California releases proposed fracking regulations

California got its first glimpse Friday morning of proposed hydraulic fracturing regulations that will likely be heavily debated over the coming year.

In a conference call with reporters, California Department of Conservation Director Mark Nechodom heralded a proposal he said would strike a balance between strong safeguards and ensuring that California's oil and gas industry can "remain productive and competitive."

The release of the draft rules kicks off a yearlong process, with the goal of having final regulations in place by Jan. 1, 2015. Nechodom said he anticipates "a very active public regulation" process that could yield "substantial changes" to the current proposed language.
Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, involves blasting a pressurized cocktail of chemicals and water underground to dislodge the gas trapped in rock formations. While many have praised fracking as a way to wean America off of foreign oil, environmentalists warn that fracking represents a public health hazard.

Pointing to fracking booms in other parts of the country and warning of a potential explosion of activity above California's Monterey Shale, several lawmakers introduced fracking bills in 2013. Of those, only Sen. Fran Pavley's bill received the governor's signature, with more stringent measures that included statewide moratoriums falling by the wayside.

The Pavley law will now guide the regulatory process. The draft rules released on Friday will require well operators to notify people living near new wells, create a groundwater monitoring regime, spur a statewide scientific review of fracking and mandate disclosure of the types and concentrations of chemicals used in fracking.

Despite the chemical disclosure requirement, the new law allows companies to invoke trade secret protections in some cases. Nechodom said it remains unclear how broadly that exemption will be used.

"It's hard to tell at this point how many trade secret claims may be made," Nechodom said. "There may be few or there may be many."

In the intervening year before final regulations take effect, well operators will need to certify to regulators in advance that they are in compliance. Starting in 2015, they will need to go through a specific permitting process that could trigger environmental review.

Nechodom tried to rebuff concerns that well operators will have free reign in the gap year, saying that operators will still have to win California Environmental Quality Act approval via county-level applications for conditional use permits.

"That has been a misperception, that CEQA does not apply in 2014," Nechodom said, adding that "by the time we get to 2015 that permitting event will essentially require some CEQA review."

In the final days of the 2013 legislative session, environmental groups abandoned Pavley's bill en masse, with many saying that a provision of the bill allowing for broad reviews that cover multiple wells would weaken oversight. Regulations governing the grouping of permits were not released Friday.

But Tim Kustic, state oil and gas supervisor for the Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources, said during Friday's conference call that the division already has to be selective in the reviews it conducts.

"We have to prioritize," Kustic said, adding that "fields that have extensive hydraulic fracturing and they're doing, say, the 3,000th in the field" will be a lower priority than an initial exploratory well.

"It's unrealistic to think the division will be out there for every well stimulation," Kustic said.

PHOTO: In this March 29, 2013 file photo, workers tend to a well head during a hydraulic fracturing operation at an Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. gas well outside Rifle, in western Colorado. AP/ Brennan Linsley.

via http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/11/california-fracking-regulations.html

California Fracking bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown

After publicly endorsing the measure to ease its passage in the Legislature, Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill establishing a permitting system for hydraulic fracturing in California, the governor's office announced this afternoon.

Brown took the unusual step of declaring his support for the bill with final legislative votes still pending, and on Friday he followed through by signing Senate Bill 4, by Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills.

In a signing message, Brown said he would seek additional "clarifying amendments" to the legislation and would direct the California Department of Conservation "to develop an efficient permitting program for well stimulation activities that groups permits together based on factors such as known geologic conditions and environmental impacts, while providing for more particularized review in other situations when necessary."

Fracking, the shorthand name for hydraulic fracturing, extricates energy locked in underground formations with a pressurized blast of sand, chemicals and water.

In addition to mandating permits for new fracking wells, the bill strengthens groundwater monitoring while requiring energy companies to notify neighboring communities when they plan to frack and to release more information about the chemicals they use. Energy companies fought Pavley's attempt to win more disclosure, saying the recipe for the particular mix of fracking chemicals they use qualify as trade secrets worthy of protection.

Several Democratic lawmakers authored bills this session to regulate fracking. But while the governor's signature would appear to mark a major victory for environmental groups, prominent California environmental advocates -- a list of groups that includes the Natural Resources Defense Council and theCalifornia League of Conservation Voters -- abandoned the bill as it headed toward a final vote in mid-September.

Late amendments weakened the bill unacceptably, environmentalists said, diluting language intended to ensure new wells go through adequate environmental review. While oil industry representatives had said the regulation is unnecessarily burdensome, environmentalists said it would give oil companies nearly unfettered freedom to drill.

Brown has a tenuous relationship with environmentalists, which his signature on the fracking bill is only likely to strain further.

PHOTO: Fracking wells run day and night off Jack and Shafter Roads in Shafter, California on June 10, 2013. The Sacramento Bee/Jose Luis Villegas.

