Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has accused the Bush administration of submitting altered data to Congress to minimize the environmental risks of hydraulic fracturing in oil and natural gas production.

The alleged revised information, which addressed benzene concentrations from hydraulic fracturing on drinking water sources, was favorable to Texas-based Halliburton Co., a leader in fracturing technology with close ties to the Bush White House, Waxman charged. Vice President Dick Cheney was chairman of the company before he entered politics.

“This incident requires immediate investigation,” he said in a seven-page letter to Administrator Christine Todd White of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “Congress needs to be able to rely on the technical and scientific information provided by federal agencies. It is hard to do so, however, when technical and scientific data that has been carefully assembled over several years is suddenly cast aside as soon as it becomes inconvenient or embarrassing. Yet that is exactly what appears to have happened in the case of hydraulic fracturing.”

The data supplied to Congress was at odds with less-favorable benezene information that EPA provided to congressional staff during an earlier briefing in mid-September, Waxman said. Staffers sought the data to “better understand this issue” of hydraulic fracturing, which is being considered as part of omnibus energy legislation (H.R. 4). House-Senate negotiators are conferring on a provision in the Senate energy bill that would require the EPA to study hydraulic fracturing to determine whether it endangers underground drinking water sources and, therefore, should be subject to federal regulation.

Oil and gas producers are opposed to efforts to regulate hydraulic fracturing at the federal level. They contend that current state regulation of the activity is sufficient, and shouldn’t be changed.

Under hydraulic fracturing, producers use pressurized water to fracture formations — such as tight sands — so that oil and natural gas can flow freely into wells.

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