Legal loophole keeps fracturing mixes murky

It’s been a year since the Texas oil and gas industry had to start disclosing the mix of water and chemicals it uses for hydraulic fracturing.

But thanks to a loophole in state law that allows companies to withhold trade secrets, it’s still largely unclear exactly which chemicals are being pumped thousands of feet underground.

Of 12,410 instances of hydraulic fracturing in Texas between April 2011 and early December 2012, companies used terms such as “proprietary,” “secret” or “confidential” 10,120 times while reporting data on the FracFocus.org website, according to data collected through early December by the Houston-based Pivot Upstream Group and analyzed by the San Antonio Express-News.

In the Eagle Ford Shale, the South Texas field that has become one of the hottest oil and gas plays in the nation, the trade secret exemption was used 2,297 times in 3,100 fracturing events.

“I think it’s a loophole big enough you can drive a frack truck through,” said Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas, referring to the army of trucks that arrive at a well site for a fracturing job.

As shale drilling boomed across the country — and in response to grass-roots concerns about potential environmental or health effects — the oil and gas industry launched FracFocus.org in the spring of 2011 as a national registry for companies to voluntarily report the composition of hydraulic fracturing fluids.

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