Encana Refutes EPA Study That Links Fracking to Water Pollution

The nat­ural gas com­pany Encana cor­po­ra­tion says the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency made sev­eral mis­takes in its recently released report on water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in Pavil­ion, Wyo. The EPA’s report cited hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or frack­ing, as the likely cause of pol­luted drink­ing water in the Wyoming town. Encana offi­cial David Stew­art, said in a con­fer­ence call today that many of the chem­i­cals cited by the EPA as present in the drink­ing water, occur nat­u­rally as a result of the area’s geol­ogy. Stew­art said the EPA’s find­ings of high lev­els of methane can­not be linked to gas drilling because methane has always existed in the area’s drink­ing water.

Stew­art also went so far as to say that the chem­i­cals used in the EPA’s test wells may have pol­luted the water.

The EPA reported that their inves­ti­ga­tion was ham­pered by lack of access to detailed chem­i­cal com­po­nents of the frack­ing fluid used by Encana. Gas drillers are not required to reveal that infor­ma­tion. But Stew­art said the com­pany did have plans to release more details of the chem­i­cals used to frack the wells in Pavilion.

The Cal­gary, Alberta based com­pany is one of the largest gas pro­duc­ers in North Amer­ica, sec­ond only to Exxon Mobil Cor­po­ra­tion. Encana called for an inde­pen­dent third party review of the study. The com­pany plans to sub­mit their response to the study before the pub­lic com­ment period ends on Jan­u­ary 27, 2012.