A set of new Montana regulations requiring the disclosure of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing do not go far enough in protecting the rights of nearby property owners, according to a statewide conservation group.
"We are not satisfied. We're definitely happy that the state is finally getting around to doing this, but the current regulations are fairly deficient," Derf Johnson, program assistant at the Montana Environmental Information Center, said Tuesday of the regulations that went into effect for oil and gas wells on state and private land in the state on August 26.
Under the new rules from the Montana Oil and Gas Board, producers can disclose the chemicals used in fracking fluid either to the board or to a national fracturing fluid disclosure database maintained by FracFocus.org.
In setting the rules, Montana became the sixth energy-producing state to require some degree of frack fluid chemical disclosure by energy producers.
However, Johnson said the Montana requirements fall short of the environmental protections that his group would have liked to see. He said that an unsuccessful bill, which the MEIC and the Northern Plains Resource Council had lobbied for in the recent 2011 session of the state legislature, would have contained stronger safeguards to protect groundwater resources than the current rules.
The new regulations, for example, require "no landowner notification prior to any fracking occurring," Johnson said.
"You have landowners who are dependent on groundwater quality for their livestock and their families," he said. "It's not fair to landowners and not good public policy."
Landowners should have the option to obtain baseline water quality data before fracking occurs, he commented.
"Another major concern is the reporting requirements. There's an extremely broad exemption for trade secrets. It's a self-fulfilling exemption," Johnson said. He said that under the new regulations producers are required to list the individual contents of fracking fluids, but not the actual formulas.
He added that the MEIC would like to have seen Montana model its fracking disclosure regulation on those of neighboring Wyoming, where producing companies are required to file applications with the state to have their fracking formulas held in confidence as proprietary information.
However, Dave Galt, executive director of the Montana Petroleum Association, defended the trade secret protections incorporated into the new regulations.
"The state of Montana has a pretty rigorous proprietary information law. The Board of Oil and Gas was cognizant of the requirements to keep propriety information confidential," he said.
"The way that they set that up it protects the industry and protects the state," he said.
Galt said that although the association neither actively supported nor opposed the enactment of the new disclosure regulations, he thinks the industry can live within them.
"We took a neutral approach. We offered constructive comments and they adjusted the rules," he said. Galt added that the producing industry in the state soon will become "comfortable" with the new regulations.
"We've got a history of doing hydraulic fracking in the Elm Coulee Field in the Bakken Shale," on the eastern side of the state, Galt said. He expects that the number of frack jobs performed will increase rapidly as the exploration-and-production industry continues to develop the Bakken in eastern Montana as well as other areas of the state.
"We think it's important for the state to demonstrate that they're actively regulating," he said. "The rules will do what they're intended to do, not only regulate fracking but also ensure well integrity."
