Our View: Baker Hughes does the right thing revealing fracking fluid ingredients
Critics of fracking tend not to applaud the oil and gas companies that do it. But one of California’s big industry players has been garnering quiet but widespread praise.
Late last month, with not much fanfare, the Houston-based oilfield services firm Baker Hughes announced it would publicly disclose all the chemicals it puts into its hydraulic fracturing mixture.
Big oilfield service firms such as Halliburton, Schlumberger and Baker Hughes regard their custom blends as precious trade secrets. But their tight-lipped demands to “trust us” have, over time, unsettled even fans of fracking. Others believe the companies are hiding dangerous secrets. And that was too often true.
A 2011 congressional investigation led by California Democrat Henry Waxman found that some 2,500 add-ins were going into the suppliers’ special sauces, for uses that ranged from killing bacteria to reducing friction. Some ingredients were harmless. (Salt, guar gum, citric acid.) Some were surprising. (Walnut hulls, tallow soap, instant coffee.)
But more than 650 contained carcinogens and hazardous pollutants, from methanol to benzene. To those with understandable concerns about the risk of groundwater contamination around drill sites, the companies’ secrecy was a recipe for disaster.
Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/2014/05/04/3324276/our-view-baker-hughes-does-the.html
