Recently, the Houston Chronicle published an op-ed by Lance Brown titled "Time for the EPA to stop putting politics before facts." Readers should beware the author is the Executive Director of the Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy (PACE), a 501(c)(4) organization that parades itself as an environmentally-minded organization, but is really a front agency for Alabama Power Company, Southern Company and coal companies.

On its website, PACE states that it’s part of Working People for Fair Energy (WPFE), which is another front group with close ties to industry to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from reducing children’s exposure to toxic coal ash.

PACE would like us to believe that clean air is far too expensive and that the EPA is preventing any new wells from being drilled. In reality, Texas is issuing more permits than ever. In 2011, Texas issued 22,480 drilling permits, compared to 18,029 in 2010 and 12,012 in 2009.

PACE claims the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) is an example of EPA’s attempts “to crucify energy producers in our state.” The truth is that the CSAPR will improve air quality and public health, increase protection for sensitive ecosystems and improve visibility in state parks. Up to 1,704 lives will be saved in Texas and the state’s total health benefits will be up to $14 billion annually. Many companies across the country, including Houston-based Dynegy, support the rule and are already in compliance.

PACE has a constitutional right to trot out the discredited argument that we must choose between health and our jobs. But they should at least be honest about who they represent.

 This commentary was originally posted on the EDF Energy Exchange Blog.

The American Natural Gas Association (ANGA) released a paper in March titled “Texas Natural Gas: Fuel for Growth,” to a lot of press, and rightly so.  The paper correctly cites several benefits of using and producing natural gas in Texas: it is produced in-state, has water use and air-quality benefits when compared to coal and helps to fund state and local governments through taxes. 

Unfortunately, the paper also makes some claims that are difficult to take seriously; perhaps the first warning sign should be that while the paper was presented as an economic analysis, the authors have no economic credentials.  Dr. Michael J. Economides, a chemical and biomolecular professor at the University of Houston, and petroleum engineering consultant Philip E. Lewis spend little time worrying about the details in this report, serving up a heaping helping of “number salad.”

For instance, the $7.7 billion “loss” is calculated by projecting the potential use of gas in Texas, if it had followed the national trend, against the actual use.  But in looking at the data, it’s not clear that the Texas fuel mix ever tracked the national fuel mix.  Even more importantly, looking at the authors’ own slides, Texas uses 20% more natural gas in its fuel mix than the nation.  If anything, the national fuel mix is following the trend set long ago by Texas —adding more natural gas and wind, while decreasing coal output.

What might shock the authors is that natural gas consumption in the electric power sector has increased by around 5,000 one thousand cubic feet of gas (MCF) since 2006, 800 MCF in transportation and nearly 10,000 MCF in the industrial sector. 

There are so many misleading statistics and inaccuracies that we could practically write a report on the report, but instead I’ll just focus on one aspect that stands out in particular. 

When it comes to comparing natural gas to coal power, the authors are quick to cite the many local benefits of using natural gas energy produced in Texas: it’s cleaner than coal and creates local jobs and a local tax base.  Wind energy has largely produced the same benefits: local wind power has brought jobs and a growing tax base and population to rural Texas counties that “had seen consistent, significant population losses since 1950.”  On top of the economic development benefits, where natural gas beats coal in reducing pollution, wind energy beats both by reducing pollution basically to zero.  But when it comes to discussing any of these benefits from wind energy in the report, the silence is deafening. 

Natural gas is reshaping our energy landscape.  And, done right—with the proper, mandatory environmental safeguards in place and reduced methane leakage rates—compared to coal plants, natural gas power plants offer other distinct air quality benefits.  It emits less greenhouse gases than coal when combusted and avoids mercury and other dangerous air pollutants that come from coal.

However, the same – and more – can be said about wind energy and Texas’ potential clean energy resources, including solar and geothermal power, among others.  Rather than pitting our local clean energy resources against each other as this report does, we should seek to expand and diversify our clean energy mix, reaping health, environmental, economic and security benefits.

