- 07May
Fracking bill gets support from Sierra Club, energy industry
The Sierra Club found some common ground with the oil and gas industry in the Texas Legislature.
The Lone Star chapter of the environmentalist organization supports bills that would use saltwater pipes to haul fracking water from drill sites to disposal wells.
Other backers include Fort Worth-based Range Resources (NYSE: RRC), Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy (NYSE" CHK), the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers and the Texas Oil and Gas Association.
Cyrus Reed, conservation director for the Sierra Club, said running pipes along the roads cuts down on truck traffic. On a typical frack job, convoys of trucks are used to haul millions of gallons of clean water to the pad site and then take away the chemical-laden flowback and produced water that comes back to the surface. The steady stream of trucks damage the road and increase the likelihood of an accident, Reed said.
"This encourages people to use the right-of-way," he said. "You won’t have the saltwater pipelines going over farmers’ land. It’s a lot cleaner and easier when it’s going along the road. It’s not the answer to every fracking issue but it helps mitigate the impact."
Senate Bill 514, filed by Senator Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, passed the senate 31-0 earlier this month. A companion bill, House Bill 2406, has to get placed on the calendar by Thursday or it dies in committee, said Amy Bruno, chief of staff for Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston.
Representatives have until May 21 to take up the senate bill.
Others who registered support for the bill included the city of Fort Worth and Tarrant County.
Not all frack water ends up in disposal wells as more companies are using technology to recycle the water so it could be used on another well. Another pair of bills would essentially make recycling fracking water mandatory while prohibiting the use of disposal wells.
Many companies that recycle frack water say they'd rather see incentives than a mandatory requirement for recycling frack water.
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