Recently, we wrote about former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell's connections to the natural gas industry after he published a pro-fracking op-ed in The New York Daily News.

Following our story, Rendell's column — which called on New York officials to lift a ban on the drilling technique — was updated to disclose that he is a paid consultant to a private equity firm with natural gas investments.

Rendell assured us in an interview before the first story that despite his role with the private equity firm, he had no "pecuniary interest in the natural gas industry doing well."

But the story doesn't end there. One entity that indisputably has an interest in the industry is Rendell's longtime home outside of politics: the law firm Ballard Spahr of Philadelphia.

Rendell is currently special counsel at the firm, and is a member of its energy and project finance and environment and natural resources practice areas, his spokeswoman said.

The firm touts its work "on the forefront" of the development of the Marcellus Shale, the formation under Pennsylvania and other states from which a vast quantity of natural gas is now being extracted.

In 2011, the publication AOL Energy named Ballard Spahr one of the top five energy law firms in the country. AOL cited Ballard Spahr's "deep presence in Pennsylvania" that "put it on the doorstep of the Marcellus Shale natural gas field," a "major source of controversy and legal work as developers work in heavily populated and closely monitored areas."

A week after leaving the governor's office in 2011, Rendell rejoined the firm, where he had given up his job as partner when he was elected in 2003. As governor, he presided over the fracking boom in Pennsylvania.

Has he worked for natural gas interests in his role at Ballard Spahr?

"Governor Rendell cannot comment on what areas he may or may not work on for clients of the firm," Kirstin Snow, his spokeswoman, said in an email.

Another attorney in Ballard Spahr's Philadelphia office, Harry Weiss, has "advocated for an oil and gas company at both the state and federal levels during regulatory and policy debates on impact of shale gas exploration on ground water supplies," according to the firm. He also represents landowners in lease negotiations with gas companies.

The firm did not respond to a request for comment about Rendell's work.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell took to the New York Daily News op-ed page Wednesday with a message to local officials: stop worrying and learn to love fracking.

As New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo agonizes over whether to allow the controversial natural gas drilling technique, Rendell invoked his own experience as a Democratic governor who presided over a fracking boom. New York state, Rendell argued, has a major part to play in the nation’s fracking “revolution” — and it can do so safely. He rejected what he called the “false choice” of “natural gas versus the environment.”

What Rendell’s passionate plea failed to note was this: since stepping down as governor in 2011, he has worked as a paid consultant to a private equity firm with investments in the natural gas industry.

The op-ed piece was widely noted in other media outlets, and Cuomo wound up being asked about it during a radio appearance on Wednesday. The New York State Petroleum Council promptly issued a press release hailing Rendell’s “strong and confident argument.”

Reached Wednesday, Rendell told ProPublica that he should have disclosed to the Daily News his work at the private equity firm, Element Partners, and that the newspaper “should have included it.”

Rendell said the Pennsylvania-based firm pays him about $30,000 per year. Still, he insisted he is not conflicted on the issue of fracking, in which water and chemicals are injected deep into the ground to extract previously unreachable natural gas from rock. He said he does not own equity in Element Partners or any fracking companies.

"The only conflict would be if I had a pecuniary interest in the natural gas industry doing well, and I certainly don’t," he said.

Element Partners’ website lists several investments by the firm in natural gas companies, including a company called 212 Resources that specializes in “fluid management systems” for fracking.

Rendell is also a senior adviser at the investment bank Greenhill, which has worked on several large transactions involving natural gas companies. A Greenhill spokesman said Rendell has not been involved in the firm’s work in the energy sector.

"I have no brief for industry," Rendell told ProPublica. He said he supports fracking because of the potential for American energy independence and jobs.

“If we choose to embrace natural gas, it will help us get past a number of significant economic and environmental challenges,” Rendell argued in the Daily News op-ed. “On the other hand, if we let fear carry the day, we will squander another key moment to move forward together.”

Daily News opinion editor Josh Greenman said in an email to ProPublica that he was unaware of Rendell’s relationship with Element, and indeed had been assured by Rendell’s representative that there was no conflict.

“Had I known, I certainly would have disclosed that and conceivably would have made a different judgment on the piece," Greenman said.

The Daily News has now added a disclosure line to the online version of the op-ed.

This isn’t the first time Rendell has popped up in New York advocating for fracking. The New York Post ran an interview with Rendell in November in which he said Cuomo would be “crazy” not to lift the fracking ban. That piece didn’t mention Rendell’s ties to the industry either.

Update 4:15 pm:

It’s worth noting that since leaving office, Rendell has been a vocal supporter of fracking around the country. He’s weighed in in support of a regulated fracking industry in venues including Huffington Post; the Nightly Business Report; a Manhattan Institute forum; the Austin, Texas, PBS affiliate; and a Wall Street Journal conference with businessman T. Boone Pickens. 

Here is a clip from the Journal’s 2012 ECO:nomics conference, in which Rendell says the burgeoning gas industry is “great for America in so many ways.”

Update 4/8/13: There's another layer to Rendell's fracking connections -- his law firm. 

Native Americans on an oil-rich North Dakota reservation have been cheated out of more than $1 billion by schemes to buy drilling rights for lowball prices, a flurry of recent lawsuits assert. And, the suits claim, the federal government facilitated the alleged swindle by failing in its legal obligation to ensure the tribes got a fair deal.

This is a story as old as America itself, given a new twist by fracking and the boom that technology has sparked in North Dakota oil country. Since the late 1800s, the U.S. government has appropriated much of the original tribal lands associated with the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota for railroads and white homesteaders. A devastating blow was delivered when the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River in 1953, flooding more than 150,000 acres at the heart of the remaining reservation. Members of the Three Affiliated Tribes — the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara — were forced out of the fertile valley and up into the arid and barren surrounding hills, where they live now.

But that last-resort land turns out to hold a wealth of oil, because it sits on the Bakken Shale, widely believed to be one of the world's largest deposits of crude. Until recently, that oil was difficult to extract, but hydraulic fracturing, combined with the ability to drill a well sideways underground, can tap it. The result, according to several senior tribal members and lawsuits filed last November and early this year in federal and state courts, has been a land grab involving everyone from tribal leaders accused of enriching themselves at the expense of their people, to oil speculators, to a New York hedge fund, to the federal government's Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The rush to get access to oil on tribal lands is part of the oil industry's larger push to secure drilling rights across the United States. Recent estimates show that the U.S. contains vast quantities of oil and gas. As fracking has opened new fields to drilling, and the U.S. has striven to get more of its energy from within its borders, leases from Louisiana to Pennsylvania have been gobbled up. Now the pressure is increasing on one of the last sizeable holdouts — lands owned by Native Americans.

A review of tribal and federal records as well as lawsuit documents reveals a dizzying array of lowball, non-competitive deals brokered by numerous companies, often entwined with the tribal council and with individual landholders on the reservation. But at heart the alleged practices are simple: Tribal leaders and outsiders set up companies to buy drilling rights cheap and flip them later for spectacular profits — in one case earning as much as a 200-fold return in just four years.

"Hundreds of millions of dollars were lost," said Tex Hall, the current chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes, in an interview. "It's just a huge loss and we'll never get it back."

At the center of that particular alleged scheme, according to one of the suits, was Spencer Wilkinson, Jr., longtime manager of 4 Bears Casino, a time-worn warehouse of slot machines, swirling cigarette smoke and stained carpets that serves as the reservation's entertainment nexus and its financial hub. Wilkinson also sat on the board of the tribe's development corporation, where he was charged with finding new opportunities to enhance the economy of the reservation.

According to interviews with tribal members, former employees of the Three Affiliated Tribes, and a class action lawsuit filed in federal district court in Bismarck, ND against Wilkinson and others, Wilkinson used his access to casino funds — and to the development corporation — to gain influence and craft an oil deal that would leave him one of the richest men on the reservation.

In 2006 he became an owner of a company, Dakota-3, with Richard Woodward, a white consultant who, records show, was receiving more than $20,000 a month from tribal funds for his work at the development corporation. Together, the suit and other legal filings allege, Wilkinson and Woodward planned to raise money and buy up rights to much of the remaining land not yet slated for drilling, all the while maintaining their work with the tribes and employing Wilkinson's relationship with the council to help get the oil leases approved.

Leases for oil rights generally work like this: A company purchases the right to drill for oil underneath an acre of land by paying a one-time upfront payment, called a bonus, and a percentage of the profits earned on the well, known as a royalty. On Indian lands additional laws also apply, dictating who can negotiate for whom and how the government has to oversee the agreements.

Wilkinson declined to comment and Woodward could not be reached. Wilkinson has filed a motion to dismiss the case. The suit alleges that Wilkinson and others aided and abetted the U.S. government in failing to fulfill its fiduciary responsibility to the tribes; Wilkinson's motion argues, among other things, that the government had no such responsibility. Woodward has not yet filed a response to the suit in court.