(Credit: www.houstontomorrow.org)

White Stallion Energy wants to build a 1,320 MW power plant in Bay City, Texas and claims that its plant will not harm human health. Recently, White Stallion filed a challenge against the EPA to rollback the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rules that protect people from toxic air pollution. Why would this power plant fight against these rules? Because this plant plans to emit toxins into the air that harm public health. White Stallion cannot meet these health protections in the MATS rule, so they are fighting against the rules.

The MATS rule places the first-ever federal limits on mercury and other toxic air pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants in the United States. These standards provide vital health protections for millions of Texans, especially infants and children, from the largest sources of toxic air pollution. When implemented, these standards will annually prevent up to 11,000 deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, 130,000 asthma attacks, over 500,000 missed work days due to illness and over 3 million unhealthy air days. These protections are valued at $37 billion to $90 billion each year they are carried out.

Coal- and oil-fired power plants are the nation’s single largest manmade source of major toxic air contaminants, responsible for half of all mercury pollution, 77 percent of acid gases, and 62 percent of arsenic emissions. Mercury exposure can cause brain damage in infants and can affect children’s ability to walk, talk, read and learn.  Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of babies are born each year with potentially unsafe levels of mercury in their blood.

White Stallion’s COO, Randy Bird, claims that “the new source levels [for mercury] are beyond detectable limits”. This is simply untrue. Many coal-fired plants are already achieving the mercury standards in the proposed rule and are in-fact exceeding the standards by a significant margin. Additionally, many states have made progress on reducing mercury emissions from the power sector and have set standards for existing coal-fired units significantly more protective than EPA’s proposed standard.

On a positive note, motions to intervene in support of the rule were filed by a group of states and cities and a group of public health and environmental organizations including EDF.

The states and cities supporting this motion include Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, District of Columbia and New York City.

The organizations supporting this motion include the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Lung Association, American Nurses Association, American Public Health Association, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, Clean Air Council, Conservation Law Foundation, Environment America, Environmental Defense Fund, Izaak Walton League of America, Natural Resources Defense Council, Ohio Environmental Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Sierra Club, and the Waterkeeper Alliance.

If you have been following our updates, you know that White Stallion has weaved a web of lies and played a shell game with its site plans in an effort to obtain air, water and wetlands permits. The real challenge for White Stallion to move forward isn’t the EPA or the new air toxics rules; it is the low price of home-grown, Texas-produced natural gas.  This latest petition only further shows that White Stallion is a bad idea for the Lone Star State. It’s time for White Stallion to see the light and stop fighting against clean air protections for Texans.

Update: Please note that the EPA is now due to finalize the national emission standards for oil and gas activities by Tuesday, April 17.

This commentary was originally posted on the EDF Energy Exchange Blog.

On April 3, 2012 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is due to finalize national emission standards to limit some of the harmful air pollutants discharged from a variety of oil and gas activities.   As Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has noted in past blogs, leaks, venting and flaring of natural gas from oil and gas activities contribute to ground-level ozone ("smog") and toxic air pollution.  As proposed, EPA's standards would reduce volatile organic compounds that contribute to smog by 25% and hazardous air pollutants by 30%, through the implementation of proven and highly cost-effective practices and technologies. 

Emissions from Oil and Gas Activities Linked to Unhealthy Levels of Ozone "Smog" Pollution

Extensive oil and gas development in parts of rural Wyoming and Utah, where little other industrial activity occurs, has led to dangerous ozone levels, higher than those recorded in some of the most heavily polluted cities. Last year, families in Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin suffered over forty days in which ozone concentrations exceeded the current health standard.  In Utah’s Uintah basin, residents experienced twice this number of unhealthy ozone days, with one monitor located in Ouray recording forty exceedances alone.

In 2009 then Governor of Wyoming Dave Freudenthal requested EPA designate counties within the Upper Green River Basin as out of attainment with the current ozone health standard explaining the link between natural gas emissions and the serious ozone problems: 

"The State of Wyoming is also challenged by the need to reduce emissions from the natural gas industry which has not traditionally been regulated for ozone nonattainment problems….Therefore, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (WDEQ) has already identified the sources that require controls such as drill rigs, pneumatic pumps, dehydration units and small heaters."

EPA  in turn concluded “[t]he [Wyoming] AQD’s analysis provided with its recommendation shows that elevated ozone at the Boulder monitor is primarily due to local emissions from oil and gas development activities: drilling, production, storage, transport and treating of oil and natural gas.”

