Davis bill would require 'tracer' fluid in fracking

State Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, filed a bill today that she said would require companies drilling for natural gas to include a unique "tracer" fluid in water used in hydraulic fracturing of wells.

The tracer "would protect the gas drilling industry from false claims of groundwater contamination in the same manner that DNA evidence is used to prove (guilty) or exonerate defendants in criminal court cases," a news release issued by Davis said.

"The goal of this legislation is to reduce the cost of legal burdens on the gas drilling industry or landowners when questions of water contamination arise, while also demonstrating to a ground-water dependent public that drilling is safe," Davis said in a statement.

The use of the tracer fluid could help quickly settle costly legal disputes related to the fracturing process, she said.

Davis said she supports "responsible drilling" and "the positive impacts that drilling for natural gas have brought to the local economy."

Hydraulic fracturing is a process under which huge volumes of water and sand, along with a much-smaller volume of chemicals, are pumped into a wellbore under high pressure to create fractures in dense rocks and allow oil and natural gas to be produced.

--Jack Z. Smith  

Comments

[biffula]

wow. something reasonable from a lawmaker.

[Chris Salmon]

Jack, I, too was a fan of this idea until I realized there is a very serious problem - a problem Sen. Davis also ignores - that of security.

The tracers would only protect industry and the public to the extent that the results can be guaranteed genuine. And I don't see any way for that to happen.

All it takes is for the chemistry of the tracer used to leak out (almost a certainty) and then you're open to someone injecting the tracer elsewhere in the aquifer and giving you a false positive. You'd have to guarantee the security of hundreds, if not thousands of water wells and also guarantee that no one in hundreds of square miles had secretly drilled a well just to inject the tracer into the aquifer.

On the other hand who is going to guarantee that the exact tracer required in the exact amount necessary is actually injected into the frac fluid? That is also another weak security point in this plan. Are you to have a state official personally carry a measured amount of this tracer to the well every time they frac it and guarantee it was the right stuff and it went into the fluid? If not then how do you guarantee every driller does it?

Once you make a piece of evidence the deciding factor in guilt or innocence as the Senator describes, you've created a focused target for attack and hacking.

I don't see a way to guarantee the security of the tests, so that makes the results useless for both sides, unfortunately.