Business, Government Legal News from throughout WVTwo companies dispute EPA draft report linking fracking with groundwater contamination

Two gas drilling companies have taken exception to last week's report by the Environmental Protection Agency that links hydraulic fracturing with groundwater contamination.

Monday afternoon, Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc., the company whose wells the EPA linked to the contamination, issued a news release listing its objections to the preliminary findings linking its operations in the Pavillion, Wyo., area with horizontal drilling and fracturing for natural gas in shale.

"The EPA's data from existing domestic water wells aligns with all previous testing done by Encana in the area and shows no impacts from oil and gas development," the release said. "Of most concern, many of the EPA's findings from its recent deep monitoring wells, including those related to any potential connection between hydraulic fracturing and Pavillion groundwater quality, are conjecture, not factual and only serve to trigger undue alarm."

The release said the EPA issued its draft report before subjecting it to qualified, third-party, scientific verification.

The entire news release can be found here.

Meanwhile, NPR on Monday published the text of an e-mail reportedly sent by Steve Dixon, chief operating officer of Chesapeake Energy, whose operations include shale drilling and fracturing in West Virginia, to all Chesapeake employees.

 "I am writ­ing to assure you that the media has missed sev­eral key facts about this draft report. Mean­while, despite min­i­mal regional, geo­log­i­cal and hydro­log­i­cal knowl­edge and after years of prop­erly del­e­gat­ing indus­try over­sight to state reg­u­la­tory agen­cies, the EPA appears to be attempt­ing to gain reg­u­la­tory over­sight of our indus­try. We believe that in their haste to find even one excep­tion to the industry's ster­ling record of respon­si­ble hydraulic frac­tur­ing, the EPA has com­pro­mised its well test­ing and data gath­er­ing protocols," the email says.

Dixon's email also says, "It is impor­tant to note that through­out the report the Agency hedges its bets by reg­u­larly using words such as ‘likely' or ‘might' before address­ing key find­ings. In fact, the EPA's own press release announc­ing the report says, ‘the draft report indi­cates that ground­wa­ter in the aquifer con­tains com­pounds likely asso­ci­ated with gas pro­duc­tion prac­tices, includ­ing hydraulic frac­tur­ing.' Unfor­tu­nately, many in the news media either inad­ver­tently or inten­tion­ally missed this nuance and reported a direct causal link between hydraulic frac­tur­ing and the com­pounds detected in two EPA-drilled mon­i­tor­ing wells."