Chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing: A-Z - Special investigations | Moneyweb

Chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing: A-Z - Special investigations | Moneyweb


US House of Representatives Committee releases the definitive report.

US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce releases the definitive report on chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing

This 32-pager, described as the “most comprehensive national assessment to date” commissioned by Henry A. Waxman: Committee on Energy and Commerce; Edward J. Markey: Committee on Natural Resources, and Diana DeGette: Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, constitutes the list of chemical compounds used in fracking fluid (excluding water).

The report covers a five-year period (2005 – 2009) and in it one finds stunners like diesel, benzene and lead amongst others.

Cocktail hour
Despite its comprehensive nature the report is not complete, but a read through it is enough to make your hair stand on end. The lack of completeness is due to some companies still either refusing or unable to submit the constituents of “proprietary” fracking fluids.

“Although some companies did provide information about these proprietary fluids, in most cases the companies stated that they did not have access to proprietary information about products they purchased “off the shelf” from chemical suppliers.”

In other words the companies are injecting fluids containing chemicals that they themselves cannot identify.

Fourteen “leading” fracking companies were called on to give the details which revealed that over 2 500 hydraulic fracturing products contained 750 chemical compounds with more than 650 containing chemicals known, or possible, human carcinogens, or listed as hazardous air pollutants.

“Overall these companies used 780m gallons of hydraulic fracturing products – not including water added at the well site.”

With a market capitalisation of around US$244bn these 14 companies include; Basic Energy Services, BJ Services , Calfrac Well Services, Complete Production Services , Frac Tech Services, Halliburton, Key Energy Services, RPC Inc, Sanjel Corp, Schlumberger, Superior Well Services, Trican Well Service, Universal Well Services, Weatherford International.

If one were to add the interests of Chesapeake, which owns 30% of unlisted Frac Tech Services, then Chesapeake’s market cap is at US$ 21bn.

Total gas company funding – a fracking mammoth US$265bn.

A look through each listed companies 52-week share highs and lows reveals also that there’s a spirit not related to the cocktail which is pushing up the price of these shares. Something reminiscent of the tech stock bubble of Silicon Valley some years back. In most cases share price lows have more than double in the period of one year.

The most widely used chemical in hydraulic fracturing during this time period, as measured by the number of compounds containing the chemical, was methanol which was used in 342 hydraulic fracturing products. Methanol is a hazardous air pollutant.

Some others widely used include isopropyl alcohol (used in 274 products), 2-butoxyethanol (used in 126 products), and ethylene glycol (used in 119 products).

In addition, the hydraulic fracturing companies injected more than 30m gallons of diesel fuel, or hydraulic fracturing fluids containing diesel fuel, in wells in 19 states. The use of diesel fuel in fracturing fluids poses the greatest threat to underground sources of drinking water.