Fracking Chemical Disclosure Bills are Really Nondisclosure Bills; Contains "Halliburton Loophole"

      Back when the ALEC model bill was debated in the Texas legislature in spring 2011 (and before it was endorsed by ExxonMobil and eventually adopted as a model by ALEC), the bill was touted as an antidote to the lack of transparency provided at the federal level on fracking chemicals by both industry and environmental groups, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Texas League of Conservation Voters (LCV).
"[T]his is proof positive that the public, environmental groups, and the state’s energy industry can work together to ensure the health and safety of Texans," the Texas LCV said in May 2011.
Rep. Rodrigues said he was impressed by these dynamics when researching the bill online in comments provided by email to DeSmogBlog.
"I was pleased to see the Environmental community and the Energy community jointly draft this legislation," he said.
The lack of federal level transparency is mandated by law via the Energy Policy Act of 2005, as outlined in a sub-section of the bill best known as the "Halliburton Loophole.
      The "Halliburton Loophole" — named such because Halliburton is an oil services company that provides fracking services and because when it was written, the company's former CEO, Dick Cheney, was vice president of the United States and oversaw the industry-friendly Energy Task Force — gives the oil and gas industry a free pass on fracking chemical disclosure, deeming the chemicals injected into the ground during the process a trade secret.
Yet, far from an antidote to the "Halliburton Loophole," a new loophole has been created in its stead at the state level — the "ExxonMobil Loophole" — which now has the backing of ALEC. The results haven't been pretty.
An August 2012 Bloomberg News investigation revealed FracFocus merely offers the façade of disclosure, or a "fig leaf" of it, as U.S. Rep. Diane DiGette (D-CO) put it in the piece.
"Energy companies failed to list more than two out of every five fracked wells in eight U.S. states from April 11, 2011, when FracFocus began operating, through the end of last year," wrote Bloomberg. "The gaps reveal shortcomings in the voluntary approach to transparency on the site."
As we reported on DeSmogBlog in December 2012, FracFocus is a public relations front for the oil and gas industry:

FracFocus' domain is registered by Brothers & Company, a public relations firm whose clients include America’s Natural Gas Alliance, Chesapeake Energy, and American Clean Skies Foundation, a front group for Chesapeake Energy.

FracFocus was listed as an industry "ally" in the recently revealed scandalous Ohio Department of Natural Resources memo from 2012 — now part of an Ohio House of Representatives investigation — which discussed how to push through fracking on public lands and divide Ohio's environmental community. It also received an initial $1.5 million in seed money in the aftermath the meetings between members of the industry-stacked 2011 Obama Administration Department of Energy Fracking Subcommittee.
Perhaps it shouldn't be shocking, then, that one of the bill's original co-introducers, Texas Rep. Lon Burnam (D), told Bloomberg, "This disclosure bill has a hole big enough to drive a Mack truck through.”
Texas' track record on fracking chemical fluid disclosure speaks for itself.
"Drilling companies in Texas, the biggest oil-and-natural gas producing state, claimed similar exemptions about 19,000 times this year through August,"explained Bloomberg. "Trade-secret exemptions block information on more than five ingredients for every well in Texas, undermining the statute’s purpose of informing people about chemicals that are hauled through their communities and injected thousands of feet beneath their homes and farms."
Or, as the Harvard University Law School study put it:

FracFocus prevents states from enforcing timely disclosure requirements, creates obstacles for compliance for reporting companies, and allows inconsistent trade secret assertions. Furthermore, the reliance on FracFocus by numerous states as a de facto regulatory mechanism sends a strong signal to industry that careful reporting and compliance is not a top priority.

Asked why HB 157 was introduced as a companion to HB 71 to begin with, Rep. Rodrigues cited the "Halliburton Loophole."
"HB 157 was introduced because there are existing exemptions for trade secrets in both state and federal statutes," he said. "Therefore HB 71 must be made compliant with existing law. Otherwise, HB 71 could be challenged in court and thus not enforced