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http://www.copyright link/business/energy/us-epa-weakens-antifracking-argument-20150609-ghkazs?

by Ben Potter

Though very few in Australia noticed, the US Environmental Protection Agency became thelatest authoritative body to give a cautious green light to the fracking when it released the results of its landmark study on Tuesday.

The report is not a sweeping endorsement - the science of man and the natural environment is rarely certain. But it is a sharp rebuff to the noisy anti-gas scaremongering of Gaslandsand, in this country, shock-jock Alan Jones, Lock The Gate farmers, assorted environmental campaigners and their political fellow travellers.

The US EPA's report is also a challenge to the state governments of NSW and Victoria.
The Baird government in NSW faces paying tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers money to gas company Metgaso for illegally confiscating its drilling licence to appease anti-gas demonstrators in northern NSW and smooth its path to re-election. NSW still maintains a go-slow on the issue of new licences for onshore gas, despite facing possible gas shortfalls in the near future.

Victoria's Andrews government has extended a ban on onshore gas drilling while it holds a year long parliamentary inquiry - a political ruse to protect the government's left flank from Green insurgents. It will likely come to the same conclusion as all the other inquiries to date, including the US EPA and the NSW Chief Scientist: fracking and coal sam gas extraction pose risks to the environment that are no greater than those posed by other extractive industries and these can be safely managed by regorous industry practice and careful regulation.

INFLAMMATORY ASSERTIONS
The anti-fracking and anti-coal seam gas campaigns in the US and in Australia rely on unsubstantiated, inflammatory assertions that fracking and extracting coal seam gas - the main form of unconventional onshore gas in eastern Australia - poses unacceptable risks to the environment and health of local populations. These threats allegedly come in the form of contamination of underground drinking water, surface spills of toxic waste water and respirtatory illnesses and headaches.

After combing 950 sources in a four year study, the US EPA found that fracking has had only a small number of isolated impacts on drinking water in the US, despite more than 100,000 wells being drilled since the shale boom took off just under a decade ago. Rather than being inherent in the practice of fracking - which involves injecting chemically enhanced water into drillholes at high pressure to hydraulically fracture the host rockand release gas and oil - most of these mishaps are due to poor or scantly regulated drilling practices.

The US EPA did not find evidence that fracking led to "widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States".



The US EPA can't be dismissed as a tame government agency in thrall to the oil and gas industry. It conducted the study under administrators appointed by President Barack Obama, who was not a supporter of the shale boom until he realised - three years into his presidency - that it was serving key goals of his White House: helping to lower carbon dioxide emissions, enhance energy independence and create well-paid jobs.

The EPA points to gaps in the data, which US environmental groups seized on with alacrity - and desperation. But the report is the best science can offer now. Like the NSW Chief Scientist's report it is yet another argument for proceeding cautiously with an onshore gas industry to increase supply and the likelihood that manufacturers and households have the gas they need at reasonably affordable prices. it is not an argument for Locking the Gate.