Fracking Chemicals Fouling Water, Rail Safety

I did an interview with RT discussing the growing problems that chemicals used in fracking oil & natural gas pose to the environment and public safety. First, the Associated Press reports that there have been hundreds of complaints of water pollution from fracking, most from methane but some from the chemicals used in fracking. But this AP report only tells half the story, as it simply documents the different ways in which states handle and record complaints when folks call in to a hotline or send an email. That’s good info, but not nearly as important as sending scientists to investigate the complaint. And there’s the rub: when confirmed fracking pollution occurs, oil & gas companies quickly settle with the affected landowners, and, in return for providing cash and drinking water supplies, force families to sign non-disclosure agreements, forbidding them from even acknowledging that fracking pollution ocurred, or in some cases, requiring families to sign statements proclaiming that pollution didn’t occur. We challenged Jack Gerard on this point when he spoke at our offices earlier this year, and he denied knowing anything about these common non-disclosure agreements. In one famous case, the natural gas company forced parents to guarantee that their two young children would never speak about fracking pollution on their farm for the rest of their lives. The proliferation of these non-disclosure agreements distorts the policy debate because they interfere with the collection of data needed to draw conclusions about the saftety of fracking. It is unacceptable for the industry to continue to say “Fracking is safe, evidenced by the lack of water contamination proof!” at the same time they’re forcing familes to give up their right to talk about pollution (or in same cases, forcing the families to lie in order to qualify for the financial compensation). A simple solution is to disallow non-disclosure agreements that mask information on drilling contamination.

A second issue involves transportation hazards posed by fracking chemicals. On December 30, Warren Buffet’s BNSF line was hauling 78,000 barrels of oil on 104 rail cars from the Bakken Shale to a refinery in Missouri when it was hit by another BNSF train carrying soybeans headed in the opposite direction, derailed, and started a massive fire. I spoke to ABC World News Tonight about this tragedy, and, as my friend Steve Horn reports, the crude oil was more volatile and dangerous because it was laced with fracking chemicals absorbed by the oil during the production process. Indeed, the Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration just issued a warning that fracked oil is more chemically explosive. And corrosive agents used in fracking that are then absorbed by the oil, such as hydrochloric acid, “which federal investigators suspect could be corroding the inside of rail tank cars, weakening them.” This means that moving fracked oil by pipelines won’t be safer, since the caustic oil could corrode pipelines as well. Big oil is opposing federal efforts to retrofit the safety of rail cars hauling crude oil.

As I’ve written before, the fracking boom is failing to deliver affordable, safe or sustainable energy for America.

Tyson Slocum is Director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. Follow him on Twitter @TysonSlocum