{"id":27734,"date":"2013-05-20T11:48:41","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T16:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=27734"},"modified":"2013-05-20T11:48:41","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T16:48:41","slug":"shades-of-texas-law-seen-in-proposed-federal-fracking-guidlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2013\/05\/20\/shades-of-texas-law-seen-in-proposed-federal-fracking-guidlines\/","title":{"rendered":"Shades of Texas Law Seen in Proposed Federal Fracking Guidlines"},"content":{"rendered":"
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REUTERS \/Anna Driver\/LANDOV<\/p>

While it's called the Railroad Commission of Texas, it actually deals with regulating oil and gas in the state. And a name change isn't likely to happen this session.<\/p><\/div>\n

As Americans watch the U.S. Bureau of Land Management develop rules to manage fracking on federal land, the Texans among them\u00a0would be forgiven for wondering “what does have to do with us?” After all,\u00a0due to the state’s unique history,\u00a0there are virtually no federal lands in Texas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Well, the rules may have more to do with Texas than you may think. Particularly in their reliance on the online database FracFocus.org to disclose what chemicals drillers are pumping into the ground.<\/p>\n

As we reported last month<\/a>, FracFocus was criticized in a report from Harvard Law School\u2019s Environmental Law Program<\/a>. It found that the database doesn’t do a good job of disclosing\u00a0information and can make it more difficult for companies to comply with state\u00a0regulations. Twelve states, including Texas, require drillers to use FracFocus to disclose their drilling chemical mixes.<\/p>\n

The Harvard report, which was quickly dismissed by many state\u00a0regulators including the Railroad Commission of Texas, also echoed previous findings that FracFocus allows too many\u00a0companies\u00a0to hide their chemical ingredients under the guise of trade secrets. This is especially a concern for people worried about the potential for groundwater pollution associated with fracking.<\/p>\n

Part of the aim of the Harvard report was to encourage the Bureau of Land Management to seek out\u00a0 a more comprehensive and user-friendly system for companies to disclose what chemicals they use.<\/p>\n

From the looks of it that goal has failed, at least for now.<\/p>\n

Last week the Bureau of Land Management, released a new version of draft rules<\/a> for fracking on public land that appears to embrace FracFocus as the best option for chemical disclosure.<\/p>\n

The proposed rules mention FracFocus a total of 48 times. In them the Bureau concedes that about half of people who submitted comments on the rules discouraged it from using the registry. Ultimately, the Bureau decided to incorporate the registry into its rules because it believes that working “to improve FracFocus will be more cost-effective and beneficial than creating a separate database for Federal and Indian wells.”<\/p>\n

This plan to revamp the database form the inside does not comfort Kate Konschnik, the Policy Director for the Environmental Law and Policy Program at Harvard, and lead author of the critical report.<\/p>\n

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