The Texas Oil & Gas Accountability Project issued a report Thursday calling for the Environmental Protection Agency to oversee regulation of air emissions from oil and natural gas exploration and production equipment in the state. In the meantime, the report said, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality "must significantly step up its currently inadequate efforts to protect public health by strictly enforcing emission limits from oil and gas exploration and production equipment." The group said the Texas Railroad Commission, the chief regulator of the state's oil and gas industry, has been its "lapdog" but "must become a watchdog." The commission "must adopt rules that provide the public with full disclosure of oil and gas drilling and fracking fluids," the group said, in reference to chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," pumps large volumes of water and sand, along with a smaller volume of chemical additives, underground under high pressure to create fractures in dense rock formations and allow trapped oil and gas to flow into a wellbore. To protect surface and groundwater resources from oil and gas contamination, the commission "must implement rules requiring closed-loop drilling systems and water-based drilling fluids," the group said. The report, issued in conjunction with the ...
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