Many details of Dakota-3's deals remain murky. There is limited transparency into tribal government affairs, no public access to documents, no annual reporting on accounts, and limited communication about what tribal council members discuss in their meetings.

But, according to separate lawsuits and records filed with the North Dakota Secretary of State, Dakota-3 partnered with an Oklahoma-based oil speculator named Robert Zinke and his company Zenergy to buy leases and form additional joint venture companies. Documents from two law suits mention the involvement of the New York based hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management Group but do not specify the firm's role. The hedge fund is publicly traded and, according to its web site, has more than $33 billion under management.

A spokesman for Och-Ziff declined to comment, and Zinke did not return a telephone message.

The interlinked companies, the documents show, purchased drilling rights to some 42,500 acres of lands owned by individuals and families through dozens of separate small deals. Those rights were ultimately controlled by Dakota-3, which also purchased from the tribal council drilling rights to another 44,000 acres of lands managed by the council. Altogether, Dakota-3 accumulated rights to about a fifth of the 420,000-odd acres of leasable land on the reservation, having bought much of those rights for as little as $50 per acre and royalties of around 18 percent. At about the same time, records and interviews show, other companies were purchasing drilling rights to land on and near the reservation for $300 to $1,000 per acre plus royalties as high as 22.5 percent.

One of the lawsuits alleges that the difference in the one-time bonus payments, plus the difference in royalty payments, "could mean billions of dollars" over the life of the oil field.

In late 2010, an Oklahoma-based oil production company, Williams, bought Dakota-3 for $925 million. At the time of the purchase, Dakota-3 was pumping a small amount of oil, but the bulk of its assets were the drilling rights. Two lawsuits allege that by buying Dakota-3, Williams effectively paid more than $10,000 per acre for those rights — as much as 200 times what Dakota-3 had paid for the leases.

At issue is not just the question of how Dakota-3 managed to win the tribal council's approval for the deal, but whether the federal government should have stepped in to ensure that the tribes were paid higher rates.

Reservation lands are still held in trust by the U.S. government. As a trustee, the Department of the Interior has responsibility for overseeing the development of oil and gas on tribal lands, and for ensuring that any leases or sales of that land are made in "the best interest" of the Native Americans. When it comes to leases to drill for oil — even those negotiated directly between the tribal council and the oil industry — the Bureau of Indian Affairs is required to make sure the leases meet this standard.

The bureau did not respond to a list of written questions, but according to interviews and documents obtained by ProPublica, the bureau approved the leases even though some Interior Department staffers expressed misgivings. Other documents show that tribal members appealed to high-level Interior Department officials and others to reject the leases and step in on their behalf.

"Mr. Secretary, this company, Dakota-3, like the other companies in the oil business will turn around and sell the lease," wrote Russell Mason Sr., a tribal elder, to the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in a December, 2007 letter. "We are making a plea to you that you exercise your trust responsibilities."

"The United States has uniformly failed in its duties to the Indian landowners," states one lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C. that was brought by tribal landowners seeking restitution for the Dakota-3 leases sold to Williams.

The Dakota-3 deals are not the only controversial ones. For example, a company called Black Rock Resources purchased drilling rights to about 12,800 acres of land for $35 per acre and a 16.7 percent royalty. It later sold those rights to Marathon Oil for about $42 million, according to financial documents that describe the deal.

Messages left for multiple Black Rock Resources officials were not returned, and Marathon Oil did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the Black Rock deal, and documents obtained by ProPublica reveal the sometimes-contradictory advice the Bureau of Indian Affairs received from its own staff and other federal officials.

When Black Rock first offered to buy up reservation leases for $35 per acre beginning in 2005, some bureau staff justified the rates saying the cumbersome regulations and past problems with leasing on the reservation had driven down demand. "Unfortunately," wrote one staffer in a department letter, $35 per acre "is what the market will bear."

But in a review dated November, 2005, an expert at the Bureau of Land Management wrote that the offered price "appears to look low compared to those offered recently at both BLM and North Dakota State competitive oil and gas lease sales in the area." He cited other sales that same month for as much as $370 an acre. An Interior Department lawyer in Washington sent a letter to North Dakota BIA officials expressing similar concerns.

Even at the time, the tribe received higher offers. Jerry Nagel is a tribe member, businessman and former program analyst for the tribe who has been outspoken against leases he thought were being sold for too little. In an interview, he said that he financed a venture in 2006 that offered the tribe $140 per acre plus a royalty rate more than twice as high as the tribal council was offered for the big leases it ultimately signed. It's unclear why the tribal council didn't take that offer, but Nagel claims it's evidence that the council gave preferential treatment to certain suitors.

The tribal council's office did not immediately respond to questions about why the council passed over Nagel's offer.

Kyle Baker is a tribe member, geologist and former environment official for minerals and energy for the tribe. He said that his family struck deals to lease its acreage on and near the reservation for as much as $700 per acre around the same time as the Black Rock deal.

"Companies will come and find your weaknesses and then drive themselves in," Baker said on a recent wintery morning in his living room overlooking Lake Sakakawea. "Our laws, our setup wasn't ready for it."

Companies and the U.S. government have long known that the Ft. Berthold reservation lay in the heart of the oil-rich Williston Basin, a reserve thought by some to contain as much as 20 billion barrels of oil. But previous efforts to lease and drill on the Indian lands stalled in the 1970s, and again in the late 1990s, thwarted by a dense bureaucracy and a tangle of laws governing leasing on reservations.

Only after the advent of modern fracking — and after Congress passed a handful of laws to ease corporate access to the Ft Berthold reservation — did companies begin to invest seriously in drilling there.

Today it's estimated that the three tribes and individual Native American landholders are receiving some $50 to $80 million a year from the drilling leases and royalties, compared with revenues of about $5 million a year before the boom began in about 2006.

But that money has brought allegations of sweetheart arrangements that have left a few tribal members with disproportionate profits from oil development.

In 2011 a team of elders audited the tribal council's activities. They found widespread financial inconsistencies that they said indicated systemic misconduct. "We saw millions of dollars going out and hardly anything coming back" to the Three Affiliated Tribes, said Tony Foote a forensic auditor who chaired the team. "We're not just talking about cash. It's rooms, food, travel, donations, and there's only a handful of people that can get all this stuff."

Hall, the tribes' current chairman, had previously held that post from 1998 until 2006. He didn't deny that there had been corruption, but he said that since he came back into office in 2010 he has focused on reform and on making sure that the oil revenues benefit the broader tribal community. He said he has formed tribal entities to directly control a pipeline and refinery project, set up a $100 million trust fund for the tribes, and begun to sign lease agreements that are more favorable to the Native Americans on the reservation. He also demoted Wilkinson, who is now an administrative officer at the casino, not its CEO.

"I was called back because people were concerned about sweetheart deals, so we have totally changed the dynamic," he said.

The U.S. relies on state and federal regulators to make sure that oil and gas drilling is done safely, and that trillions of gallons of toxic waste injected into underground disposal wells do not contaminate water supplies.

Today, ProPublica is updating its database on oversight of production and waste wells, adding records for 2010 and 2011 — the most recent year available for many states — to data from 2003 to 2009. We've added information about agencies' budgets, as well as the total number of injection wells they are responsible for overseeing.

The data shows some states have hired more inspectors or otherwise increased their enforcement capacity. Still, the ratio of wells to inspectors remains extremely high, and the volume of waste being pumped underground has ballooned, driven in large part to the boom in drilling made possible by fracking.

Over a five-year span, ProPublica has investigated the risks from fracking and the expanding system of underground injection wells, often finding that regulatory agencies have fallen short in enforcing critical environmental protections.

In 2009, we found that the state oil and gas agencies charged with overseeing fracking and the drilling of natural gas were often woefully understaffed, just as the largest drilling boom in the recent history was ramping up.

In 2012, we investigated how the same agencies and the federal government were monitoring roughly 700,000 underground disposal wells in the U.S., of which more than 150,000 are used for waste from oil and gas drilling.

Our examination of records summarizing more than 220,000 well inspections conducted between late 2007 and late 2010 showed that fundamental safeguards are sometimes ignored or circumvented. We found records showing that more than 7,000 wells had leaked, and that more than 17,000 wells had failed structural tests.

Because of a lack of regulatory resources, our reporting showed, disposal wells often don't get the oversight that they need.

According to our September report:

State and federal regulators often do little to confirm what pollutants go into wells for drilling waste. They rely heavily on an honor system in which companies are supposed to report what they are pumping into the earth, whether their wells are structurally sound, and whether they have violated any rules.

More than 1,000 times in the three-year period examined, operators pumped waste into Class 2 wells at pressure levels they knew could fracture rock and lead to leaks. In at least 140 cases, companies injected waste illegally or without a permit.

