new frack rules.

“I haven’t heard of anyone having problems,” said John Robitaille, vice-president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. He said it is perfectly legitimate for companies to try and protect trade secrets.

Hydraulic fracturing is a 60-year-old technique used by the oil and gas industry, to either enhance or initiate the flow of oil and gas from rock formations. Using proprietary recipes of water, silica sand and chemicals, fracking fluid is pumped under high pressure into rock formations, causing the rock to fracture. The fractures are kept open with the particles of silica and sand, allowing oil and gas to emerge from tight rock like sandstones and shales.

Deb Thomas, an organizer with the Powder River Basin Resource Council, said that from her perspective, “some companies have complied completely right,” while others have had drilling applications rejected until they came into full compliance.

Steve Jones, an attorney with the Wyoming Outdoor Council, cautioned some companies have been trying to skate by on the new fracking rules by listing ingredients by their commercial or function names.

“What the rules require is to list their ingredients by their CAS numbers,” said Jones.

CAS numbers are unique numerical identifiers for chemical elements, compounds, mixtures and alloys, all assigned by the American Chemical Society.

Thomas’ associate, Shannon Anderson, noted fracking ingredient lists are coming in on already-permitted wells that require additional fracking. No brand-new permit applications have been filed, she said, and there’s been nothing from coal-bed methane companies.

“These lists are confirming what we already suspected,” said Anderson. Lists have been shared with toxicologists and, so far, there have been no surprises. “We do need to push industry toward safer and cleaner chemicals,” Anderson added.

“My biggest concern is that while we’ve got these great, new rules, enforcement is a huge issue,” said Thomas. The commission only has 13 inspectors; Thomas worries that might not be enough as new, deep shale plays get rolling.

Doll said the O&G Commission had beefed up the number of inspectors during the coal-bed methane boom. “Any bureaucrat would want more people,” he said, but he’s impressed with how much his inspectors do and how they get around the state.

Besides, said Doll, for all the publicity that the Niobrara shale development play is getting, “they’re in wildcat, exploratory drilling mode right now. We’re a long way from full development.”

Time will tell whether the new fracking regs need to be tweaked. Wyoming Outdoor Council’s Jones already has a suggestion.

“Whenever possible, we should get a baseline on water quality before there’s any drilling or the use of fracking fluids,” he said.

Jones notes that as ubiquitous as fracking is now, it will be used even more widely as energy companies pursue deep oil and gas reserves in sandstone and shale. In these energy developments, said Jones, companies are drilling thousands of feet down and then thousands of feet out to the side, and then using fracking fluids and high pressure to crack the formations and release oil and gas.

There’s really no way to guarantee that fracking fluids can’t migrate into drinking water aquifers, he added.

Geologists and hydrologists acknowledge this uncertainty as the “black box” phenomena, whereby they know what goes into and what comes out of large blocks of underground material, but lack a complete understanding of what’s going on inside.

Even Doll acknowledges the inherent lack of knowledge in the process.

“There is uncertainty in drilling,” he said. “But what technology can tell us, he said, is that the pathway for pollution probably isn’t there,” referring to cemented casings and rock formations separated from aquifers.

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