Not as ingrained in Indiana as some places, fracking has been used since 1940s

McDivitt, as part of his role as head of the Indiana regulatory agency on oil and gas development, spoke with students, educators and the public at the University of Southern Indiana Thursday night.

The method of pumping fluid into the earth to fracture rock and create pathways to release oil and gas has been in use since the late 1940s, he said. Over the last eight years, more than 27.1 million gallons of fluid have been used as part of hydraulic fracturing in Indiana, largely in Gibson County, he said.

While an old process, fracking, McDivitt said, has become the focus of activists, who are more concerned with things not directly related to the hydraulic fracturing process. A “sound bite” culture has left people ill informed, he said.

“The average citizen doesn’t have a strong grasp of the ins and outs of oil and gas development,” leading to skepticism, he said.

Hydraulic fracturing, he said, has increased oil reserves by 30 percent and natural gas preserves by 90 percent.

A recent public interest in the process is likely a result of technological advances for the oil and gas industry.

Whereas hydraulic fracturing old processes used to pump 80,000 to 100,000 gallons of fluid into the earth, some large operations now send 8 to 12 million gallons of fluid into a well.

However, the fracking taking place in Indiana uses between 150,000 to 2 million gallons fluid per well, he said. The highest being 2,095,128 gallons of fluid completed in Gibson County.

Currently, only 16 percent of Indiana wells receive hydraulic fracturing treatments, he said. Houston, Texas-based Citation Oil & Gas Corp. held the largest number of permits for hydraulic fracturing in 2012.

Areas such as Gibson County’s Griffin Bottoms in the southwestern part of the county have a higher number of fracking operations by comparison to the rest of the state.

The composition of the fluid used by the oil and gas industry typically consists of around 88 percent water, 11 percent sand and 0.5 percent “other” compounds, such as hydrochloric acid, guar gum and methanol, he said. Older methods, years removed from modern methods, have used nitro glycerin, kerosene or napalm in the fluid used for hydraulic fracturing process.

There’s no state regulation that requires a developer to report what chemicals they will be using in their fluid during the permit application process, but they must report what was used after the fracturing period. McDivitt said that there has not been an incident where they saw an unapproved chemical used by a developer after that fact.

There are risks, he said, but there haven’t been any confirmed instances of contaminated groundwater as a result of fracking in Indiana.

There are also risks associated with going back to old wells to fish out natural gas or oil left years ago. However, the greater risk lies within the high-volume fracking in old wells — and there’s no regulation in place to oversee that — but he said the only high-volume fracking in Indiana is with newly constructed wells.

McDivitt said he doesn’t support more regulations or oversight than is already in place, adding they could potentially be “overkill.”