In several instances, records show, operators did not meet requirements to identify old or abandoned wells near injection sites until waste flooded back up to the surface, or found ways to cheat on tests meant to make sure wells aren't leaking.

New research has concluded that salty, mineral-rich fluids deep beneath Pennsylvania's natural gas fields are likely seeping upward thousands of feet into drinking water supplies.

Though the fluids were natural and not the byproduct of drilling or hydraulic fracturing, the finding further stokes the red-hot controversy over fracking in the Marcellus Shale, suggesting that drilling waste and chemicals could migrate in ways previously thought to be impossible.

The study, conducted by scientists at Duke University and California State Polytechnic University at Pomona and released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tested drinking water wells and aquifers across Northeastern Pennsylvania. Researchers found that, in some cases, the water had mixed with brine that closely matched brine thought to be from the Marcellus Shale or areas close to it.

No drilling chemicals were detected in the water, and there was no correlation between where the natural brine was detected and where drilling takes place.

Still, the brine's presence – and the finding that it moved over thousands of vertical feet -- contradicts the oft-repeated notion that deeply buried rock layers will always seal in material injected underground through drilling, mining, or underground disposal.

"The biggest implication is the apparent presence of connections from deep underground to the surface," said Robert Jackson, a biology professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and one of the study's authors. "It's a suggestion based on good evidence that there are places that may be more at risk."

The study is the second in recent months to find that the geology surrounding the Marcellus Shale could allow contaminants to move more freely than expected. A paper published by the journal Ground Water in April used modeling to predict that contaminants could reach the surface within 100 years – or fewer if the ground is fracked.

Last year, some of the same Duke researchers found that methane gas was far more likely to leak into water supplies in places adjacent to drilling.

Today's research swiftly drew criticism from both the oil and gas industry and a scientist on the National Academy of Science's peer review panel. They called the science flawed, in part because the researchers do not know how long it may have taken for the brine to leak. The National Academy of Sciences should not have published the article without an accompanying rebuttal, they said.

"What you have here is another case of a paper whose actual findings are pretty benign, but one that, in the current environment, may be vulnerable to distortion among those who oppose this industry," said Chris Tucker, a spokesman for the gas industry trade group Energy In Depth. "What's controversial is attempting to argue that these migrations occur as a result of industry activities, and on a time scale that actually matters to humanity."

Another critic, Penn State University geologist Terry Engelder, took the unusual step of disclosing details of his review of the paper for the National Academy of Sciences, normally a private process.

In a letter written to the researchers and provided to ProPublica, Engelder said the study had the appearance of "science-based advocacy" and said it was "unwittingly written to enflame the anti-drilling crowd."

In emails, Engelder told ProPublica that he did not dispute the basic premise of the article – that fluids seemed to have migrated thousands of feet upward. But he said that they had likely come from even deeper than the Marcellus – a layer 15,000 feet below the surface – and that there was no research to determine what pathways the fluids travelled or how long they took to migrate. He also said the Marcellus was an unlikely source of the brine because it does not contain much water.

"There is a question of time scale and what length of time matters," Engelder wrote in his review. In a subsequent letter to the Academy's editors protesting the study, he wrote that "the implication is that the Marcellus is leaking now, naturally without any human assistance, and that if water-based fluid is injected into these cross-formational pathways, that leakage, which is already ‘contaminating' the aquifers with salt, could be made much worse."

Indeed, while the study did not explicitly focus on fracking, the article acknowledged the implications. "The coincidence of elevated salinity in shallow groundwater... suggests that these areas could be at greater risk of contamination from shale gas development because of a preexisting network of cross-formational pathways that has enhanced hydraulic connectivity to deeper geological formations," the paper states.

For their research, the scientists collected 426 recent and historical water samples -- combining their own testing with government records from the 1980s -- from shallow water wells and analyzed them for brine, comparing their chemical makeup to that of 83 brine samples unearthed as waste water from drilling sites in the Marcellus Shale.

Nearly one out of six recent water samples contained brine near-identical to Marcellus-layer brine water.

Nevertheless, Jackson, one of the study's authors, said he still considers it unlikely that frack fluids and injected man-made waste are migrating into drinking water supplies. If that were happening, those contaminants would be more likely to appear in his groundwater samples, he said. His group is continuing its research into how the natural brine might have travelled, and how long it took to rise to the surface.

"There is a real time uncertainty," he said. "We don't know if this happens over a couple of years, or over millennia."

Did the fracking debate dredge up ‘Dallas’ – the redux – or was this soap opera’s resurgence just another convenient mirror in which to reflect how central the nation’s debate over energy has now become in our culture?

Either way, the show’s creators seem to have found the decades-old plot so evocative of the evolving contemporary debate over oil and gas drilling and the environment that they couldn’t resist resurrecting it. Perhaps they should have.

When Dallas was first launched in 1978, it always covered oil, and, later, a little bit about the environment. But really it was about sex, betrayal, and the infighting that came with running Ewing Oil, the company that had made their family rich. In the end, two brothers – J.R. and Bobby Ewing – fought over whether to conserve their sprawling family ranch, Southfork.

The plot line was an effective analogy not just for the oil business, but for all business. It provided a voyeuristic – and playfully sensationalized – glimpse into the glitzy lives of those who succeeded by it and a fantastically Reaganesque view on what it took to climb to the top of an industry on the backs of your competitors, Texas style.

But the world was different then. Oil was a near singular symbol of business wealth in the U.S. Texas was on top of its game. And environmentalism was still seen by big business as a fringe movement.

Today Big Oil remains as powerful as ever, but wealth, technology and industry have diversified and become more complex. Today’s corporations often seek – and in fact profit from – social responsibility and sustainability. The notion that resources are finite and that environmental protection necessary have become mainstream. They are certainly no longer laughable.

The next-generation Dallas – which still has its aging stars but picks up with a rivalry between Bobby and J.R.’s sons – appears to be all about trying to transcend its old paradigm, seizing on its oil roots as an opportunity to build on the current conversation.

The opening scene glides above a verdant pasture until the camera stumbles on an oil-drilling rig nestled among the trees. It’s more a thing of beauty than an interruption in the landscape. Soon the well is gushing oil – 1880’s style – and two of the show’s young protagonists, who estimate they just found “a couple of billion barrels” are drenched in syrupy crude and kissing beneath the shower of oil.

“This will make us richer than we ever imagined,” croons JR’s son, John Ross, played by Josh Henderson. “It will change everything.”

In the new plot, John Ross schemes to develop the oil on Southfork without the consent of Bobby (still played by Patrick Duffy). Meanwhile Bobby’s son Christopher, played by Jesse Metcalfe, has founded Ewing Alternative Energy and espouses a seemingly anti-oil perspective. Like any good soap opera, everything is incestuous and intertwined. The two men battle over the affections of Elena, a buxom entrepreneurial wildcatter who is also the daughter of the Ewing’s in-house cook, even while Christopher marries another woman. JR – the senior villain still played by Larry Hagman, watches on in bemusement.

The cheese is thick enough to spread on crackers.

“So, I hear you’ve come home with some kind of alternative energy scheme to save the world,” John Ross asks Christopher, in their first major argument around the dinner table.

“Oil is the past,” Christopher replies. “Alternatives are the future.”

“I couldn’t disagree more.”

“Well this country is quickly running out of resources,” Christopher adds.

And just like that, 16 minutes into the first episode of the pilot, the fundamental dynamic of U.S. energy policy –- err… I mean, of the Ewing family in Dallas Tx – is laid bare. Christopher even speeds away under the high-pitched electric whine of his sleek black Tesla.

It would be a mistake to think that the show takes itself too seriously. In Dallas, that’s not the point. The plot’s dynamic is superficial, with as much attention paid to hot bodies and hot cars as oil. At times, its more like an Abercrombie commercial, as bare-chested John Ross prances in his boxer-briefs, or Christopher’s fiancé gets frisky in the country club locker room. “May I suggest you save something for the honeymoon?” chides Mrs. Stanfield, a blueblood family friend who interrupts the act.

Still, the show occasionally tries to put on a straight face, like when Christopher pitches his new-energy business ideas to investors, breaking a frosty white block on the table. “Go on, touch it,” he says. “It’s Ice, flammable ice.”

It’s a thinly veiled reference to flammable water associated with methane leaks near fracked gas wells, except this ice is meant to burn. Christopher explains that it is methane hydrates, the stuff we briefly heard about when it clogged BP’s containment box meant to capture the spewing oil from its ruptured Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Never mind that natural gas – a hydrocarbon – is not exactly what most people mean by “alternative energy.” Christopher sees a revolution in harvesting this methane gas, and here the show gets downright techy. “Remember your thesis on petroleum and waterflooding?” he asks Elena at one point, referring to the underground injection process that fracking is so often compared to. “I think I may be able to use it to extract methane from the hydrates, and prevent seabed slumping.”

