![]() ![]() Efforts to close the Halliburton loophole OGAP’s review of relevant data on hydraulic fracturing suggests that there is insufficient information for EPA to have concluded that hydraulic fracturing does not pose a threat to drinking water. As reported in Our Drinking Water at Risk, we found that EPA removed information from earlier drafts that suggested unregulated fracturing poses a threat to human health, and that the Agency did not include information that suggests fracturing fluids may pose a threat to drinking water long after drilling operations are completed. The Oil and Gas Accountability Project (OGAP) has conducted a review of the EPA study. In March of 2005, EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley found enough evidence of potential mishandling of the EPA hydraulic fracturing study to justify a review of Wilson’s complaints. In an October 2004 letter to Colorado’s congressional delegation, Wilson recommended that EPA continue investigating hydraulic fracturing and form a new peer review panel that would be less heavily weighted with members of the regulated industry. The 2004 EPA study has been called “scientifically unsound” by EPA whistleblower Weston Wilson. The EPA also concluded that no further study of hydraulic fracturing was necessary. The EPA completed its study in 2004, finding that fracturing “poses little or no threat” to drinking water. Meanwhile, in 2001, a special task force on energy policy convened by Vice President Dick Cheney recommended that Congress exempt hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. ![]() The primary goal of the study was to assess the potential for fracturing to contaminate underground drinking water supplies. In 2000, in response to the 1997 court decision, the EPA initiated a study of the threats to water supplies associated with the fracturing of coal seams for methane production. This decision followed a 1989 CBM fracturing operation in Alabama that landowners say contaminated a residential water well. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit (Atlanta) ordered the EPA to regulate hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Nor do companies have to monitor water quality when there are drinking water formations in close proximity to areas where hydraulic fracturing occurs. Several oil and gas producing states have regulations governing some aspects of hydraulic fracturing, but they rarely, if ever, do they require companies to provide detailed information on types and quantities of chemicals being used, and whether the amount injected underground returns to the surface or remains underground.Īdditionally, in most states companies do not have to prove that fractures have stayed within the target formations. Halliburton staff were actively involved in review of the 2004 EPA report on hydraulic fracturing. This exemption from the SDWA has become known as the “Halliburton loophole” because it is widely perceived to have come about as a result of the efforts of Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force.īefore taking office, Cheney was CEO of Halliburton - which patented hydraulic fracturing in the 1940s, and remains one of the three largest manufacturers of fracturing fluids. The oil and gas industry is the only industry in America that is allowed by EPA to inject known hazardous materials - unchecked - directly into or adjacent to underground drinking water supplies. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) does not regulate the injection of fracturing fluids under the Safe Drinking Water Act. ![]() Despite the widespread use of the practice, and the risks hydraulic fracturing poses to human health and safe drinking water supplies, the U.S. ![]()
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