Production Trumps Public Health

From the Durango Herald  comes a demonstration of how little the oil and gas industry and its regulators care about public health and how much they care about profits.  

Cathy Behr is back at work and recovering after she fell ill from helping a man who showed up at the hospital soaked in unknown chemicals. The worker's company wouldn't share information about the chemicals that could have helped Behr's doctor diagnose and treat her injury, she said.

At the time, she was suffering from liver, heart and lung failure in Mercy's intensive care unit.  Behr talked about her experience Wednesday with

The Durango Herald, just as state regulators are considering new rules to require companies to disclose their chemicals.  "I didn't have the knowledge base of how risky and dangerous the chemicals were. Now we do," Behr said.

That's learning the hard way.

Behr stressed that she's not angry at anyone. She wanted to share her experience Wednesday at a hearing of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, but commissioners decided not to allow her testimony.

Privacy rules prevent Behr from saying which chemical made her and the worker sick, she said. The rules also prevented Mercy officials from revealing the gas-field worker's employer.

The commission is in the middle of a multi-week hearing to rewrite the rules on gas and oil production, and on Wednesday, commissioners considered requiring companies to disclose to the state which chemicals they use on their well sites.

Durango attorney Tom Dugan, on behalf of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, the Colorado Petroleum Association and Halliburton, argued that Behr shouldn't be allowed to testify because commission staff added her name to the witness list in the last few days - too late for the industry to prepare a rebuttal. Dugan called it "classic, last-minute sand-bagging."

Three companies - Halliburton, Schlumberger and BJ Services - dominate the fracing industry.  Dale Davis with Halliburton argued against the disclosure rule. Halliburton protects its frac-fluid formula because it leads to a 20 percent to 30 percent increase in well production, he said.

If Halliburton had to disclose its formula, even only to state regulators, the company would quit using its secret formula in Colorado, and well production would drop, he said.

"The combination of lost tax revenue and lost jobs will have an overall detrimental effect on the state economy," Davis said.

There you have it: secret formula chemicals sicken people and destroy groundwater quality but are critical to the bottom line.   So it's OK then.

How do these guys sleep at night?

Comments

[michelle meaders]

Isn't a company that sells a chemical used at work required to provide MSDSs so workers can protect themselves while using it? Knowing what's in something doesn't tell you the proportions of it.