Wyoming Grants 146 "Trade Secret" Exemptions For Fracking Chemicals

• Scott Detrow
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.
  
  Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.
  
  Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

Earlier this month, we took a look at Pennsylvania’s fracking chemical disclosure regulations, and how they stack up against other states.
Wyoming, Arkansas, Texas, Pennsylvania and Michigan all require drillers to tell state regulators what chemicals they’re using at each well. But all five states allow companies to keep some of that information to themselves, if it’s deemed a trade secret.
Pennsylvania and Michigan take the companies’ words on what chemicals are and aren’t proprietary information, but Wyoming, Arkansas and Texas leave the final decision up to state officials.
How much leeway are regulators providing? The Billings Gazette reports Wyoming regulators granted “trade secret” exemptions for 146 chemicals, in the year the state’s regulations have been in effect.

CASPER, Wyo. — Wyoming regulators have agreed to keep secret the identities of 146 chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing since disclosure rules went into effect nearly a year ago, according the the state’s oil and gas supervisor.
The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission granted the trade secret exemptions to 11 companies, said Tom Doll, commission supervisor.
It’s the first release of the number of exemptions since state rules regarding hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, went into effect in September.
Doll, who released the numbers at the Petroleum Association of Wyoming’s annual meeting in Casper on Wednesday, said no company has requested blanket exemptions for all chemicals.
“It’s just been steady requests, a few a month,” he told the Star-Tribune after his presentation.

Doll told the paper his office has rejected just two trade secret requests.

Editor's Picks