US DOI fracking rule needs to be stronger: House Democrats

Washington (Platts)--26Aug2013/307 pm EDT/1907 GMT

A US Department of Interior proposal to regulate hydraulic fracturing falls short of recent state regulatory efforts and needs to be strengthened, top Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee said.

In a letter filed with Interior late Friday, six Democrats, including Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat and the committee's ranking member, took aim at what they see as weak rules on chemical disclosure and well safety for fracking on federal and Indian lands. The letter was among more than 175,000 comments filed on Interior's fracking rule, which has drawn criticism from energy firms as a potential impediment to new production, and from environmentalists who said the rule was largely inadequate.

In their letter, the House Democrats took aim at chemical disclosure requirements, which they called "shocking and offensive" because Interior's Bureau of Land Management would not be requiring disclosure of chemicals prior to fracking operations and would allow operators to have 30 days to report.

"Not only do the regulations allow this unnecessary delay, the substance of such a disclosure is significantly more obtuse," the House Democrats wrote.

In addition, the lawmakers said the BLM's proposed use of the website FracFocus was inadequate as a disclosure platform. FracFocus is a website that oil and gas producers voluntarily launched in 2011 to publicly disclose the names of the chemicals they use in their fracking operations.

"As it is a private website and not maintained by DOI, FracFocus is not subject to any open record laws and the public will only have access to posted information as long as FracFocus chooses to maintain it," they wrote. "The election by the DOI to use FracFocus may be described as a failure to provide for transparency."

The Democrats also said that a provision in the proposed rule would allow wells in the same fields to avoid regulation if a nearby well is deemed safe.

"The provision fails to account for the obvious fact that any well can have faulty design or construction, and that one well passing a safety inspection does not ensure that another well would do the same," they wrote.

The Democrats wrote that BLM should model their rules after certain, more stringent state regulations, such as new fracking rules in Illinois.

In addition to DeFazio, the letter was signed by Representatives Rush Holt of New Jersey, Grace Napolitano and Alan Lowenthal of California, Raul Grijalva of Arizona, and Matthew Cartwright of Pennsylvania.

Despite the tens of thousands of comments, the letter was one of the few from members of Congress.

Earlier last week, Wyoming Senators Michael Enzi and John Barrasso, both Republicans, and Cynthia Lummis, a Republican and Wyoming's lone House member, sent a letter which said the rule would further shift oil and gas development to private lands in the East and South.

Interior has yet to decide when it may issue a final fracking rule.

--Brian Scheid, brian.scheid@platts.com
--Edited by Derek Sands, derek.sands@platts.com

http://www.platts.com/latest-news/natural-gas/washington/us-doi-fracking-rule-needs-to-be-stronger-house-21472427