US oil executives accidentally expose the industry’s greatest weakness.
To keep drilling in the US, big oil needs permission to dump treated fracking wastewater into rivers and onto cropland. In the fracking process, water is used to break up shale and free trapped oil and gas. Once the project is finished, the water can be reused for further fracking, treated and recycled, or disposed of.
The idea of discharging this waste water into rivers or onto cropland is open to serious questioning and concerns. The US oil industry claims they can effectively treat the water to make it harmless, and similar claims are made in the UK but it appears that the water remains toxic and, in some cases, radioactive.
According to the UK Environment Agency there are strict environmental regulationsin place to control the storage and disposal of all wastes produced during fracking. You can read them here.
In addition a temporary moratorium on high-volume fracking remains in place across the UK, while the government works to enact a permanent legislative ban. However, the present ban does not include all forms of the practice, including proppant squeeze, a low level industrial technique.
In May, North Yorkshire Council refused aplanning application from Europa Oil & Gas who proposed a 125ft (38m) rig inBurniston, which would have used a proppant squeeze method to extract the gas. Europa Oil & Gas is appealing the decision. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c202k7rp73jo
A parliamentary debate on the potential merits of a full ban on fracking took place on Tuesday 15 September 2026. During the debate, the government undertook to enacta complete ban on fracking in the forthcoming Energy Independence Bill but indicated that proppant squeeze techniques would not be included in this ban as there were sufficient safeguards against this practice already in place.
Meanwhile a recent article in the US publication ‘Heated’ written by Texan based journalist Saul Elbein, sounded alarm bells. His revelations came after he attended a little-noticed Texas Senate committee hearing. Paying close attention to what industry representatives said there, he reached the conclusion that if campaigners in the US can prevent the disposal of this waste water onto farmland and into river
systems, they can effectively halt the fracking industry. You can read the article here.