“If you can do that,” says Elena, in a line that might sound familiar to anyone following the real-life political debate over natural gas, “it’s a game changer.”

And here Dallas does tiptoe into issues that really matter. At one point Christopher learns that his methane mining can cause faults to slip. “There might be a link between harvesting methane, and earthquakes,” a Chinese scientist tells him. “Its not safe.”

When a moralistic Bobby shuts down a drilling rig on Southfork, his monologue echoes the choice now facing landowners in Pennsylvania and New York. “I know times are rough out there boys, but this ranch has been in my momma’s family for 150 years,” Ewing says. “I promised her no drilling on it. I’m sorry about your jobs.”

Dallas’ one liners – and JR has some great ones – will be amusing to some and haunting to others whose real-life scrapes with the oil industry and fracking in their backyards might make them more likely to shiver than laugh.

When John Ross files a lawsuit to force Bobby into drilling on his property JR tells him: “Son, the courts are for amateurs and the faint of heart.” Later, a smirking JR boasts: “My friends are in the state house. My enemies are going to be harder to find.”

By the end of Wednesday’s two-hour premier, the battle lines (and the bikini lines) were clearly, if not simplistically, drawn. An environmentalist and an oilman have to be diametrically opposed, the show’s writers tell us.

What happens next – and whether the show can find relevance while only flirting with the finer points of the energy debate – is anybody’s guess. Perhaps Bobby will discover that in addition to a billion-barrel reserve beneath his ranch he has something even more valuable in post modern Texas – an aquifer.

That might make Dallas interesting.

June 13: This post has been corrected and updated.

Oil drilling has sparked a frenzied prosperity in Jeff Keller's formerly quiet corner of western North Dakota in recent years, bringing an infusion of jobs and reviving moribund local businesses.

But Keller, a natural resource manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, has seen a more ominous effect of the boom, too: Oil companies are spilling and dumping drilling waste onto the region's land and into its waterways with increasing regularity.

Hydraulic fracturing — the controversial process behind the spread of natural gas drilling — is enabling oil companies to reach previously inaccessible reserves in North Dakota, triggering a turnaround not only in the state's fortunes, but also in domestic energy production. North Dakota now ranks second behind only Texas in oil output nationwide.

The downside is waste — lots of it. Companies produce millions of gallons of salty, chemical-infused wastewater, known as brine, as part of drilling and fracking each well. Drillers are supposed to inject this material thousands of feet underground into disposal wells, but some of it isn't making it that far.

According to data obtained by ProPublica, oil companies in North Dakota reported more than 1,000 accidental releases of oil, drilling wastewater or other fluids in 2011, about as many as in the previous two years combined. Many more illicit releases went unreported, state regulators acknowledge, when companies dumped truckloads of toxic fluid along the road or drained waste pits illegally.

State officials say most of the releases are small. But in several cases, spills turned out to be far larger than initially thought, totaling millions of gallons. Releases of brine, which is often laced with carcinogenic chemicals and heavy metals, have wiped out aquatic life in streams and wetlands and sterilized farmland. The effects on land can last for years, or even decades.

Compounding such problems, state regulators have often been unable — or unwilling — to compel energy companies to clean up their mess, our reporting showed.

Under North Dakota regulations, the agencies that oversee drilling and water safety can sanction companies that dump or spill waste, but they seldom do: They have issued fewer than 50 disciplinary actions for all types of drilling violations, including spills, over the past three years.

Keller has filed several complaints with the state during this time span after observing trucks dumping wastewater and spotting evidence of a spill in a field near his home. He was rebuffed or ignored every time, he said.

"There's no enforcement," said Keller, 50, an avid outdoorsman who has spent his career managing Lake Sakakawea, a reservoir created by damming the Missouri River. "None."

State officials say they rely on companies to clean up spills voluntarily, and that in most cases, they do. Mark Bohrer, who oversees spill reports for the Department of Mineral Resources, the agency that regulates drilling, said the number of spills is acceptable given the pace of drilling and that he sees little risk of long-term damage.

Kris Roberts, who responds to spills for the Health Department, which protects state waters, agreed, but acknowledged that the state does not have the manpower to prevent or respond to illegal dumping.

"It's happening often enough that we see it as a significant problem," he said. "What's the solution? Catching them. What's the problem? Catching them."

Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, a lobbying group, said the industry is doing what it can to minimize spills and their impacts.

"You're going to have spills when you have more activity," he said. "I would think North Dakotans would say the industry is doing a good job."

In response to rising environmental concerns related to drilling waste, North Dakota's legislature passed a handful of new regulations this year, including a rule that bars storing wastewater in open pits.

Still, advocates for landowners say they have seen little will, at either the state or federal level, to impose limits that could slow the pace of drilling.

The Obama administration is facilitating drilling projects on federal land in western North Dakota by expediting environmental reviews. North Dakota's Gov. Jack Dalrymple has urged energy companies to see his administration as a "faithful and long-term partner."

"North Dakota's political leadership is still in the mold where a lot of our oil and gas policy reflects a strong desire to have another oil boom," said Mark Trechock, who headed the Dakota Resource Council, a landowner group that has pushed for stronger oversight, until his retirement this year. "Well, we got it now."

Reaching 'the Crazy Point'

Keller's office in Williston is as good a spot as any to see the impacts of the oil boom.

The tiny prefab shack — cluttered with mounted fish, piles of antlers and a wolf pelt Keller bought in Alaska — is wedged between a levee that holds back Missouri River floodwaters and a new oil well, topped by a blazing gas flare. Just beyond the oil well sits an intersection where Keller estimates he saw an accident a week during one stretch last year due to increased traffic from drilling.

Keller describes the changes to his hometown in a voice just short of a yell, as if he's competing with nearby engine noise. Local grocery stores can barely keep shelves stocked and the town movie theater is so crowded it seats people in the aisle, he said. The cost of housing has skyrocketed, with some apartments fetching rents similar to those in New York City.

"With the way it is now," Keller said, "you're getting to the crazy point."

Oil companies are drilling upwards of 200 wells each month in northwestern North Dakota, an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey.

North Dakota is pumping more than 575,000 barrels of oil a day now, more than double what the state produced two years ago. Expanded drilling in the state has helped overall U.S. oil production grow for the first time in a quarter century, stoking hopes for greater energy independence.

It has also reinvigorated North Dakota's once-stagnant economy. Unemployment sits at 3 percent. The activity has reversed a population decline that began in the mid-1980s, when the last oil boom went bust.

The growth has come at a cost, however. At a conference on oil field infrastructure in October, one executive noted that McKenzie County, which sits in the heart of the oil patch and had a population of 6,360 people in 2010, required nearly $200 million in road repairs.

The number of spill reports, which generally come from the oil companies themselves, nearly doubled from 2010 to 2011. Energy companies report their spills to the Department of Mineral Resources, which shares them with the Health Department. The two agencies work together to investigate incidents.

In December, a stack of reports a quarter-inch thick piled up on Kris Roberts' desk. He received 34 new cases in the first week of that month alone.

"Is it a big issue?" he said. "Yes, it is."

The Health Department has added three staffers to handle the influx and the Department of Mineral Resources is increasing its workforce by 30 percent, but Roberts acknowledges they can't investigate every report.

Even with the new hires, the Department of Mineral Resources still has fewer field inspectors than agencies in other drilling states. Oklahoma, for example, which has comparable drilling activity, has 58 inspectors to North Dakota's 19.

Of the 1,073 releases reported last year, about 60 percent involved oil and one-third spread brine. In about two-thirds of the cases, material was not contained to the accident site and leaked into the ground or waterways.

But the official data gives only a partial picture, Roberts said, missing an unknown number of unreported incidents.

"One, five, 10, 100? If it didn't get reported, how do you count them?" he said.

He said truckers often dump their wastewater rather than wait in line at injection wells. The Department of Mineral Resources asks companies how much brine their wells produce and how much they dispose of as waste, but its inspectors don't audit those numbers. Short of catching someone in the act, there's no way to stop illegal dumping.

The state also has no real estimate for how much fluid spills out accidentally from tanks, pipes, trucks and other equipment. Companies are supposed to report spill volumes, but officials acknowledge the numbers are often inexact or flat-out wrong. In 40 cases last year, the company responsible didn't know how much had spilled so it simply listed the volume of fluid as zero.

In one case last July, workers for Petro Harvester, a small, Texas-based oil company, noticed a swath of dead vegetation in a field near one of the company's saltwater disposal lines. The company reported the spill the next day, estimating that 12,600 gallons of brine had leaked.

When state and county officials came to assess the damage, however, they found evidence of a much larger accident. The leak, which had gone undetected for days or weeks, had sterilized about 24 acres of land. Officials later estimated the spill to be at least 2 million gallons of brine, Roberts said, which would make it the largest ever in the state.

