Oil and gas service companies injected tens of millions of gallons of diesel fuel into onshore wells in more than a dozen states from 2005 to 2009, Congressional investigators have charged. Those injections appear to have violated the Safe Water Drinking Act, the investigators said in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday.
...concerns have been growing over the potential for fracking chemicals — particularly those found in diesel fuel — to contaminate underground sources of drinking water.
“Whether the E.P.A. has the chutzpah to try to impose retroactive liability for use of diesel in fracking, well, everyone is in a wait-and-see mode. I suspect it will have a significant fight on its hands if it tried it do that.”
Two years later, when Congress amended the Safe Water Drinking Act to exclude regulation of hydraulic fracturing, it made an express exception that allowed regulation of diesel fuel used in fracking.
Why?
The diesel-laced fluids were used in a total of 19 states. Approximately half the total volume was deployed in Texas, but at least a million gallons of diesel-containing fluids were also used in Oklahoma (3.3 million gallons); North Dakota (3.1 million); Louisiana (2.9 million); Wyoming (2.9 million); and Colorado (1.3 million).
Everything's bigger in Texas...
No permits for diesel-based fracking have been sought or granted since the Safe Drinking Water Act was amended in 2005.
The attitude reflected in that O&G attorney is eerily reminescent of all the ganster movies where the criminal enterprise was so powerful (i.e. corruption, intimidation,payoffs, etc) that it felt and viewed itself as even more powerful than the government ---of,by,and for the People.
ReplyDeleteThat's chutzpah, indeed. Or as we non northeastern types would put it, they have some balls.