{"id":38299,"date":"2014-08-13T16:33:22","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T21:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=38299"},"modified":"2014-08-13T16:33:22","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T21:33:22","slug":"environmental-group-says-illegal-diesel-fracking-used-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/08\/13\/environmental-group-says-illegal-diesel-fracking-used-in-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmental Group Says Illegal Diesel Fracking Used in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_6165\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 199px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"A hydraulic fracking operation in the Barnett Shale.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/02\/Hydraulic-FrackingBarnettShaleDrilling.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6165\" alt=\"A hydraulic fracking operation in the Barnett Shale.\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/02\/Hydraulic-FrackingBarnettShaleDrilling-300x451.jpg\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/02\/Hydraulic-FrackingBarnettShaleDrilling-300x451.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/02\/Hydraulic-FrackingBarnettShaleDrilling-620x932.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/02\/Hydraulic-FrackingBarnettShaleDrilling-220x330.jpg 220w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/02\/Hydraulic-FrackingBarnettShaleDrilling.jpg 1872w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">StateImpact Texas<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A hydraulic fracking operation in the Barnett Shale.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>An environmental group says it\u2019s found over a hundred oil or gas wells being drilled in Texas using techniques that the group says are illegal. At issue is \u201cfracking\u201d which injects huge quantities of water and chemicals deep underground.<\/p>\n<p>Fracking is what\u2019s revolutionized drilling in Texas. The technique uses all sorts of chemicals including acids that are injected by the thousands of gallons down into wells to break up rock so gas and oil can escape.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019ve always been concerns that the chemicals could risk contaminating groundwater, but state and federal regulators have allowed drillers to use dozens of different substances.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/163018672&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Except one: diesel fuel.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year,\u00a0<a title=\"EPA fracking regs\" href=\"http:\/\/water.epa.gov\/type\/groundwater\/uic\/class2\/hydraulicfracturing\/hydraulic-fracturing.cfm\">prompted by the federal Environmental Protection Agency<\/a>\u00a0(EPA), Texas state regulators said to inject diesel fuel would\u00a0<a title=\"RRC notice\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rrc.state.tx.us\/media\/20701\/062014-hf-diesel.pdf\">require a special permit<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A national group, the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), was concerned the new rules wouldn\u2019t be followed. They began reviewing databases drillers use to report what they inject.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe identified 122 wells in Texas in total,\u201d said Mary Greene,\u00a0<a title=\"EIP's report\" href=\"http:\/\/environmentalintegrity.org\/archives\/6940\">EIP\u2019s author of the report<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Greene said the wells were one drillers had continued using diesel in but that in some cases, had gone back and changed their reports to make it look like they had not.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur primary pur pose is to make the states and the EPA aware of this so they can do their own compliance evaluations and take appropriate enforcement where indicated,\u201d Greene said in a conference call with journalists.<\/p>\n<p>A drilling industry group says the environmental group got its data largely wrong.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese guys are literally saying diesel is being used in hydraulic fracturing when it wasn\u2019t. Period,\u201d said \u00a0Steve Everley with\u00a0<a title=\"Industry response \" href=\"http:\/\/energyindepth.org\/national\/eip-diesel-fuel-report-lacks-data-integrity\/\">Energy In Depth<\/a>. \u201cThe industry has largely stopped using this substance.\u201c<\/p>\n<p>The industry says fracking has yet to lead to any major groundwater contamination. And the environmental group, EIP, said it knows of no cases where diesel fuel used in drilling has actually contaminated groundwater in Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An environmental group says it\u2019s found over a hundred oil or gas wells being drilled in Texas using techniques that the group says are illegal. At issue is \u201cfracking\u201d which injects huge quantities of water and chemicals deep underground. Fracking is what\u2019s revolutionized drilling in Texas. The technique uses all sorts of chemicals including acids [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[59],"tags":[182,96,15],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38299"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38299"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38303,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38299\/revisions\/38303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}