Environmentalists, energy firms clash over pollution laws

— -- Congress and regulators should close loopholes in five major environmental laws that allow oil and gas companies to avoid regulatory oversight and public disclosure of their drilling activities, the Natural Resources Defense Council said in a report Wednesday.

"We're looking at a big gaping hole in our safety net," said Amy Mall, an NRDC analyst and the report's author. "There is no justification to allow oil and gas companies the privilege to pollute when other industries have to comply" with federal environmental laws.

Not so, said Lee Fuller, vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Federal environmental laws were created to address large sources of pollution, such as manufacturing, he said. Oil and gas sites are exempted from the laws because they are small sources of pollution.

The most contentious issue is the industry's exemption from a provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The exemption means there is little or no federal oversight over a drilling process used to extract natural gas. The process involves injecting water, mixed with sand and chemicals, to crack rock deep below the Earth's surface and release the gas trapped within it.

"Oil and gas companies can pump hundreds of thousands of gallons of fluid — containing any number of toxic chemicals — into sources of drinking water with little or no accountability," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., in a statement.

Waxman chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which held a hearing Wednesday on federal environmental exemptions for oil and gas.

Fuller said the industry drills well below any aquifers that may supply drinking water and uses extra safety guards when doing it.

Mall said oil and gas companies involved in exploration and production also are exempt from reporting emissions to the Toxic Release Inventory, a public database maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Fuller said that database also was meant for large manufacturers and huge sources of emissions, not thousands of small sources like the many oil and gas wells across the country.