While witnesses from Texas testified in Washington against a federal study of the method central to unlocking oil and gas from shale formations, the Texas House passed a bill that would require producers to disclose chemicals used in the process.

The seemingly contrasting events in Austin and Washington, both led by Republican lawmakers, illustrate the complexity of the debate over the process called hydraulic fracturing, often called fracking.

It has contributed to a boom in natural gas exploration and production, bringing new prosperity to oil patch communities that had been in decline, but also has prompted worries that extracting the fuel can contaminate water supplies.

“Although there have been no cases of the process contaminating groundwater in Texas, the people say they want to know the contents of the fluid used in the process,” the state bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Granbury, told the Associated Press.

He chairs the House Energy Resources Committee, where the bill was approved after an amendment limited the amount of information that companies would have to disclose.

In the original bill, drillers would have had to list on a public website all chemicals by volume and concentration. Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas, said the revision would require disclosing only chemicals that federal officials list as hazardous.

The bill also allows drillers to petition the Texas Attorney General’s Office for an exemption if they believe use of a specific chemical constitutes a trade secret.

Another North Texas legislator, state Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, is sponsoring a similar disclosure bill that is scheduled for a public hearing today in the Senate Natural Resources Committee.

Despite the “potential loopholes,” Metzger called the House bill a good first step because it would give people near fracturing operations information about the chemicals involved and what kind of impact they might have on public health and air and water quality.

“In this political environment,” Metzger said, “this chalks up as a pretty significant victory.”

The political environment skeptical of regulation was evident in Washington, where the House Science, Space and Technology Committee conducted a hearing on the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to launch a study into hydraulic fracturing.

Committee Chairman Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Rockwall, questioned the EPA’s objectivity.

“Its draft study plan is yet another example of this administration’s desire to stop domestic energy development through regulation,” Hall said. “The study intends to identify the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water without ever taking into consideration the probability that such an effect may occur.”

‘Grimm brothers’

Texas Railroad Commission Chairman Elizabeth Ames Jones said the EPA was under the influence of “a few special-interest Grimm brothers who perpetrate fairy tales.”

Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting mixtures of water, sand and chemicals deep underground and at high pressures to break up dense shale rock. It is being used in combination with horizontal drilling techniques to extract previously unrecoverable natural gas.

But conservationists are concerned about the high water demands of fracturing and how the industry disposes of water it uses.

Environmentalists also warn that natural gas can escape out of poorly designed wells, a finding bolstered by a Duke University study released Monday that found a connection between natural gas drilling and higher levels of methane in drinking water in parts of Pennsylvania and New York.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, said she hopes hydraulic fracturing is “as benign as the industry asserts.”

“But let us not be fooled into believing that the drilling industry alone, out of sheer benevolence, will implement cleaner and potentially more costly technologies and practices,” she said.

Hydraulic fracturing historically has been regulated by state governments — and Congress in 2005 exempted it from regulation under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act — but lawmakers last year asked the EPA to study the relationship between fracturing and drinking water.

Life span of water

Under the EPA’s study blueprint, the research would examine the full life span of water in fracturing — from its acquisition to the fracturing process and the management of water it produces.

Although some drilling advocates in Congress originally believed the study could help forestall calls to give the EPA the power to regulate the practice, they now worry that the probe could eventually be used to make the case for federal oversight.

Cal Cooper, a manager of environmental technologies, greenhouse gas and hydraulic fracturing for Houston-based Apache Corp., said the EPA’s plans were too broad.

“It aspires to do too much with too little, in too short a time frame,” Cooper said.

Jones complained that the analysis would “delve into areas beyond the reach of federal law and study areas beyond the practice of hydraulic fracturing,” such as water use and availability.

Paul Anastas, an EPA assistant administrator of research and development, fired back against GOP accusations that the EPA was moving forward without confirmed evidence of drinking water contamination from chemicals in hydraulic fracturing.

There have been enough reports of problems, he said, that it would be irresponsible for the EPA to “unilaterally declare that there’s no problem here” without conducting further analysis.

jennifer.dlouhy@chron.com

ronnie.crocker@chron.com