Yet state records still put the volume at 12,600 gallons and Roberts sees no reason to change it.

"It's almost like rubbing salt in a raw wound," Roberts said, criticizing efforts to tabulate a number as "bean counting." Changing a report would not change reality, nor would it help anyone, he added. "If we try to go back and revisit the past over and over and over again, what's it going to do? Nothing good."

In a written statement, Petro Harvester said tests showed the spill had not contaminated groundwater and that it would continue monitoring the site for signs of damage. State records show the company hired a contractor to cover the land with 40 truckloads of a chemical that leaches salt from the soil.

Nearly a year later, however, even weeds won't grow in the area, said Darwin Peterson, who farms the land. While Petro Harvester has promised to compensate him for lost crops, Peterson said he hasn't heard from the company in months and he doesn't expect the land to be usable for years. "It's pretty devastating," he said.

Little Enforcement

The Department of Mineral Resources and the Health Department have the authority to sanction companies that spill or dump fluids, but they rarely do.

The Department of Mineral Resources has issued just 45 enforcement actions over the last three years. Spokeswoman Alison Ritter could not say how many of those were for spills or releases, as opposed to other drilling violations, or how many resulted in fines. Ritter said case files containing this information could be reviewed, but only in person in the agency’s office in Bismarck, N.D.

The Health Department has taken just one action against an oil company in the past three years, citing Continental Resources for oil and brine spills that turned two streams into temporary toxic dumps. The department initially fined Continental $328,500, plus about $14,000 for agency costs. Ultimately, however, the state settled and Continental paid just $35,000 in fines.

The agency has not yet penalized Petro Harvester for the July spill, thought it has issued a notice of violation and could impose a fine in the future, Roberts said, one of several spill-related enforcement actions the agency is considering.

Derrick Braaten, a Bismarck lawyer whose firm represents dozens of farmers and landowner groups, said his clients often get little support from regulators when oil companies damage their property.

State officials step in in the largest cases, he said, but let smaller ones slide. Landowners can sue, but most prefer to take whatever drillers offer rather than taking their chances in court.

"The oil company will say, that's worth $400 an acre, so here's $400 for ruining that acre," Braaten said.

Daryl Peterson, a client of Braaten's who is not related to Darwin Peterson, said a series of drilling waste releases stretching back 15 years have rendered several acres unusable of the 2,000 or so he farms. The state has not compelled the companies that caused the damage to repair it, he said. Peterson hasn't wanted to spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take to haul out the dirt and replace it, so the land lies fallow.

"I pay taxes on that land," he said.

At least 15 North Dakota residents, frustrated with state officials' inaction, have taken drilling-related complaints to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the last two years, records show.

Last September, for example, a rancher near Williston told the EPA that Brigham Oil and Gas had plowed through the side of a waste pit, sending fluid into the pond his cattle drink from and a nearby creek. When the rancher called Brigham to complain, he said, an employee told him this was "the way they do business."

A spokeswoman for Statoil, which acquired Brigham, said the company stores only fresh water in open pits, not wastewater, and that "we can't remember ever having responded in such a manner" to a report about a spill.

Federal officials can offer little relief.

Congress has largely delegated oversight of oil field spills to the states. EPA spokesman Richard Mylott said the agency investigates complaints about releases on federal lands, but refers complaints involving private property to state regulators.

The EPA handed the complaint about Brigham to an official with North Dakota's Health Department, who said he had already spoken to the company.

"They said this was an isolated occurrence, this is not how they handle frac water and it would not happen again," the official wrote to the EPA. "As far as we are concerned, this complaint is closed."

Salting the Earth

Six years ago, a four-inch saltwater pipeline ruptured just outside Linda Monson's property line, leaking about a million gallons of salty wastewater.

As it cascaded down a hill and into Charbonneau Creek, which cuts through Monson's pasture, the spill deposited metals and carcinogenic hydrocarbons in the soil. The toxic brew wiped out the creek's fish, turtles and other life, reaching 15 miles downstream.

After suing Zenergy Inc., the oil company that owns the line, Monson reached a settlement that restricts what she can say about the incident.

"When this first happened, it pretty much consumed my life," Monson said. "Now I don't even want to think about it."

The company has paid a $70,000 fine and committed to cleaning the site, but the case shows how difficult the cleanup can be. When brine leaks into the ground, the sodium binds to the soil, displacing other minerals and inhibiting plants' ability to absorb nutrients and water. Short of replacing the soil, the best option is to try to speed the natural flushing of the system, which can take decades.

Zenergy has tried both. According to a Department of Mineral Resources report, the company has spent more than $3 million hauling away dirt and pumping out contaminated groundwater — nearly 31 million gallons as of December 2010, the most recent data available.

But more than a dozen acres of Monson's pasture remain fenced off and out of use. The cattle no longer drink from the creek, which was their main water source. Zenergy dug a well to replace it.

Shallow groundwater in the area remains thousands of times saltier than it should be and continues to leak into the stream and through the ground, contaminating new areas.

There's little understanding of what long-term impacts hundreds of such releases could be having on western North Dakota's land and water, said Micah Reuber.

Until last year, Reuber was the environmental contaminant specialist in North Dakota for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees wetlands and waterways.

Reuber quit after growing increasingly frustrated with the inadequate resources devoted to the position. Responding to oil field spills was supposed to be a small part of his job, but it came to consume all of his time.

"It didn't seem like we were keeping pace with it at all," he said. "It got to be demoralizing."

Reuber said no agency, federal or state, has the money or staff to study the effects of drilling waste releases in North Dakota. The closest thing is a small ongoing federal study across the border in Montana, where scientists are investigating how decades of oil production have affected the underground water supply for the city of Poplar.

Joanna Thamke, a groundwater specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Montana, started mapping contamination from drilling 20 years ago. She estimated it had spread through about 12 square miles of the aquifer, which is the only source of drinking water in the area. Over the years, brine had leaked through old well bores, buried waste pits and aging tanks and pipes.

In the Poplar study and others, Thamke has found that plumes of contaminated groundwater can take decades to dissipate and sometimes move to new areas.

"What we found is the plumes, after two decades, have not gone away," she said. "They've spread out."

Poplar's water supply is currently safe to drink, but the EPA has said it will become too salty as the contamination spreads. In March, the agency ordered three oil companies to treat the water or to find another source.

North Dakota officials are quick to point out that oversight and regulations are stronger today than they were when drilling began in the area in the 1950s. One significant difference is that waste pits, where oil companies store and dispose of the rock and debris produced during drilling, are now lined with plastic to prevent leaching into the ground.

New rules, effective April 1, require drillers in North Dakota to divert liquid waste to tanks instead of pits. Until now, drillers could store the liquid in pits for up to a year before pumping it out in order to bury the solids on site. The rule would prevent a repeat of the spring of 2011, when record snowmelt and flooding caused dozens of pits to overflow their banks.

But Reuber worries that the industry and regulators are repeating past mistakes. Not long before he left the Fish and Wildlife Service, he found a set of old slides showing waste pits and spills from decades ago.

"They looked almost exactly like photos I had taken," he said. "There's a spill into a creek bottom in the Badlands and it was sitting there with no one cleaning it up and containing it. And yeah, I got a photo like that, too."

Keller has grown so dispirited by the changes brought by the boom that he is considering retiring after 30 years with the Army Corps and moving away from Williston. He runs a side business in scrap metal that would supplement his pension.

Still, determined to protect the area, he keeps alerting regulators whenever he spots evidence that oil companies have dumped or spilled waste.

Last July, when he saw signs of a spill near his home, Keller notified the Department of Mineral Resources and sent pictures showing a trail of dead grass to an acquaintance at the EPA regional office in Denver. The brown swath led from a well site into a creek.

If the spills continued, he warned the EPA in an email, they could "kill off the entire watershed."

EPA officials said they spoke with Keller, but did not follow up on the incident beyond that. The state never responded, Keller said. The site remained untested and was never cleaned up.

"There was no restoration work whatsoever," Keller said.

Correction: This story stated that Department of Mineral Resources spokeswoman Alison Ritter could not say how many of the 45 enforcement actions taken by the agency over the last three years were for spills or releases, as opposed to other drilling violations, or how many resulted in fines. It should have added that Ritter said case files containing this information could be reviewed, but only in person in the agency’s office in Bismarck, N.D. The story also said that, last July, when Jeff Keller saw signs of a spill near his home, he notified the Health Department. He notified the Department of Mineral Resources.

Update: North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources spokeswoman Alison Ritter submitted the following statement in response to this story yesterday (we have added editor’s notes where appropriate for accuracy):

The remarkable growth in western North Dakota’s oil and gas industry has created great benefits and opportunities for our state, and significant challenges as well.

