Summary: FracFocus disclosures that contain unintentional duplication of records distort the quantity of the chemicals used. Open-FF1 found that West Virginia had 525 such disclosures by 14 different operators. On average, these duplicates inflated chemical mass in disclosures by 193,000 pounds.
Background on duplication errors
The national disclosure instrument, FracFocus, documents the fracking chemicals that have been used in over 220,000 fracking jobs in the US since 2011. This extensive data set is especially important because it is one of the few resources available to the public about fracking chemicals. As such, FracFocus should be central to analyses and debates about fracking patterns and impacts. However, poor data integrity can undermine the usefulness of this resource.
The Open-FF project is trying to make errors in FracFocus more visible to stakeholders. Our aim is to alert users of FracFocus data to weaknesses and to encourage operators to correct problems and prevent future errors.
We recently summarized an odd problem in a large number of FracFocus disclosures. Many disclosures have duplicate records, that is, two single lines share identical values in many identifying columns. Because such records can be confused with legitimate records, users of the data are confronted with significant ambiguity. If they are errors, these records distort the quantity of chemical usage.
We’ve found evidence that these duplicates are unintentional. They have also gone largely uncorrected, some for over 8 years. As we’ve noted, because our project is based only on publicly available data, we cannot be certain that the duplicates are not legitimate; only feedback from the companies can clarify this issue.
The scope of West Virginia’s duplication issue
As of this date, West Virginia has 3,397 disclosures in FracFocus. We have detected duplication issues in 15.5% of those disclosures. The following figure illustrates West Virginia’s pattern over time.
The following table summarizes the operating companies with affected disclosures in West Virginia. To see examples of the duplication, follow “Link to Report” for summaries of specific companies.
| Operator | detected number of disclosures in West Virginia | link to Open-FF report |
|---|---|---|
| Tug Hill Operating, LLC | 121 | link to report |
| EQT Production | 104 | link to report |
| Northeast Natural Energy LLC | 93 | link to report |
| CNX Gas Company LLC | 37 | link to report |
| Chevron USA Inc. | 36 | link to report |
| Arsenal Resources | 29 | |
| Jay-Bee Oil & Gas, Inc. | 23 | |
| Southwestern Energy | 19 | |
| CONSOL Energy Inc. | 18 | link to report |
| Tribune Resources, LLC | 13 | |
| Antero Resources Corporation | 12 | |
| XTO Energy/ExxonMobil | 12 | link to report |
| Triad Hunter LLC. | 7 | |
| Buckeye Oil Producing Company | 1 |
As of this date, many companies continue to publish disclosures with duplications.
What it means to have duplicate records in West Virginia disclosures
At the center of this issue is the core purpose of FracFocus: to provide an accurate picture of a critical part of fracking operations to all stakeholders. Where that accuracy is undermined, stakeholder trust will be undermined. To be sure, errors in such an instrument are inevitable and expected. But because of that, there must be some form of quality assurance or auditing to correct problems discovered after publication. So, when visible errors that touch so many disclosures (about 20,000 across all states) and so many companies (more than 500) remain uncorrected for many years, users of FracFocus data may reasonably assume that review of data is poor.
Following the progression of this issue
This report is based on a snapshot of the FracFocus data (Oct. 8, 2024). The number of disclosures with duplicates will likely change as operators add more disclosures and correct mistaken ones.
To see the most updated status of West Virginia’s disclosures with duplicate records and a comparison to a baseline snapshot, visit this link.
Duplicate records in Open-FF data sets
Users of FracFocus data via of Open-FF data sets can remove duplicates by using a standard data set. However, because we only have access to publicly available FracFocus data, we can’t be sure that the records we flag are truly mistakes. In some cases, our detection process may be flagging legitimate records. We leave it to the users of our data sets to weigh the costs and benefits of keeping vs. removing these records. In our experience, it is safest to remove the duplicates.
Title image credit: Becky Mansfield (modified by author)
- This work is part of an effort at The Open-FF Project to improve the quality and accessibility of the FracFocus data. ↩︎