Disclosure registry FracFocus, which provides data on oil and gas, has presented its findings in a machine-readable SQL format
The national project collects and disseminates data on hydraulically-fracked oil and gas wells in the USA. Now, the data can be downloaded by a user, in an aggregate form.
Although the project isn’t providing any new information nor offering users any analytical tools, it is making data from 94,360 oil and gas wells available in a form that’s much easier to obtain than it was previously.
FracFocus, which earlier drew criticism for being too cumbersome to be an effective disclosure of the substances used by oil and gas operators, has gone a step ahead by making its report highly accessible. A range of individuals such as academic researchers, nonprofits and federal agencies can used the inputs.
Groundwater Protection Council associate director Dan Yates said, “We think it’s a really good first step, to get the data out in a proper format so people can start looking at the whole picture themselves. Previously, it would have taken you a month or more to do that. Now, it takes you 10 minutes.”
Groundwater Protection Council is a nonprofit group of state regulators, who run FracFocus, along with the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, also an interstate agency.
State regulators, according to Yates, have been cooperative and provided their insights at various stages.
