A debate is stimulating up over whether the fracturing technique used in natural-gas drilling could result in chemicals contaminating drinking water

By Abrahm Lustgarten

Watch full size video:

Lisa Bracken of Silt, Colo., worries about the sprinkle and calender she draws from Divide Creek Jamie Kripke

Editor’sitting Note: Lustgarten is a reporter by ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism organic structure in New York. For to a greater degree on the controversy surrounding natural-gas drilling, go to http://www.propublica.org and to http://bx.businessweek.com/oil-and-gas.

Natural-gas operations are proliferating from Wyoming to New York. At the same time, Halliburton (HAL) and other gas-service giants are fighting to keep secret the potentially hazardous chemicals they use to split thick layers of rock and release the fuel beneath.

Some regulators and sundry environmentalists worry that the fluids injected into many U.S. aeriform fluid fields could be contaminating drinking water with benzene, methanol, and other toxic substances. The industry counters that its methods are safe. Drillers sally to a 2004 study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that supports their position, as well as a key legislative exemption from federal oversight they won in 2005.

The debate is heating up as reports of water pollution near gas drill sites accumulate and the incoming Obama team considers reversing a newly come Bush Administration influence to permit greater quantity drilling in Utah. A close see at the EPA’s 2004 study reveals that the agency may have played down evidence of health dangers. And now some regional EPA officials repeat it’session time for the labor to disclose precisely what it’s pumping into the ground.

Energy companies are taking a tough stance. Last summer, Houston-based Halliburton threatened to be wanting natural-gas operations in Colorado if regulators there persisted in demanding the chemical recipe used in a common drilling case known as hydraulic fracturing. Using this method, drillers shoot wide quantities of water, sand, and chemicals into the earth to break up put to sleep and release gas. "A disclosure to members of the the people of detailed advice…would result in every unconstitutional taking of [Halliburton’sitting intellectual] one’s own," the company said in a filing to Colorado’sitting Oil & Gas Conservation Commission. The habitual devotion to labor has adopted similar positions in New York, Wyoming, and New Mexico.

Halliburton says its reluctance to release complaint about drilling chemicals reflects only a desire to protect valuable trade secrets. "If these formulas were to get available to other companies, it is possible that we could dislodge our competitive vantageground with homage to those companies, not alone in Colorado but throughout the world," says Halliburton spokeswoman Diana Gabriel. Rival drillers have similar motives for their secrecy, according to the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a Washington trade group.

In Colorado, Halliburton lately reached a compromise by means of regulators, but it’s one that appears to favor the industry. The company agreed in August to disclose the chemicals it uses in hydraulic fracturing to state health officials and regulators, though not to the public. But the agreement applies only to chemicals stored in drums that include 50 gallons of drilling fluid or more. As a practical matter, drilling workers in Colorado and Wyoming utter in interviews that the fluids are often kept in smaller quantities. That means at least some of the ingredients still won’t have to be disclosed. Halliburton didn’t respond to questions through the Colorado compromise.

Regulators "will never get [the chemical data]," predicts Bruce Baizel, a lawyer with the Oil & Gas Accountability Project, a nonprofit in Durango, Colo. "Not unless they are willing to concur through a lawsuit." So far such a process hasn’t been filed in Colorado—or anywhere else—since regulators have only lately sought to learn greater degree about the effects of hydraulic fracturing.

Three companies—Halliburton, Schlumberger (SLB), and BJ Services (BJS)—control the vast majority of the $15 billion hydraulic-fracturing market. They work as subcontractors for the world’session largest natural-gas developers, including BP (BP), Shell (RDSA), Chesapeake Energy (CHK), and Chevron (CVX). The drillers have zealously refused to reveal the combinations of chemicals they use in fracturing. "It’s like Coke protecting its syrup formula on account of many of these furniture companies," says Scott Rotruck, Chesapeake’sitting vice-president for corporate development. Chesapeake and its contractors are facing disclosure demands from New York state officials before they can drill in a massive Appalachian gas make an exception of known as the Marcellus Shale. Schlumberger and BJ Services didn’t respond to requests for comment.