Companies that drill for natural gas and oil are skirting federal law and injecting toxic petroleum distillates into thousands of wells, threatening drinking water supplies from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. Federal and state regulators, meanwhile, largely look the other way.

Based on a six-month investigation of chemical disclosure records filed by several of the largest drilling corporations and interviews with regulators in five states, Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that:

1. Companies are injecting natural gas wells with millions of gallons of fracking fluids laced with petroleum distillates that can be similar to diesel and represent an equal or greater threat to water supplies. The distillates typically contain the same highly toxic chemicals as diesel: benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene. Distillates disclosed in records analyzed by EWG have been found to contain up to 93 times more benzene than diesel but require no authorization prior to use. Although the companies disclosed the distillates in the context of natural gas drilling, at least several of the companies, including Halliburton, Schlumberger Ltd. and B.J. Services Co., also help drill and fracture oil wells, suggesting that at least some of the same distillates may be used in oil drilling, too.

2. State and federal regulatory agencies surveyed in the report are generally not tracking fluids used in fracturing and in some cases appear to misinterpret the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. As a result, companies could easily be fracturing with diesel without a permit. Only one of five state or federal agencies contacted, in Wyoming, reported tracking the chemicals used in fracking operations. But even Wyoming requires companies to disclose trade names of fracking fluids only, not the specific chemical components of the fluids. (The other agencies were in Pennsylvania, New York, Montana, and Texas.

3. A Wyoming state official reported that companies commonly use diesel in that state and that the state has not issued any permits for fracturing under the SDWA.

EWG’s Recommendations

1. Congress should require companies to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act when using any substance for hydraulic fracturing. Currently, the act allows companies to use substances that may be at least as toxic as diesel without any oversight.

Congress should require drilling companies to publicly disclose the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing in each well. At a minimum, companies must disclose Chemical Abstracts Services Registry Numbers in every chemical product to allow easy identification. Generic names such as “petroleum distillate” leave the public in the dark.

3. The U.S. Department of the Interior should exercise its authority under the oil and gas leasing program to require such disclosures for wells drilled on federal land.

4. Congress should investigate federal and state oversight of hydraulic fracturing and insist that federal and state personnel be properly informed about the law.

5. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should use its existing authority to determine whether companies are using diesel and enforce permit requirements.

Read Entire Report Here