EPA Weighs National Fracking Disclosure Regulations

Scott Detrow

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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.

November 24, 2011 | 2:01 PM

Pennsylvania is one of seven states requiring natural gas drillers to disclose what chemicals they’re using during hydraulic fracturing operations. According to Bloomberg News, the Environmental Protection Agency is considering making those standards national:

The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that it would weigh rules requiring disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic-fracturing fluids.
Companies such as Halliburton Co. and Schlumberger Ltd., which supply oil and natural gas producers, should be required to reveal substances used in the mining technology known as fracking, according to a petition filed with the EPA by the environmental group Earthjustice. In a response posted on its website Wednesday, the EPA said it would begin gathering data.
The EPA will try to provide “aggregate pictures of the chemical substances and mixtures used in hydraulic fracturing,” Stephen A. Owens, an assistant administrator at the agency, said in a letter to Deborah Goldberg, an attorney for Earthjustice. “This would not duplicate, but instead complement, the well-by-well disclosure programs of states.”