Mar 31, 2015
Oil and gas companies refuse to disclose 10 percent of the hundreds of chemicals they use during hydraulic fracturing, according to a new analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency. The revelation comes in a major installment of the EPA’s study of the potential risks of fracking on drinking water.
The agency’s assessment of more than 39,000 reports from the website FracFocus about the composition of fracking fluid also showed that “at least one chemical was identified as confidential business information in 70 percent of the disclosures analyzed,” wrote Tom Burke, EPA’s science adviser, in an agency blog.