Common drilling technique to be exempt from federal regulation

[walkon]

Do they say Halliburton would benefit? I would never believe that diesel fuel could foul a water supply. And why would buying city water be more expensive than using fuel as a "fracturing fluid"? Seems like another payoff by the Repugs to me.

http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/112262850453570.xml&coll=3

snip

Among those seeking the exemption from federal drinking water standards has been Halliburton Co., the Dallas-based conglomerate once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. In a deal with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in late 2003, Halliburton and two other major providers of fracturing services agreed to stop using diesel fuel as a fracturing fluid.

In a report released about six months later, the Environmental Protection Agency said it had found no confirmed incidents of well contamination linked to fracturing. While fracturing may introduce potentially hazardous chemicals into underground drinking water, other factors "significantly" reduce the risks, the agency concluded.

Since then, however, an EPA employee in Colorado has labeled the report's conclusions "unsupportable" and charged that members of a review panel appear to have had conflicts of interests. Last October, four Democratic members of Congress asked EPA's inspector general, a kind of internal agency watchdog, to investigate.

snip

Although oil and gas lobbyists once feared that the 11th Circuit decision would spread a blanket of costly new federal regulation over the entire industry, Alabama remains the only state with an EPA-approved plan to ensure compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act, Lathem said. Those rules impose more paperwork and higher costs, he said, including sometimes having to buy city water for use as fracturing fluid. Should the energy measure pass Congress, Lathem said, he would seek changes in those regulations "to make sure that Alabama's operators are not discriminated against."