Political dissent on the EPA fracking study review panel

March 31, 2016
external stakeholder, Unconventional Oil and Gas Senior Manager, 27 year careerR&D Director, Oil Field Chemicals10 years at BP, offshore managerLobbying DirectorPrivate consultingPrivate lecturesPetroleum Engineering facultyOwnerDissenterDissenterDissenterDissenterSense of the panelThin political dissentAnadarko PetroleumCorporationHalliburtonCompanyBP America IncTalisman EnergyInc.Missouri University ofScience and TechnologyStephen W AlmondShari Dunn-NormanJohn V FontanaWalter R HuffordFour industry reps likeEPA's top-line as isPennsylvania PipelineInfrastructure Task ForceVista GeoscienceLLCFritz IndustriesPetroleum ETC26 of 30 panelistsask for clarityEPA SAB frackingresearch panelEPA injected politics with its controversial "widespread, systemic" line, fracturing the review panelIf on a phone, scroll below to click through the story.
 

First, EPA's top-line spin was a gift to the fracking industry and Wall Street

In June 2015 the EPA issued a much anticipated draft study on fracking's impacts to drinking water. In its top-line, the agency dismissed the impacts as not "widespread, systemic."

The EPA did this without a clear basis of support, in terms of what "widespread" or "systemic" impacts would actually look like, or what fracking’s ongoing impacts to drinking water resources actually are. The EPA crossed a line, and injected politics into the report. Ultimately, this fractured the independent panel reviewing the study. It led four industry representatives on the panel to break with the rest of the panel and embrace the agency's controversial top-line dismissing the impacts. 

The actual findings of the June draft study show abundant risks and harms. The EPA explains where there are uncertainties, as far as what is known, but it does not address why those uncertainties persist. The EPA failed to do new case studies, lacking voluntary cooperation with industry. The agency also inexplicably avoided mentioning several high-profile cases, namely "Pavillion, Dimock and Parker County." Untold numbers of victims of contamination have been silenced through court settlements.

Given the actual content of the 1000-page study, the top-line of EPA's press release — which read: "assessment shows no widespread, systemic impacts" — was a public relations coup for the oil and gas industry, and for the banking interests that own many billions in drilling and fracking company debt and that expect to get paid back. 

Food & Water Watch has argued the line is controversial because it papers over where the science ended, and where political considerations began, as EPA finished its final draft assessment of fracking's impacts on drinking water resources. EPA has some explaining to do.