HOUSTON, August 20, 2009 -- In the August 2009 issue of Oil & Gas Financial Journal, Baker Botts lawyers Daniel Steinway and Thomas Jackson write about the importance of hydraulic fracturing in energy production in the United States.

While the technology has been used for 60 years to enhance production from oil and gas wells, Steinway and Jackson state, "today hydraulic fracturing is essential to making gas wells in many types of unconventional formations such as shales economically viable. As a result, this long-standing practice holds the key to unlocking vast domestic reserves of natural gas that can contribute to America's energy security while helping to address climate change concerns."

Steinway and Jackson point out in their article that hydraulic fracturing operations have long been regulated by state officials as part of their oil and gas regulatory programs.

"These programs have been highly successful, allowing hydraulic fracturing operations to enhance recovery of critical domestic energy supplies while protecting water resources," they state. "As a result, Congress has seen no need to complicate matters with federal regulatory requirements and as recently as 2005 amended the Safe Drinking Water Act to affirm that hydraulic fracturing is not to be regulated under that statute except in very limited circumstances involving the use of diesel as a fracturing fluid."

Notwithstanding this long track record of safe and effective use of hydraulic fracturing techniques and an absence of any hard evidence that hydraulic fracturing has affected drinking water resources, efforts are underway in Congress and in a number of states and local jurisdictions across the country to impose a variety of new restrictions on hydraulic fracturing, Steinway and Jackson note in their article.

"These efforts to impose additional regulatory requirements on hydraulic fracturing have the potential to significantly impact domestic energy production and are unwarranted in light of existing studies which demonstrate that the practice poses little threat to drinking water."

The complete article is available here.

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