Oil and gas lobbyist claims fracking well residue “good as candy!”

By Donna Carver -

Mr. Thomas E Stew­art, lob­by­ist for the Oil and Gas indus­try and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Ohio Oil and Gas Asso­ci­a­tion based out Granville Ohio, tes­ti­fied before the House Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion on May 22nd, 2012 con­cern­ing Gov­er­nor Kasich’s ‘Energy Bill’, SB 315. Many amend­ments were offered to SB 315 con­cern­ing full chem­i­cal dis­clo­sure, dye trac­ers, fresh water well test­ing, local deci­sion mak­ing on well place­ment and back­ground checks for well oper­a­tors, that would have added much needed pro­tec­tion for Ohioans, but these were dis­re­garded for the most part in favor of a ‘gag’ rule which ties the hands of first respon­ders and doc­tors in treat­ing any­one affected by a toxic spill or drill site acci­dent. Dur­ing ques­tion­ing, Mr. Stew­art, who is regarded as an author­ity on the uncon­ven­tional method of hor­i­zon­tal hydrauli­cally frac­tured extrac­tion wells, also known as “frack­ing”, seemed to be unable to directly answer tough ques­tions about the actual chem­i­cals and the chem­i­cal dis­clo­sure amend­ment. It is rumored that Stew­art played an impor­tant role in advis­ing and writ­ing SB 315 which should indi­cate a very thor­ough knowl­edge and abil­ity to con­vey var­i­ous aspects of the hydrofrack­ing process to our leg­is­la­tors, but break­ing video seems to indi­cate a reluc­tance to talk straight facts about the hazards.

The state of New York has imposed a mora­to­rium on “frack­ing” to bet­ter study the process and pro­tect res­i­dents and the envi­ron­ment from harm. The “Revised Draft — Sup­ple­men­tal Generic Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment (SGEIS) from the New York State Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Con­ser­va­tion lists in sec­tion 5, pages 102–105, over one hun­dred chem­i­cals, many of which are known to be haz­ardous to humans even in small con­cen­tra­tions that are in the back­flow waste water com­ing out of the hydrauli­cally frac­tured wells.

In a recent video of the pro­ceed­ings Mr. Stew­art states that the wells are cleaned with Tide laun­dry deter­gent and goes on to say, quote: “Ohio pro­duces, uh, prob­a­bly the high­est qual­ity crude oil known to be pro­duced in the world, it’s uh, Pen­ngrade 38 green oil , it’s highly paraf­finic, they actu­ally skim the paraf­fin off in refiner­ies and make candy out of it, they also make, uh, the coat­ings on Advil and M&M’s, so when you’re eat­ing your next box of M&M’s, you’re eat­ing crude oil.”

Are we to under­stand that the lead­ing expert on frack­ing in Ohio is telling us that chem­i­cal dis­clo­sure is not needed because the process is so safe that we are eat­ing it when we take pain med­ica­tion or enjoy a sweet candy treat? It seems that a sim­ple asso­ci­a­tion between com­mon every­day prod­ucts and the com­pli­cated and untested process of hydraulic frac­tur­ing was the infor­ma­tion our leg­is­la­tors needed to pass SB315 with­out legit­i­mate chem­i­cal disclosure.

It is true that food grade paraf­fin is used in many food prod­ucts, but it seems a stretch to sug­gest that full chem­i­cal dis­clo­sure is not needed dur­ing the drilling, back­flow and pro­duc­tion processes. The waste water gen­er­ated by these “fracked” wells is toxic and can­not be cleaned up to be usable for human con­sump­tion or con­tact. Instead, it must be injected into Class II deep injec­tion wells and accord­ing to the indus­try, tucked away safely under­ground for­ever. The Oil and Gas indus­try has kept its chem­i­cal cock­tail secret under the Energy Act of 2005, nick­named the “Hal­libur­ton Loop­hole”, which also pre­vents first respon­ders and med­ical per­son­nel from being able to han­dle an emer­gency expo­sure to the mil­lions of gal­lons cre­ated by each well.

If the com­pany decided that some of the chem­i­cal “types” were pro­pri­etary trade secrets, then the report would only state the “chem­i­cal class to which the com­po­nent belongs”. “’If it was an organic com­pound and it was in the alkane fam­ily, then that is how they would describe it,’ said Rick Sim­mers, chief of the oil and gas divi­sion of the Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources. ‘They are nar­row­ing it down to a fam­ily or a type.’ A class or fam­ily could con­tain hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent chem­i­cals.” This gen­eral descrip­tion is use­less for assess­ing the dan­ger to the pub­lic. From SB 315 -(H)(1) “If a med­ical pro­fes­sional, in order to assist in the diag­no­sis or treat­ment of an indi­vid­ual who was affected by an inci­dent asso­ci­ated with the pro­duc­tion oper­a­tions of a well, requests the exact chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion of each prod­uct, fluid or sub­stance that is des­ig­nated as a trade secret pur­suant to divi­sion (I) of this sec­tion, the per­son claim­ing the trade secret pro­tec­tion pur­suant to that divi­sion shall pro­vide to the med­ical pro­fes­sional the exact chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion of the prod­uct, fluid or sub­stance and of the chem­i­cal com­po­nent in the prod­uct, fluid or sub­stance that is requested.” (2) “a med­ical pro­fes­sional who receives infor­ma­tion pur­suant to divi­sion (H)(1) of this sec­tion shall keep the infor­ma­tion con­fi­den­tial and shall not dis­close the infor­ma­tion for any pur­pose that is not related to the diag­no­sis and treat­ment of an indi­vid­ual who was affected by an inci­dent asso­ci­ated with the pro­duc­tion oper­a­tions of a well.” So return­ing to Stewart’s tes­ti­mony, he uses this anal­ogy for not being able to reveal the chem­i­cals – quote: “Here’s how a pro­ducer gets it to flow again, he goes to the part, to the gro­cery store and he buys, Tide, and he puts it down the back­side of the well which causes it to bub­ble up and foam up, lighten the fluid and the well flows. So to ask the ques­tion, what do you want me, as a pro­ducer, to give you the C.A.S. num­ber of… Tide? “ (If an indi­vid­ual was over­come by soapy deter­gent water, would we need a ‘gag’ order in the first place?)

In cor­re­la­tion with the recent fir­ing of Larry Wick­strom, State Geol­o­gist who has helped lead the charge to open up Ohio to hydraulic frac­tur­ing and the Musk­ingum Water­shed Con­ser­vancy Dis­tricts deci­sion to halt the sale of fresh­wa­ter reserves until the impact can be fur­ther stud­ied, it seems that a closer look at the Ohio Oil and Gas Asso­ci­a­tions lead­ing expert and lob­by­ist should also be con­ducted. Time to slow down and study what is best for the res­i­dents, envi­ron­ment and eco­nomic sta­bil­ity of Ohio. It seems ludi­crous that our leg­is­la­tors would buy into this “Eat the crude oil” anal­ogy, but they can always find frack free alter­na­tives to help with that frac­tur­ing headache they are going to have soon. It is the respon­si­bil­ity of all of us to get the facts and become active in con­tact­ing our elected pub­lic offi­cials and fol­low in the foot­steps of New York State that has recently extended a mora­to­rium on ‘frack­ing” for the pro­tec­tion of its peo­ple. The min­eral reserves aren’t going to dis­ap­pear and it’s past time to put the health and wel­fare of peo­ple before the prof­its of the Oil and Gas Industry.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jun 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.