The state is committed to protecting the environment and to meeting other impacts created by rapid energy development. As part of that commitment, the state Department of Mineral Resources has added staff for greater oversight and the North Dakota Industrial Commission has strengthened the state’s oil and gas regulations to provide greater environmental protections than ever before. The rule changes, which took effect April 1, ban the use of open pits; increased bond requirements, strengthen hydraulic fracturing requirements and mandate the reporting of chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process. A two-part news report prepared by New York-based ProPublica and published by the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead on June 10 and 11 included several errors of fact about the state’s role in regulating the oil industry.

1. In the report, Nicholas Kusnetz reported that Oklahoma has comparable drilling activity, but employs 58 inspectors to North Dakota’s 19. What Kusnetz failed to tell readers is that Oklahoma has about 90,000 active wells while North Dakota has less than 7,000 wells, and that well sites – not drilling sites – pose the greatest risk of accidental spills. About 95 percent of spills occur at well sites as opposed to drilling sites.

2. Mr. Kusnetz reported that the Department of Mineral Resources could not provide details regarding rule violations that led to 45 enforcement actions against oil companies. The fact is that Mr. Kusnetz was invited to visit the Department of Mineral Resources where he could review each case file for the information he sought, but he chose not to.

Editor’s note: We have updated the article to reflect this information.

3. Mr. Kusnetz reported that the state has issued only 45 disciplinary actions in the last three years for drilling violations, but what he failed to tell readers is that approximately 99% of all violations have been remedied by the state requiring companies to clean up their spills in an effective and timely manner.

4. Mr. Kusnetz reported that state officials rely on companies to clean up spills voluntarily. North Dakota law mandates that companies clean up spills and no officials from the Department of Mineral Resources suggested otherwise. All spill sites are inspected and enforcement actions are taken when companies fail to clean spills in an effective and timely manner.

5. Mr. Kusnetz reported that Jeff Keller, a natural resource manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has observed trucks illegally dumping wastewater and that Keller also has spotted a spill. Mr. Keller and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have never filed a spill report with the Department of Mineral Resources.

Editor's note: Keller said he reported a spill to the Department of Mineral Resources as well as reporting other incidents to the Health Department.

6. Mr. Kusnetz reported that “Congress has largely delegated oversight of oil field spills to the states.” The EPA operates the Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure program, and under federal law cannot delegate any part of this program to state enforcement agencies. State enforcement of the oil industry goes above and beyond federal enforcement.

7. Mr. Kusnetz reported two-thirds of spills were not contained. Data compiled by the Department of Mineral Resources shows that about 30 percent - less than one-third - of all spills were not immediately contained.

Editor’s note: This is not an accurate paraphrasing of the story, which said that in about two-thirds of the cases, spills were not contained “to the accident site.”

8. Official records do not support Mr. Kusnetz’s statement that state regulators “have been unable - or unwilling - to compel companies to clean up their mess.” The state Department of Health utilizes its authority to impose a variety of sanctions to protect the environment, including but not limited to monetary penalties. Most reported spills have been addressed through the completion of onsite inspections and state-mandated remediation. Editor’s note: This is not an accurate quote from the story, which says “state regulators have often been unable — or unwilling — to compel energy companies to clean up their mess.”

9. While most oilfield waste water is properly disposed of in Class II wells, the state Department of Health acknowledges that some illegal disposal does take place. Catching companies or individuals engaged in illegal dumping is difficult. However, the department is increasing its enforcement presence with additional inspectors and modifying its regulations to increase civil penalties.

10. Mr. Kusnetz reported that “the state has no real estimate of the quantity of fluids spilled from tanks, pipe, trucks and other equipment.” The state Department of Health evaluates each spill on a case-by-case basis to determine the specific issues associated with each spill. State records show that more than 70 percent of the spills have involved fluid amounts of 10 barrels or less.

It's important that the people of North Dakota receive factual information as we work together to protect our land, water and air and to support the responsible development of our energy resources.

Lynn Helms, Director, North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources
Dave Glatt, Environmental Health Section Chief, North Dakota Department of Health

A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted.

More than 5,000 wells were drilled in the Marcellus between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to the study, which was published in the journal Ground Water two weeks ago. Operators inject up to 4 million gallons of fluid, under more than 10,000 pounds of pressure, to drill and frack each well.

Scientists have theorized that impermeable layers of rock would keep the fluid, which contains benzene and other dangerous chemicals, safely locked nearly a mile below water supplies. This view of the earth's underground geology is a cornerstone of the industry's argument that fracking poses minimal threats to the environment.

But the study, using computer modeling, concluded that natural faults and fractures in the Marcellus, exacerbated by the effects of fracking itself, could allow chemicals to reach the surface in as little as "just a few years."

"Simply put, [the rock layers] are not impermeable," said the study's author, Tom Myers, an independent hydrogeologist whose clients include the federal government and environmental groups.

"The Marcellus shale is being fracked into a very high permeability," he said. "Fluids could move from most any injection process."

The research for the study was paid for by Catskill Mountainkeeper and the Park Foundation, two upstate New York organizations that have opposed gas drilling and fracking in the Marcellus.

Much of the debate about the environmental risks of gas drilling has centered on the risk that spills could pollute surface water or that structural failures would cause wells to leak.

Though some scientists believed it was possible for fracking to contaminate underground water supplies, those risks have been considered secondary. The study in Ground Water is the first peer-reviewed research evaluating this possibility.

The study did not use sampling or case histories to assess contamination risks. Rather, it used software and computer modeling to predict how fracking fluids would move over time. The simulations sought to account for the natural fractures and faults in the underground rock formations and the effects of fracking.

The models predict that fracking will dramatically speed up the movement of chemicals injected into the ground. Fluids traveled distances within 100 years that would take tens of thousands of years under natural conditions. And when the models factored in the Marcellus' natural faults and fractures, fluids could move 10 times as fast as that.

Where man-made fractures intersect with natural faults, or break out of the Marcellus layer into the stone layer above it, the study found, "contaminants could reach the surface areas in tens of years, or less."

The study also concluded that the force that fracking exerts does not immediately let up when the process ends. It can take nearly a year to ease.

As a result, chemicals left underground are still being pushed away from the drill site long after drilling is finished. It can take five or six years before the natural balance of pressure in the underground system is fully restored, the study found.

Myers' research focused exclusively on the Marcellus, but he said his findings may have broader relevance. Many regions where oil and gas is being drilled have more permeable underground environments than the one he analyzed, he said.

"One would have to say that the possible travel times for a similar thing in Arkansas or Northeast Texas is probably faster than what I've come up with," Myers said.

Ground Water is the journal of the National Ground Water Association, a non-profit group that represents scientists, engineers and businesses in the groundwater industry.

Several scientists called Myers' approach unsophisticated and said that the assumptions he used for his models didn't reflect what they knew about the geology of the Marcellus Shale. If fluids could flow as quickly as Myers asserts, said Terry Engelder, a professor of geosciences at Penn State University who has been a proponent of shale development, fracking wouldn't be necessary to open up the gas deposits.

"This would be a huge fracture porosity," Engelder said. "So I read this and I say, 'Golly, does this guy really understand anything about what these shales look like?' The concern then arises from using a model rather than observations."

Myers likened the shale to a cracked window, saying that samples showing it didn't contain fractures were small in size and were akin to only examining an intact section of glass, while a broader, scaled out view would capture the faults and fractures that could leak.

Both scientists agreed that direct evidence of fluid migration is needed, but little sampling has been done to analyze where fracking fluids go after being injected underground.

Myers says monitoring systems could be installed around gas well sites to measure for changes in water quality, a measure required for some gold mines, for example. Until that happens, Myers said, theoretical modeling has to substitute for hard data.

"We were trying to use the basic concepts of groundwater and hydrology and geology and say can this happen?" he said. "And that had basically never been done."

One of the key controversies about fracking is the chemical makeup of the fluid that is pumped deep into the ground to break apart rock and release natural gas. Some companies have been reluctant to disclose what's in their fracking fluid. Scientists and environmental advocates argue that, without knowing its precise composition, they can't thoroughly investigate complaints of contamination.

Disclosure requirements vary considerably from state to state, as ProPublica recently charted. In many cases, the rules have been limited by a "trade secrets" provision under which companies can claim that a proprietary chemical doesn't have to be disclosed to regulators or the public.

One apparent proponent of the trade secrets caveat? The American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC, a nonprofit group that brings together politicians and corporations to draft and promote conservative, business-friendly legislation. ALEC has been in the spotlight recently because of its support of controversial laws like Florida's "Stand Your Ground" provision.

This weekend, as part of a story on ALEC's political activity, The New York Times noted that the group recently adopted "model legislation" on fracking chemical disclosure, based on a bill passed in Texas last year. According to The Times, the model bill was "sponsored within ALEC" by ExxonMobil, which runs a major oil and gas operation through its subsidiary, XTO Energy. The advocacy group Common Cause, which provided the documents on ALEC's lobbying efforts to The Times, describes model legislation, in many cases identifying by name the company that proposed it to ALEC's task forces.

