(NYT) Oil and gas service companies injected tens of millions of gallons of diesel fuel into onshore wells in more than a dozen states from 2005 to 2009, Congressional investigators have charged. Those injections appear to have violated the Safe Water Drinking Act, the investigators said in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday.
“We learned that no oil and gas service companies have sought — and no state and federal regulators have issued — permits for diesel fuel use in hydraulic fracturing,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California and two other Democratic members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, in the letter. “This appears to be a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act.”
Oil and gas companies acknowledged using diesel fuel in their fracking fluids, but they rejected the House Democrats’ assertion that it was illegal. They said that the E.P.A. had never properly developed rules and procedures to regulate the use of diesel in fracking, despite a clear grant of authority from Congress over the issue.
Full story here: www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/business/energy-environment/01gas.html
From Rep. Waxman's letter:
Between 2005 and 2009, 12 of the 14 companies used 32.2 million gallons of diesel fuel or fluids containing diesel fuel. BJ Services used the most diesel fuel and fluids containing diesel, more than 11.5 million gallons, followed by Halliburton, which used 7.2 million gallons. Four other companies, RPC (4.3 million gallons), Sanjel (3.6 million gallons), Weatherford (2.1 million gallons), and Key Energy Services (1.6 million gallons), used more than one million gallons of diesel fuel and fluids containing diesel.
These 12 companies injected these diesel-containing fluids in 19 states. Diesel-containing fluids were used most frequently in Texas, which accounted for half of the total volume injected, 16 million gallons. The companies injected at least one million gallons of diesel-containing fluids in Oklahoma (3.3 million gallons), North Dakota (3.1 million gallons), Louisiana (2.9 million gallons), Wyoming (2.9 million gallons), and Colorado (1.3 million gallons).The list of companies provided by the committee:
| Company | Volume (gallons) |
| Basic Energy Services | 204,013 |
| BJ Services | 11,555,538 |
| Complete | 4,625 |
| Frac Tech | 159,371 |
| Halliburton | 7,207,216 |
| Key Energy Services | 1,641,213 |
| RPC | 4,314,110 |
| Sanjel | 3,641,270 |
| Schlumberger | 443,689 |
| Superior | 833,431 |
| Trican | 92,537 |
| Weatherford | 2,105,062 |
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