User:MajorTom2GroundControl/Hydraulic fracturing by country

United States
Hydraulic fracturing was exempted from underground injection controls of the Safe Drinking Water Act by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act (later called the FRAC Act) was introduced to end the exemption of hydraulic fracturing practices from the Clean Water Act. This measure was purposed first in 2009 and later in 2011, however failed to pass in Congress on both occasions. Lack of federal regulation for hydraulic fracturing has allowed U.S. States great latitude to decide their own policy, leading to varied regulations across the United States. State policies have been influenced by many factors, including local public opinions on fracking, natural gas reserves within the state, and industrial lobbying.

In May 2012, the state of Vermont became the first state to outlaw hydraulic fracturing and New York state, which unlike Vermont has significant gas reserves, banned the practice in December 2014. Maryland introduced a temporary fracking ban in 2015, which was made permanent in 2017. Washington joined these states by banning hydraulic fracturing in May of 2019.

A type of fracking technique called slickwater fracking was used in Texas in 1998 to complete natural gas wells in the Barnett Shale. This type of completion was made possible by a number of advances in directional drilling and microseismic 3-dimensional imaging supported by the Department of Energy and other federal agencies, drilling into shale now accounts for 30 percent of US gas production. This method of well completion has become controversial in high-activity states like Texas, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Ohio, because of the complaints about pollution, health effects and Earthquakes.