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Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/09/california-fracking-bill-signed-by-gov-jerry-brown.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/09/california-fracking-bill-signed-by-gov-jerry-brown.html#storylink=cpy

California Fracking Disclosure Rules Leave Some Environmentalists Unsatisfied

 Underneath much of Central and southern California sits the single largest deposit of shale oil in the United States, boasting a motherlode of some 15 billion barrels of oil.

While the Monterey Shale's unique geology has prevented energy companies from unleashing a new West Coast energy boom, California regulators have begun to take the first steps in regulating hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking"), a controversial practice decried by environmentalists and the most promising solution for retrieving said oil.

The process of injecting a mixture of water, sand and other chemicals into a well in order to stimulate the flow of oil or natural gas, fracking is especially helpful in accessing energy deposits in shale formations that would otherwise be out of reach using traditional methods.

Kassie Siegel of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, which is in the process of suing the state for doing what it calls an insufficient job of regulating fracking, argues that the practice has the potential to do irreparable harm to the environment. She notes that a quarter of all the chemicals used in fracking are known carcinogens, and some people living near fracked wells have reported health ailments like vomiting, nausea and seizures.

On the other hand, industry representatives have pointed to a recent year-long study conducted in Southern California's Ingleside Oil Field that found no negative health, air quality or seismic effects from the fracking occurring there. The study, paid for by Plains Exploration & Production Company as part of a lawsuit against the energy producer, has been criticized by environmentalists for not looking at the long-term heath effects of fracking.

Earlier this month, the California Department of Conservation's Department of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) released a preliminary set of regulatory guidelines for all fracking activities occurring in the state.

During a phone conference with members of the media last week, state regulators noted that many of the rules they're planning to put in place mandate practices already standard across the energy industry. However, one area headed for change is the requirement that companies disclose all the chemicals they use in fracking.

The new rules mandate that all chemicals used in the fracking process be disclosed within 60 days after the completion of fracking and that the state be notified 10 days before fracking occurs.

Presently, energy producers aren't required to tell anyone where or when they're using hydraulic fracturing, although many companies have started to do so on a voluntarily basis through industry-run site FracFocus.org after state regulators asked them to do so earlier this year. Under the new regulatory regime, reporting chemicals on FracFocus would become mandatory.

FracFocus now lists information for just over 600 fracked wells in California. According to Western States Petroleum Association Spokesman Tupper Hull, a recent survey found that of the 47,000 active wells, only 628 utilize hydraulic fracturing.

Some environmentalists have questioned the wisdom of relying on a private, industry-run website to host this information, especially when said site isn't required to comply with Freedom Of Information Act requests. However, on last week's conference call, regulators explained that the state retains the ability to extricate itself from FracFocus at any time and build its own site if they feel FracFocus isn't doing an adequate job. It would likely take California at least three years to get its own version of FracFocus online, whereas the industry site is ready now and has been hosting voluntary disclosures for over a year.

"When the companies voluntarily disclosure info, we're happy," said Scott Anderson, a senior policy advisor at the Environmental Defense Fund. "But voluntary disclosure is insufficient."

Surprisingly, over the past year or so, many of the companies engaging in fracking have come to the same conclusion as Anderson. When Wyoming adopted a mandatory disclosure rule in 2010, the state imposed it over significant industry opposition. However, as Anderson explained, the industry has come to see mandatory disclosure as a way to overcome some of the widespread hostility toward fracking. "There's no reason for people to trust data that's doled out by these companies on a voluntary basis," he explained.

This newfound openness toward letting the whole world know about precisely which chemicals they're pumping into the ground isn't exactly universal--it stops at a line marked "trade secrets."

Firms in states with mandatory disclosure rules, such as the ones proposed in California, are able to avoid releasing information about certain compounds by saying that making this information public would put them at a competitive disadvantage against other drilling firms.

The California rules would allow the state to challenge trade secrets claims and require immediate disclosure if a heath professional declares a medical emergency.

In an editorial published a few days after the release of this new set of regulations, the Sacramento Bee came down strongly in favor of the state demanding the strongest level of disclosure possible:
As valuable as fossil fuels are, California groundwater is a much more treasured resource, and it needs to be protected. We don't allow food companies to withhold the fact they might be adding carcinogenic chemicals to their recipes. Why should we allow oil companies to do the same with fracking?

California must insist on full disclosure on fracking chemicals. If regulators think they lack the authority to order such disclosure, then the Legislature will need to pass legislation to make it the law of the land.

Siegel came out even more forcefully. "These draft regulations would keep California's fracking shrouded in secrecy and do little to contain the many threats posed by fracking," she said in a statement. "These regulations are going to have to be completely rewritten if the goal is to provide real protection for our air, water, and communities."

Formal discussion of the fracking rules will begin early next year. During that process, regulators plan on meeting with both environmentalists and industry representatives and will host a series of town hall discussions with members of public in oil-producing areas across the state.

via Huffington Post