Today, Congressman Rahall, the Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, unveiled a comprehensive bill to strengthen environmental and safety rules for oil and gas drillers on publicly managed minerals – both onshore and offshore.

In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it’s nice to see that lawmakers are appropriately coming to the conclusion that fossil fuel extraction needs to occur in ways that protect communities, clean water and public health.

Gasland opens when Filmmaker Josh Fox is offered $100,000 for the drilling rights to the gas under his land in Pennsylvania near the New York border. Many people have signed on the dotted line and regretted it. But not Fox. He took off on a cross-country investigation of America to understand what it would mean to open the door to natural gas drilling on his family’s land.
 
The film that resulted, Gasland, follows Josh as he exposes the environmental effects of drilling and hydraulic fracturing. What he uncovers is nothing new to OGAP members but horrifying to those unfamiliar with what it takes to turn on a light switch or light their stove top: homes with tap water so contaminated you can set it on fire; people with similar chronic illnesses and symptoms in drilling areas across the country; and toxic waste pits that kill livestock and wildlife.
 
From Dimock, Pennsylvania, to Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to DISH, Texas and Aztec, New Mexico, Fox documents the dark side of America’s energy policy: an oil and gas industry that is exempt from nearly every one of our federal environmental laws – the Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act, to name a few. In 2005, Congress, thanks to former Vice-President Dick Cheney and Halliburton, exempted hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") from the Safe Drinking Water Act.  

Last week the Wyoming Oil & Gas Conservation Commission (WOGCC) passed several new oil and gas rules.  These new rules are a badly needed step in the right direction and it's important that states move forward with updating their oil and gas regulations.  

But, let's not get too carried away with Wyoming's good works. The cozy relationship between industry and Wyoming regulators is still very much alive and protected by a lack of adequate local, state and federal regulation that is consistently enforced.  

Today was bad news for people living next to the natural gas fields nationwide. Two incidents led to injuries and environmental mayhem in Texas and West Virginia, while in Pennsylvania the Moshannon State Forest was still reeling from clean up from last Friday’s well blowout. Before reading on, take a minute to help stop this madness at http://frackaction.earthworksaction.org

South of Dallas, Texas, when electrical company workers drilled into a natural gas pipeline, the area expoded into a furnace where the heat was described as ‘unbearable’ 900 feet away from the explosion. The plume of flame was visible from several miles away. Initially three people were reported dead and several injured; the latest reports indicate that one person remains missing and at least seven were hospitalized.

Texans working to improve set-asides for natural gas infrastructure have been arguing for 1000-foot setbacks away from homes, schools and other buildings. The current law calls for 150-foot setbacks. The Wall Street Journal, in an aside, also points out that Cleburne, Texas, where the explosion occurred, was the site of a ‘series of small earthquakes last year’ linked to natural gas drilling.

‘Incidents’ are on the rise

According to the House Energy and Commerce committee, the three largest hydraulic fracturing companies may be using diesel fuel or diesel-based solutions, along with other hazardous chemicals, in their hydraulic fracturing fluids.

This potentially violates the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Exxon, America's biggest oil company, is planning on merging with XTO, a $25 billion oil and gas drilling company heavily invested in hydraulic fracturing of shale gas deposits.

Whether or not you think that's a good thing, it's causing a bit of furor in part because Exxon has included some language pertaining to fracking's regulatory landscape.

What do the recent Pennsylvania and Colorado examples of industry's attempt to suborn reasonable state drilling oversight demonstrate?

The need for federal regulation of drilling/fracking.

More proof that the FRAC Act is, contrary to industry claims, quite necessary.

Yesterday, the House Natural Resources Committee held the second of two hearings on Chairman Nick Rahall's bill H.R. 3534, the "Consolidated Land, Energy and Aquatic Resources Act", which contains a number of modest reforms to the federal government's oil and gas programs.

The oil and gas industry, all too predictably, can be expected to fire back that any reform directed at their business is unnecessary, prohibitively costly to this multi-billion dollar industry, and could severely limit our nation's gas supplies.

The drilling industry argues that state regulations, and industry self-policing, are adequate to protect our drinking water from hydraulic fracturing. Experience shows us otherwise.