The Environmental Integrity Project and 16 other organizations have petitioned the US Environmental Protection Agency to require the oil and gas extraction industry, including those companies engaged in hydrofracking, to report a list of the chemicals they use to extract natural gas.
The issue has become a regional hot potato since fracking in the Marcellus shale and Utica shale areas has been placed on the table.
Among the groups in the latest call to the EPA is Delaware Riverkeeper Network whose senior attorney Jane Davenport said the issue is about information dissemination.
“What this is really about is not telling the oil and gas industry that they can’t do something, but that they just have to be up front,” Davenport said. “They have to inform the public so that if a property owner wants to buy property near a gas processing facility, they have the ability to go look on a website and say, ‘maybe that’s not the best place to move my family because look at all these toxic air pollutants that this facility is issuing every year.”
The process of hydrofracking employs forcing chemicals into the shale formation under extreme pressure and opponents say they do not have an accounting of the chemicals used in the process.