In Colorado and Texas, smog-forming emissions from the oil and gas industry have exceeded other major sources of pollution such as vehicles.   In 2008, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment concluded that the smog-forming emissions from oil and gas operations exceeded vehicle emissions for the entire state.  Similarly, a 2009 study found that summertime emissions of smog-forming pollutants from oil and gas sources in the Barnett Shale were roughly comparable to emissions from all of the motor vehicles in the Dallas Fort-Worth area.

Oil and Gas Activities Emit Benzene-A Known Carcinogen-and other Air Toxics

Venting, flaring and equipment leaks also emit hazardous air pollutants or air toxics, including hydrogen sulfide, formaldehyde and benzene into the environment.  Elevated levels of benzene have been detected near gas production sites in Texas and Colorado. In 2010 the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) measured acute concentrations of benzene that exceeded the state’s health-based risk levels at two exploration and production sites in the Barnett Shale in Texas. Research based on air samples taken from oil and gas sites in the Piceance Basin in Colorado in 2008 determined that emissions from well completions, dehydration units, and condensate tanks posed an elevated cancer risk to nearby residents. Similarly, atmospheric measurements collected by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that “oil and gas operations in the DJB (Denver-Julesburg Basin) could be the largest source of C₆H₆ (benzene) in Weld County.”

As oil and gas development continues to expand across the country, strong, national clean air standards are essential to protect public health.  EPA’s standards, which build on clean air measures already in place in states with extensive oil and gas activities, such as Colorado and Wyoming, are an important first step in strengthening clean air protections for human health and the environment.

Diesel engine emissions continue to be a problem in the United States even though light cars and trucks have seen 30 years of improved engine standards.  Exposure to diesel exhaust can cause lung damage and respiratory problems, exacerbate asthma and existing allergies, and increase the risk of cancer.  Given the impact of these emissions on human health, EDF has been pushing for stronger protections from diesel pollution over a decade.  By reducing exposure, we can prevent illness, reduce healthcare costs, and save lives.

Emissions and the Houston Barge System

Diesel exhaust in Houston is produced from a number of sources: on and off-road heavy duty equipment and machinery, marine engines, and other equipment used in port operations.  In order to implement effective pollution reduction initiatives, we must first properly evaluate and characterize emissions from various sectors within the region.  This has proven to be a difficult task, particularly in marine freight and the barge industry.

Freight movement by barge is an important aspect of the Houston economy—and a significant source of air pollution. While maritime transportation is comparably efficient in terms of energy consumption, the sheer volume of marine traffic in Houston makes these emissions an important local health issue.

The Houston Tug & Barge System: A Review of Operations and Opportunities

To help characterize and understand regional maritime emissions, EDF developed a report outlining the profile of barges that operate in the Houston area. The recently released report, “The Houston Barge System: A Review of Operations and Opportunities,” discusses the combustive as well as evaporative emissions associated with barges operating in the Houston region, and identifies opportunities for establishing emissions reduction targets.

Key Areas of Opportunity

Among the findings catalogued in the report, a few opportunities and challenges stand out:

• While large oceangoing vessels are a more significant source of marine emissions than harbor tugs, they are regulated primarily by international standards and not subject to local pollution standards.
• Given their area and hours of operation, the Houston tugboat fleet offers perhaps the best opportunity for emission reductions on the Houston Ship Channel.
• The current fleet of harbor tugs is relatively old and inefficient, and serviced to pre-emissions control standards.
• Auxiliary engines are key targets for reduction: they log more hours, require more frequent maintenance, and are easier to replace.
• The extensive utilization of each tugboat means that individual improvements can have big payoffs for air quality.
• Recent inclusion into the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan (TERP) for tugboats could initiate the transition to a cleaner, lower emitting tugboat fleet.

The quality of the air we breathe has a direct impact on our health. The information from this study will help determine the most effective and efficient pollution control strategies for the maritime freight industry and should be used as a guide to develop policies that improve our air quality in Texas.

The United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. heard arguments last week in a group of lawsuits over the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) clean air measures to protect American's health and well-being from the clear and present danger of climate pollution. 

