Producers said they were encouraged Friday when Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, the top scientific expert in the Obama administration, expressed support for hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracing), which is being used to stimulate production from an increasing number of shale natural gas wells.

“We agree with…Chu, who at a Department of Energy roundtable last week said hydraulic fracturing was safe and that lawmakers should be cautious in their efforts to restrict it,” said the American Petroleum Institute (API), which represents major producers.

Chu told reporters, “The question is, can you do this right so it [hydrofracing] doesn’t leak into the water table? I think you can.” However, he conceded “can you do it incorrectly and start to pollute water tables, yes.

“There’s a hundred ways to mess up something. But a lot of it is, for example, making sure that as you go through a water table level to go deeper that the seal around the water table is intact and remains good…And so that means you have to be very careful about that…I think it can be done responsibly and the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] and other agencies will be looking to ensure that it can be done safely and responsibly,” he said.

“Yes, I think it is possible to do this [hydrofracing], but again you don’t want to be mucking with shale that is very, very close to a water table, or if there is not a very stable fault line.”

Questioned about lawmakers’ attempts to ban hydrofracing, he said, “If it [oil and gas] can be extracted in an environmentally safe way, then why would you want to ban it? I’d rather say let’s go down the path and show that it [hydrofracing] can be done in an environmentally safe way. And then you make sure there are safeguards and a measurement to do that.”

Hydrofracing involves the injection of fluids into wells at extremely high pressures to crack underground formations and stimulate the flow of oil and gas. More than 90% of oil and gas wells in the United States employ hydrofracing.

Hydrofracing activities currently are regulated by individual states. There is a debate going on over whether Congress should pass legislation to regulate hydrofracing under the federal government. Producers and their hydrofracing activities are now exempted from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), and they want it to stay that way.

“Hopefully Congress will listen to what he [Chu] has to say on the matter,” said Lee Fuller, vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA).

“I think [Chu’s comments] certainly are consistent with what producers have said about hydrofracing,” Fuller said. API, IPAA and other producer groups contend that hydrofracing does not harm drinking water and that stripping producers of this exemption would stunt natural gas production, particularly from shale gas plays. Environmentalists on the other hand argue that hydrofracing threatens water supplies.

“Unnecessary additional regulation of this practice would only hurt the nation’s energy security and threaten our economy, especially since studies estimate that up to 80% of natural gas wells drilled in the next decade will require hydraulic fracturing,” API said.

“Hopefully this will be a chance for the Energy Department to be more engaged in the issue.” Fuller said the Department of Energy historically has been an advocate for U.S. energy development, and he believes that’s a role the department should play with respect to hydrofracing.

Last June Senate and House Democrats introduced bills to repeal the SDWA exemption for hydrofracing. The legislation also would require oil and natural gas producers to disclose to the EPA the chemicals they use in their hydrofracing processes (see Daily GPI, June 10, 2009). Energy analysts generally believe there is a low probability that Congress will repeal the SDWA exemption for hydrofracing by the end of this year.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 clarified that hydrofracing was not intended to be regulated under the SDWA, which seeks to protect the public water supply from toxic contamination. The oil and gas industry is the only industry exempted from the SDWA.

The House last June also voted out a spending bill that calls on the EPA to study the risks of hydrofracing to the nation’s drinking water (see Daily GPI, June 29, 2009).

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