Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) reintroduced legislation last Tuesday to increase regulations on hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking).

The Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, also known as the FRAC act, would repeal an exemption for hydrofracking in the Safe Water Drinking Act (SWDA) and require companies to disclose the chemicals they use during the hydrofracking process. Casey originally introduced the bill in June 2009, but the bill died in committee.

Existing SWDA regulations designed to keep underground injection from harming drinking water supplies exclude “the underground injection of fluids or propping agents (other than diesel fuels) pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations related to oil, gas, or geothermal production activities” in the definition of “underground injection.”

That exemption is a sticking point among critics of hydrofracking, who believe it exempts hydrofracking from all SWDA regulations. Those critics have dubbed it “the Halliburton loophole” because it came about during the 2005 Energy Policy Act promoted by former Vice President and former Halliburton executive Dick Cheney.

However, industry groups view the exemption much more narrowly, saying the bill didn’t exempt hydrofracking from the law because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) never regulated hydraulic fracturing under the SWDA. Those groups cite cases where companies have been sanctioned under other provisions in federal law.

In addition to ending the exemption, the FRAC Act would also require companies to give state agencies a list of the chemical additives – but not the “proprietary chemical formulas” – used in the hydrofracking process. Each state would then be required to make that information available online to the public. The bill would also require companies to disclose proprietary information about chemical additives if a state or an “appropriate treating physician or nurse” decided that it needed to know the make up and mixture of the additives in order to respond to a medical emergency.

The bill has seven co-sponsors and a companion bill in the House.

Casey also reintroduced two other natural gas related bills that stalled in previous sessions. The Marcellus Shale On-the-Job Training Act would train Pennsylvanians for jobs that might otherwise go to out-of-state workers, while the Faster Action Safety Team Emergency Response Act, or FASTER, aims to improve emergency response at well sites.

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