(Source: www.bostinno.com)

The Challengers to Clean Air

The state of Texas, along with several large industrial polluters, has challenged EPA's action – even though other states and business allies support EPA's protections.  For example, the U.S. auto makers and a dozen states (California, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington) have intervened in defense of EPA's cleaner car standards. EDF has also intervened in defense of EPA's vital protections.

The lead challenger is a group called the Coalition for Responsible Regulation, a group that actively sought to enlist the State of Texas in mounting legal attacks against the EPA's clean air protections. Interestingly, state records show that the Coalition’s board of directors share the same Houston address as the Quintana Minerals Corporation.

Quintana Minerals is the nation’s largest private holder of coal reserves. Its owner, Corbin Robertson Jr., is a contributor to Texas politicians like Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Gregory Abbott and U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (who memorably apologized to BP for the White House's investigation of the Gulf oil spill) — politicians who are committed to hobbling an EPA that uses rigorous science to regulate harmful pollution.

The EPA Protections Being Challenged

 One of the EPA protections facing legal challenge is the Endangerment Finding. To provide a little background, on Dec. 15, 2009, EPA determined that six greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations. EPA based this finding on more than 100 published scientific studies and peer-reviewed syntheses of climate change research by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program/U.S. Global Change Research Program, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

That Endangerment Finding followed the Supreme Court’s landmark 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA.  In that decision, the court held that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.  The Court then instructed EPA to determine — on the basis of science — whether these gases endanger human health and welfare.

Texas is the second most populous state in the nation, with 25 million residents. Why would a state that has more people in it than that of many states combined fight against clean air protections when other states are intervening on behalf of EPA?

Let’s take this idea further.  When you have a lot of people in a state, this means a lot of cars on the road. Indeed, there are over 21 million cars on roads in Texas. At a time when people are increasingly concerned about rising gas prices, the clean car standards will save Texans thousands of dollars at the gas pump by enabling families to drive farther on a gallon of gas, will help break our nation's addiction to foreign oil, and cut dangerous pollution. 

The clean car standards established by EPA the Department of Transportation (DOT) are supported by U.S. auto makers, the United Auto Workers, and a dozen states – among others – because they provide significant environmental, economic, and energy security benefits.

There is much at stake for our nation's environment and economy. There is much at stake for our nation's environment and economy. Texas should be a leader in supporting clean car standards instead of a lone cowboy fighting against them.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Equality (TCEQ) recently released the 2012 Air Pollutant Watch List (APWL) Report.

The APWL is a list of areas in the state where concentrations of harmful pollutants exceed the state’s own health-based screening level guidelines. Some of the APWL areas have been listed for over a decade – this is important as exposure to these toxics may impact human health and may lead to serious health outcomes such as birth defects or cancer. Recognizing the need to reduce air toxics, TCEQ has adopted a formal protocol for remediating these areas.

Figure 1: Active APWL Area Locations, Source: TCEQ

The 2012 report outlines 11 active areas where air toxics were measured consistently at concentrations indicating a level of potential health concern. The report also discusses what the agency is doing to address those areas, which involves focusing investigations on specific facilities, and working with local stakeholders to reduce emissions. As the number of APWL areas has decreased since the first report issued in 2010, it appears that the agency is making some progress in remediating APWL areas. TCEQ proposed delisting Bastrop from the AWPL for hydrogen sulfide, for example, and also reported that benzene levels in Galena Park and Port Arthur have decreased.

We applaud the progress that the agency has made in addressing these hotspot areas, though we recognize that there is much more work to be done. We look forward to working with TCEQ to remediate these areas. We also believe that there may be other areas around the state not currently classified as hotspots (such as Corpus Christi and Midlothian) that are in need of environmental remediation. Let’s make sure that Texas is a healthy place to live!

Recently, the Texas Public Policy Foundation released a report titled: EPA’s Approaching Regulatory Avalanche:  “A Regulatory Spree Unprecedented in U.S. History”

(Source: www.parkercountyblog.com

Not only is the title of the report inflammatory and divisive, but the recommendations of the report suggest that Congress should gut the core foundations of primary clean air and clean water protections. Why?  According to Ms. White, “…the new rules have marginal, if indeed measurable at all, health benefits. Nor are they supported by credible science.”  Interestingly, Ms. White issues such statements in a report that fails to reference one single peer-reviewed piece of scientific evidence to support her claims that EPA rules do not have any health benefits.