ALEC has recently removed its list of model bills from its main website, and did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for XTO Energy confirmed that the company is a member of ALEC, but he did not provide details on the company's involvement with the disclosure bill.

The spokesman said ExxonMobil supports "full disclosure of the ingredients and additives in hydraulic fracturing fluids," but added that when vendors request it, ExxonMobil has "respected the trade secret status of their products." Last year, the company began voluntarily uploading chemical disclosures to FracFocus, a clearinghouse website run by the Groundwater Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.

In a recent blog post, ALEC claimed that legislators in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, New York and Ohio have introduced versions of its model bill, but many of those states vary in the level of disclosure required and how they handle the trade secrets provision. Laws in 11 states require at least partial disclosure, and the Bureau of Land Management recently drafted disclosure guidelines for drilling on federal land.

These laws have been relatively well-received by environmental advocates, though the trade secrets issue remains a concern for some. In Ohio, for example, proprietary chemicals don't have to be disclosed to regulators or the public. In Pennsylvania, they are disclosed to regulators, and the public can request information on them from the state Department of Environmental Protection on a case-by-case basis.

The Texas law, which ALEC cites in the post as its template, codifies the trade secrets exemption, and who can challenge it:

Otherwise, Texas' law requires that companies post disclosure forms for each completed well on the FracFocus site. They must disclose all chemicals but only report the concentrations of those that are hazardous. The law also requires that the companies give the total volume of water used in fracking.

The Environmental Protection Agency cannot regulate fracking in order to protect groundwater, because in 2005 Congress exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act, which controls how industries inject substances underground.

According to ALEC's blog, the model disclosure legislation is designed to promote "responsible resource production" and "aims to preempt the promulgation of duplicative, burdensome federal regulations" from the EPA, in particular. ALEC has consistently opposed any federal control over fracking. In 2009, the group adopted a "Resolution to Retain State Authority Over Hydraulic Fracturing."

Monday night, we hosted an in-depth discussion on the perils and promise of fracking at NYC’s Tenement Museum. In case you couldn’t make it, or don’t have time to watch the hour-plus recording, we pulled out the highlights.

(Need a primer on fracking? Check out our musical explainer: My Water’s On Fire Tonight.)

1. The public debate does not mirror the debate in the regulatory agencies. Stu Gruskin thinks it should.

Stu Gruskin, former executive deputy commissioner at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, would like to see a better-informed

public debate that mirrors the “objective,” nuanced discussion in the regulatory agencies. He thinks the current “philosophical” debate does a “great disservice” to the public. He cites the Midwest quakes as a perfect example of the public’s misunderstanding of the subtleties of fracking.

2. Some say the media’s fracking coverage is biased, but Abrahm Lustgarten thinks it emphasizes the real concerns.

“No one denies the economic benefits are happening,” Lustgarten said. “[But] It doesn’t take a lot of scrutiny ... to come up with a whole slew of concerns. From a reporter’s perspective, the question is, ‘Where do I start?’ Not, ‘Do I put those concerns aside and talk about the minority who reap an economic benefit?’”

3. How a sound well is supposed to work.

Southwestern Energy’s Mark Boling shows the mechanics of a functioning well – and a not-so-functioning well. He also reviews necessary regulations, and brings up an issue he thinks deserves more attention: moving water by pipe as much as possible.

4. Collaboration among industry, the public, environmental groups and regulators is key to making fracking as safe as possible, according to industry and regulatory representatives.

Gruskin mentioned it here, while talking about what New York state regulators need to do their jobs:

And Mark Boling mentioned it here. “If you’re looking for a sound bite, it’s collaboration, innovation and regulation,” he said. “And I believe it’s in that order.” He cited as an example the EPA’s Natural Gas STAR Program.

To explore fracking further, check out our collection of nine of the best pieces of watchdog journalism on the issue, and our ongoing series of stories.

On Monday, April 9, we’re hosting a live discussion at New York City’s Tenement Museum on “The Perils and Promise” of using hydraulic fracturing to drill for natural gas. So, to get the conversation going, we collected some of the can’t-miss watchdog journalism on fracking.

Halliburton’s Interests Assisted by White House, Los Angeles Times, October 2004
Despite environmental concerns raised by staff members at the Environmental Protection Agency, former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney firmly supported hydraulic fracturing, which just happened to be developed by Halliburton, a company Cheney headed from 1995 to 2000.

Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering U.S. Water Supplies? ProPublica, November 2008
A 2004 EPA study concluded fracking did not pose a risk to drinking water, but contamination was far more prevalent than indicated in the report. A case in rural Wyoming was the first recognized by a federal agency. But more than 1,000 cases tied to drilling and fracking have been documented by courts and state and local governments — including one that blew up a house. (We normally don’t include our own work in these “Best Of” roundups, but reporting on natural gas drilling by Abrahm Lustgarten, Joaquin Sapien and others at ProPublica has won numerous journalism awards.)

State Oil and Gas Regulators Are Spread Too Thin To Do Their Jobs, ProPublica, December 2009
As fracking operations ballooned in 22 states, regulators struggled to keep up. Questions about resources required to regulate fracking rarely entered the debate, but it was hard to ignore in a place like Texas, where the number of new wells drilled each year jumped 75 percent between 2003 and 2009, and state regulatory staff increased just 5 percent. (We created a database that lets you find out how big the gas drilling regulatory staff is in your state.)

Game Changer, This American Life, July 2011
One Pennsylvania professor discovers that fracking is an economic boon; another, that the technique is an environmental nightmare. Politics ensue, and the resulting story provides poignant insight into what happens when a game changer hits a state, “like natural gas hit Pennsylvania.”

Fracking at Drinking Water Source for 80,000 Pennsylvanians Raises Alarms, Inside Climate News, July 2011
When one Pennsylvania water utility leased its watershed to gas drillers without public input or regulation, residents, even those not totally opposed to fracking, became concerned. Though this watershed was the only one to have leased its land, many others were being courted.

A Tainted Water Well, and Concern There May Be More, The New York Times, August 2011
For decades, oil and gas industry executives claimed that fracking never contaminated underground drinking water. But one EPA report documents a case in which that's exactly what happened — and that report was published in 1987. The same report suggested that more cases may have occurred, but sealed settlements between energy companies and landowners blocked researchers from further investigations.

Hunt for Gas Hits Fragile Soil, and South Africans Fear Risks, The New York Times, December 2011
More than 30 countries are considering fracking for natural gas or oil, often at the encouragement of the United States. Especially in developing nations, it’s often been adopted with a “drill-first, figure-out-regulations-later attitude” that could lead to environmental problems.

How the Sierra Club Took Millions from the Natural Gas Industry — and Why They Stopped, Time, February 2012
Some environmental groups initially promoted natural gas as a “bridge fuel” because of its smaller carbon footprint. But the Sierra Club’s cozy relationship with the industry blew up in the organization's face after concerns about pollution from fracking moved to the forefront. This article traces big environmental groups’ attempts to change the energy industry “from within” — and the resulting tension with grassroots supporters.

For Pennsylvania's Doctors, a Gag Order on Fracking Chemicals, Mother Jones, March 2012

A new law lets Pennsylvania doctors request information about fracking chemicals. They just can't share it with anyone – including their patients.

(ProPublica reporter Abrahm Lustgarten helped curate this list.)

March 21: This post has been corrected.

When the Environmental Protection Agency announced last week that tests showed the water is safe to drink in Dimock, Penn., a national hot spot for concerns about fracking, it seemed to vindicate the energy industry’s insistence that drilling had not caused pollution in the area.

But what the agency didn’t say – at least, not publicly – is that the water samples contained dangerous quantities of methane gas, a finding that confirmed some of the agency’s initial concerns and the complaints raised by Dimock residents since 2009.

The test results also showed the group of wells contained dozens of other contaminants, including low levels of chemicals known to cause cancer and heavy metals that exceed the agency’s “trigger level” and could lead to illness if consumed over an extended period of time. The EPA’s assurances suggest that the substances detected do not violate specific drinking water standards, but no such standards exist for some of the contaminants and some experts said the agency should have acknowledged that they were detected at all.

“Any suggestion that water from these wells is safe for domestic use would be preliminary or inappropriate,” said Ron Bishop, a chemist at the State University of New York’s College at Oneonta, who has spoken out about environmental concerns from drilling.

Dimock residents are struggling to reconcile the EPA’s public account with the results they have been given in private.

“I’m sitting here looking at the values I have on my sheet – I’m over the thresholds – and yet they are telling me my water is drinkable,” said Scott Ely, a Dimock resident whose water contains methane at three times the state limit, as well as lithium, a substance that can cause kidney and thyroid disorders. “I’m confused about the whole thing… I’m flabbergasted.”

