When the US Environmental Protection Agency issued its draft report on possible contamination to groundwater in Wyoming from the oil & gas drilling practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the agency was careful to say that the results should not be generalized to other areas. In Texas, where fracking has been commonplace for nearly two decades, the reaction has been particularly vehement.
The Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency responsible for oil & gas production, sees the Wyoming report as just another piece of the US EPA’s ideological agenda to impose stricter regulation on oil & gas production. The head of the Railroad Commission had this to say about the Wyoming study:
Well hello! [fracking near the water table] is a really bad thing to do! We do not allow that, and our geology doesn’t allow for it either.
The point is that even if further testing in Wyoming proves decisively that fracking caused the groundwater contamination, that proves nothing about the effects of fracking in Texas, where wells are much deeper and are insulated from seepage by thick layers of impermeable rock.
Because the US EPA has admitted as much already, the fracas in Texas could well be moot. But that doesn’t mean that the Railroad Commission and the EPA are going to be best friends forever any time soon.
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