It’s not surprising that Ms. White calls for an attack on protections legislated through the Clean Air Act (CAA). Texas facilities have proven to be some of the worst emitters in the entire country. While she was a commissioner at the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, Ms. White consistently tried to override clean air and water protections by rubberstamping permits for facilities across the state and failing to provide proper enforcement for high profile violators such as ASARCO and Flint Hills Refinery.

While we could spend weeks picking apart Ms White’s misleading statements that riddle the report, we thought a more constructive way to respond to the misinformation provided is to highlight a few specific examples of the egregious claims and then tell the truth:

TPPF Claim #1:

EPA is picking on poor little ol’ Texas by placing an effective Federal Implementation Plan on Texas.

The truth is that Texas is an outlier among all the states.  Texas alone decided not to modify its permitting program to comply with the law.   

On, December 1, 2010, EPA released the State Implementation Plan (SIP) Call Rule for greenhouse gas emissions that flowed from the Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA. In the SIP call, EPA found that Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) permitting regulations in 13 states did not meet CAA requirements because their programs did not cover greenhouse gas emissions as regulated by the Supreme Court. EPA asked those states to change their laws and submit those changes as a part of a revised SIP for review and approval, and gave the states one year to change their laws.  Twelve states cooperated; Texas alone refused to cooperate with EPA’s efforts to apply greenhouse gas requirements in the PSD program.

In order to allow industry in Texas to be able to obtain legal permits, EPA was forced to issue a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) and to take on the responsibility of issuing the PSD permits for stationary power plants, large factories and other industrial facilities.

EPA had no other choice – since Texas, and Texas alone, refused to take responsibility for granting these permits.

TPPF Claim #2:

Protecting clean air and water through the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) will lead to Armageddon with rolling blackouts and job losses.

• Independent analyses confirm that industry can comply with MATS while maintaining the reliability of the electric system.
• EPA’s analysis found adequate reserve margins for generation will be maintained and regional grid reliability will not be compromised.
• EPA’s analysis has been confirmed by independent assessments of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the Department of Energy, and the Congressional Research Service.
• An Associated Press survey found that power companies expect to retire about 8 percent of generation to comply with the air toxics and CSAPR. The average age of the affected coal plants is 51 years and their profitability has been devastated in recent years by the low price of natural gas.
• The adaptable compliance framework put forward by EPA provides a conservative, protective backstop to ensure that any local reliability concerns or specific compliance challenges can be addressed.

TPPF Claim #3:

Protecting clean air and water will cost too much. Plus, Texas has already solved our air quality problems.

We beg to differ. Bizarrely, Ms. White discredits one of her main arguments in the report, which is that these rules cost too much. The report states that “since 1970, aggregate emissions of the six criteria pollutants regulated under the CAA have decreased 53 percent. This environmental achievement occurred while the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased over 200 percent.”

If clean air and water are such devastating job killers, how does Ms. White reconcile the fact that Texas has been one of the fastest growing, most profitable states in the nation while air quality has improved?  Interestingly, Ms. White makes no mention of the fact that last year’s drought, almost certainly related to climate change, cost the state billions of dollars in loss.

It appears that Ms. White is blowing a bunch of smoke to try to confuse and scare Texans.

(Source: www.inhabitat.com)

This commentary was originally posted on the EDF Energy Exchange Blog by Colin Meehan.