The water in Dimock first became the focus of international attention after residents there alleged in 2009 that natural gas drilling, and fracking, had led to widespread contamination. That April, ProPublica reported that a woman’s drinking water well blew up. Pennsylvania officials eventually determined that underground methane gas leaks had been caused by Cabot Oil and Gas, which was drilling wells nearby. Pennsylvania sanctioned Cabot, and for a short time the company provided drinking water to households in the Dimock area.

This January, the EPA announced it would take over the state’s investigation, testing the water in more than 60 homes and agreeing to provide drinking water to several of families – including the Elys – in the meantime.

Then, last Thursday, the EPA released a brief statement saying that the first 11 samples to come back from the lab “did not show levels of contamination that could present a health concern.” The agency noted that some metals, methane, salt and bacteria had been detected, but at low levels that did not exceed federal thresholds. It said that arsenic exceeding federal water standards was detected in two samples.

But Dimock residents say the agency’s description didn’t jibe with the material in test packets distributed to them, and they voiced concerns about why the EPA had passed judgment before seeing results from nearly 50 homes. Several shared raw data and materials they were given by the EPA with Josh Fox, the director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary “GasLand,” who shared them with ProPublica.

EPA press secretary Betsaida Alcantara said the agency was trying to be forthcoming by giving the tests results to Dimock residents and is now considering whether to release more information to the public about the water samples. “We made a commitment to the residents that we would give them the information as soon as we had it,” she said. “For the sake of transparency we felt it was the right thing to do.”

However preliminary, the data is significant because it is the first EPA research into drilling-related concerned on the east coast, and the agency’s first new information since it concluded that there was likely a link between fracking and water contamination in central Wyoming last December. The EPA is currently in the midst of a national investigation into the effects of fracking on groundwater, but that research is separate.

As the agency has elsewhere, the EPA began the testing in Dimock in search of methane and found it.

Methane is not considered poisonous to drink, and therefore is not a health threat in the same way as other pollutants. But the gas can collect in confined spaces and cause deadly explosions, or smother people if they breathe too much of it. Four of the five residential water results obtained by ProPublica show methane levels exceeding Pennsylvania standards; one as high as seven times the threshold and nearly twice the EPA’s less stringent standard.

The methane detections were accompanied by ethane, another type of natural gas that experts say often signifies the methane came from deeply buried gas deposits similar to those being drilled for energy and not from natural sources near the surface.

Among the other substances detected at low levels in Dimock’s water are a suite of chemicals known to come from some sort of hydrocarbon substance, such as diesel fuel or roofing tar. They include anthracene, fluoranthene, pyrene and benzo(a)pyrene– all substances described by a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as cancer-causing even in very small amounts. Chromium, aluminum, lead and other metals were also detected, as were chlorides, salts, bromide and strontium, minerals that can occur naturally but are often associated with natural gas drilling.

It is unclear whether these contaminants have any connection to drilling activities near Dimock. The agency says it plans further testing and research.

Many of the compounds detected have not been evaluated for exposure risk by federal scientists or do not have an exposure limit assigned to them, making it difficult to know whether they present a risk to human health.

Inconsistencies in the EPA’s sampling results also are raising concerns. EPA documents, for example, list two different thresholds for the detection of bromide, a naturally occurring substance sometimes used in drilling fluids, opening up the possibility that bromide may have been detected, but not reported, in some tests.

“The threshold that it is safe, that shouldn’t be changing,” said Susan Riha, director of the New York State Water Resources Institute and a professor of earth sciences at Cornell University. “For some reason … one was twice as sensitive as the other one.”

The EPA did not respond to questions about the detection limits, or any other technical inquiries about the test data.

A spokesman for Cabot declined to comment on the water test results or their significance, saying that he had not yet seen the data.

Correction: This post said EPA tests had detected bromium in some Dimock water wells. It should have said bromide. Also, the post identified Susan Riha as the director of the New York State Water Resources Group. She is the director of the Water Resources Institute at Cornell University.

In a decision that could set a national precedent for how local governments can regulate gas drilling, a New York state court yesterday ruled for the first time that towns have the right to ban drilling despite a state regulation asserting they cannot.

At issue was a zoning law in Dryden, a township adjacent to Ithaca and the Cornell University campus, where drilling companies have leased some 22,000 acres for drilling. In August, Dryden's town board passed a zoning law that prohibits gas drilling within town limits. The next month, Denver-based Anschutz Exploration Corp. sued the town, saying the ban was illegal because state law trumped the municipal rules.

As Anschutz noted, New York law promotes the development of oil and gas resources in the state. State Supreme Court Justice Phillip Rumsey addressed this point in his decision, writing: "Nowhere in legislative history provided to the court is there any suggestion that the Legislature intended — as argued by Anschutz — to encourage the maximum ultimate recovery of oil and gas regardless of other considerations, or to preempt local zoning authority."

The Dryden case is merely the latest in a string of similar conflicts arising from Colorado to Pennsylvania that pit local communities against state oil and gas laws. It is common for local governments to zone industrial or commercial land, or to institute ordinances for noise or traffic. When it comes to the development of natural resources like oil and gas, the industry contends that local government shouldn't make those decisions.

In New York, the controversy over state regulation of fracking has been brewing for years. In 2008, New York effectively put drilling on hold while it launched an environmental analysis of fracking, a process that uses a mix of highly pressurized water, sand and other chemicals to crack the earth deep underground. This is the first ruling on an industry effort to use the mineral extraction law to get around local bans.

In addition to the environmental and health concerns over fracking, which we've covered in depth, a fundamental issue has been the rights of localities against state or federal laws. According to Eric Goldstein, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York, the right of local governments to determine their own land use has been guaranteed by the Constitution for over a century.

"The argument is simple," said Goldstein. "New York state laws shouldn't override the authority of local governments to protect their constituents."

In New York, two very similarly worded laws govern the regulation of mining and oil and gas drilling. The oil and gas provision gives the state the power to "regulate the development, production and utilization of natural resources of oil and gas." The town of Dryden argued that it was not trying to regulate fracking but merely trying to protect its citizens and property. It pointed out that courts have allowed towns to ban mining, and said Dryden should be allowed to do the same for fracking. The justice seemed to agree, concluding that the state's oil and gas laws don't prohibit localities from barring drilling.

Anschutz's lawyer, Thomas West, said he was not sure whether the company would appeal the decision. Even if it does so, said Joseph Heath, an environmental attorney in New York, Tuesday's win could help set a precedent for other communities. Despite the threat of similar lawsuits from a major corporation, local fracking bans and moratoriums have continued to grow in the last few years.

"People are now concentrating on local governments because that's the best form of protection against fracking," said Heath.

Such protection is unlikely to come from the states, as New York's Department of Environmental Conservation has already deferred to the courts. When ProPublica interviewed the commissioner last year, we asked him specifically about the potential for conflict between local municipalities and states. He said it was likely "that the courts will need to decide these issues in a lawsuit between the town and the drilling company, not the state." Now, it looks as if at least one court has decided.

"[The Dryden case] is an important indicator of how those battles are likely to play out," said the NRDC's Goldstein, "although it's not the final word."

Last week several media outlets obtained the federal Bureau of Land Management's draft of proposed rules requiring fracking companies to disclose the chemicals they pump into the ground. Such disclosure requirements have been championed by environmentalists for years and were endorsed by President Obama in the State of the Union, but critics say the rules may not go far enough.

In the process of fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, millions of gallons of highly pressurized water, mixed with sand and other chemicals, are injected into the ground to extract natural gas from rock. As we've noted before, some of these chemicals are toxic to humans and have contaminated nearby groundwater. Some energy companies have voluntarily made their chemical information public, but others have fought to keep them secret.

InsideClimate notes that the proposed national rules would specifically require companies to give both the names and concentrations of individual chemicals used. So far, Colorado is the only state that requires such detailed information for all chemicals; eight other states with fracking disclosure rules either do not require companies to report concentrations or only require them to report concentrations of hazardous materials. The BLM's rules also would compel companies to report the total volume of fracking fluid used, as well as how they intend to recover and dispose of it.

Though the BLM's proposed rules are more stringent than most state laws, environmental and health advocates say drillers could circumvent some of the requirements. For instance, the rules would only apply to drilling on federal lands. Also, companies could request that certain chemicals be exempted from disclosure if they are deemed a "trade secret." The trade secret exemptions "could potentially make the rules meaningless if applied broadly," Dusty Horwitt, senior counsel at a public health advocacy group told InsideClimate.

While the BLM's proposal states that all the non-exempted information would "become a matter of public record," it makes no mention of how or where the disclosure information would appear -- or how it would be made available to the public.

To compare the BLM's draft rules with state disclosure provisions, take a look at the table here (which we've recreated from a chart by InsideClimate). You can also read the full draft legislation here.