Secretary Chu’s panel is officially known as the Natural Gas Subcommittee and is a project of the U.S. Energy Advisory Board. This panel, now often referred to as Obama’s Fracking Panel, has been formally discredited by a coalition of leading scientists and also by a collective of leading citizen and environmental groups. Most notoriously, the panel was called out for its strong financial ties to the gas industry.   

 

The panel was given 90 days to document their preliminary findings, which they released in a report on August 18th. Today, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing to examine those early findings.   

 

From the outset, the hearing looked like the perfect opportunity for the subcommittee to congratulate itself for its own work. 

 

Dr. Daniel Yergin, one of the most formidable witnesses to testify at the hearing, is perhaps a good indicator of what today’s proceedings were designed to do. Already something of a natural gas convert, Yergin’s perspective is shaped by the background conviction that fracking should and will proceed. 

 

It looks as though the panel’s investigation is framed around the question of how to develop our unconventional gas assets, and not whether to.   

 

A brief look at the other participants, such as Dr. Stephen A. Holditch and Dr. Mark D. Zoback, show they hold a similar bias.

Dr. Holditch began his testimony [.docx] today with the expert-ish sentence, “Shale gas is for real.” He then went on to belittle concerns about the fracking process, repeating standard industry excuses about how fracking chemicals are similar to products we all have in our homes, like Clorox, Dawn dish soap and food products like guar gum. (Minus all the other toxic fracking chemicals he failed to mention, of course.)

Dr. Holditch did not hesitate to state his opinion “that the United States has a real opportunity to develop it’s [sic] unconventional gas reservoirs (shale gas, coal gas and tight gas).”

After acknowledging that the panel and the industry did not have all the relevant information to make declarative statements about the safety of fracking, and confirming that “there are real issues with water, air emissions, and community impact that must be addressed by the oil and gas companies” – Holditch nevertheless stated, “It is my opinion that current drilling and hydraulic fracturing activity does not adversely affect shallow drinking water aquifers.” 

 

Unfortunately the committee failed to invite any external reviewers, independent experts who could provide the outside criticism needed to keep the investigation directed at its end goal: increasing the standards, safety and oversight of fracking operations while limiting the associated risks to human and environmental health.

 

It is left to the Senate to ask the hard questions necessary to hold this panel accountable for their findings. But at this stage, there is little indication that this entire process will amount to the kind of tough crackdown the reckless gas industry warrants.