Austin Energy’s Rates: 13% Below the Average Rate in ERCOT’s Competitive Markets – After Accounting for the Proposed 12.5% Rate Increase

Austin Energy has been in the news a lot lately, and most often for some controversy around the ongoing rate review process.  What often gets lost in these heated discussions is that fact that Austin's heritage of clean energy and innovative approaches to economic development are firmly rooted in our city's electric utility, and that the utility allows city leaders to keep taxes low.  At the same time, Austin Energy's leadership often puts it in the crosshairs of groups that are ideologically opposed to clean energy and city owned utilities, and whether supported by facts or not, the opportunity to criticize Austin Energy has proven too difficult to resist.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is often one of the ringleaders in the crusade against clean energy as well as city owned utilities, and they're not going to let facts get in the way of scoring an ideological point.  In knocking Austin Energy and promoting their agenda, TPPF cherry picks data and uses coded language like the idea that customers "can choose" rates lower than Austin Energy's if they are in the competitive regions of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).  The truth is, for a customer in the competitive areas of ERCOT to maintain lower rates than Austin Energy they would have to change electric providers each month, and they’d have to be pretty lucky on top of it.

The problem is that the rates TPPF reference when they say customers can choose lower rates are usually introductory, variable or otherwise subject to increases not included in the rates that customers do choose.  What this means is that customers actually pay more than TPPF's selective math would suggest, but TPPF seems more concerned with scoring political points than what customers actually pay for their electricity.

Look at the data from a more logical point of view and you will see that competitive regions in ERCOT average higher residential rates than ERCOT's average rates.  In fact, ERCOT rates are kept low largely by municipal and co-operative utilities like Austin Energy, the customer owned utility model that TPPF criticizes in their latest missive.  The most recent data available for a real analysis of the rates Texans pay was released by the Energy Information Administration just a few months ago, including data through 2010.  As the chart below shows, Austin Energy's rates are well below the ERCOT average, and even farther below the average competitive market rate, despite TPPF's claims to the contrary.  

Even if you account for Austin's proposed 12.5% rate increase, the new rates are 13% below competitive rates in ERCOT. This calculation doesn’t even include the impact of increasing wholesale power rates in ERCOT, which increased about 50% between 2010 and 2011 in the South Zone (Austin Energy's location in the competitive market).  While it's too early to tell how the wholesale power price increase has impacted competitive retail rates, it's clear that Austin Energy's rates – even after the rate review is completed – will be below the competitive average.

As we talk about rates in our community and across Texas, it’s important to remain focused on factual analysis and avoid misleading assumptions driven more by ideology than a desire for real debate. Unfortunately, arguments like those put forward by TPPF don't contribute to an honest discourse; they mislead the public, distort reality, and threaten Austinite's low tax lifestyle.

Today, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin released a major report titled, “Fact-Based Regulation for Environmental Protection in Shale Gas Development.” The report’s conclusions are those of the authors, though Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) helped the University of Texas at Austin define its scope of work and reviewed drafts during the course of the project.

What are the main conclusions? As has been the case in other inquiries, the University of Texas study did not find any confirmed cases of drinking water contamination due to pathways created by hydraulic fracturing. But this does not mean such contamination is impossible or that hydraulic fracturing chemicals can’t get loose in the environment in other ways (such as through spills of produced water). In fact, the study shines a light on the fact that there are a number of aspects of natural gas development that can pose significant environmental risk. And it highlights the fact that there are a number of ways in which current regulatory oversight is inadequate.

The following conclusions are particularly important:

• Many reports of groundwater contamination occur in conventional oil and gas operations (e.g. failure of well-bore casing and cementing) and are not unique to hydraulic fracturing.
• Surface spills of fracturing fluids appear to pose greater risks to groundwater than hydraulic fracturing itself.
• Blowouts – uncontrolled fluid releases during construction and operation – are a rare occurrence, but subsurface blowouts appear to be under-reported.
• The lack of baseline studies makes it difficult to evaluate the long-term, cumulative effects and risks associated with hydraulic fracturing.
• Most state oil and gas regulations were written well before shale gas development became widespread.
• Gaps remain in the regulation of well casing and cementing, water withdrawal and usage, and waste storage and disposal.
• Enforcement capacity is highly variable among the states, particularly when measured by the ratio of staff to numbers of inspections conducted.

The report deserves widespread attention. But it is by no means the final word on these topics. Chip Groat, who led the study on behalf of the Energy Institute, plans to tackle additional topics in the future. These include air emissions from natural gas operations, induced seismicity and a field and laboratory investigation of whether hydrogeologic connectivity exists between the Barnett Shale and aquifers and other geologic units above and below the formation.

To read the complete report, visit http://energy.utexas.edu/