BECKLEY, W.Va. — The watchdog arm of the Environmental Protection Agency found the agency is not doing enough to protect the country’s water resources from possible hazardous effects of hydraulic fracturing, a report released Friday found.
Specifically, the Office of Inspector General wrote the agency needs to get tougher on the unlicensed use of diesel fuel in fracking and decide whether to mandate public disclosure of fracking chemicals.
The report found that with advanced technologies, fracking has become much more common in the industry. In seven years, production of oil and natural gas has gone from 15.5 billion cubic feet per day to 40.5 billion cubic feet per day in 2014.
The report states a number of methane gas releases have been documented during fracking leaching into drinking water.
Well construction, chemical mixing and several other practices used in the oil and natural gas sector threaten surface and ground water, the report found…