FracFocus Trade Secrets in Texas

Summary: Trade secrets in FracFocus, an instrument of transparency, explicitly conceal the identity of chemicals. This masking has long been controversial. Open-FF found 464,000 trade secrets in Texas records. These records spanned all years and 86.1% of published disclosures. About 10,300,000,000 pounds of trade secret chemicals have been reported. In this post, we summarize the broad patterns of trade secret use in Texas between 2014 and early 2025. We also illustrate the types of trade secrets patterns in the state with local examples. This post is part of a series reporting on “holes” in FracFocus.¹

FracFocus is a public online database that provides information about the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) across the United States. While intended to promote transparency, a significant portion of the disclosed chemical information is often withheld as “trade secrets.” This practice has been a subject of debate, balancing industry’s need to protect proprietary formulas with the public’s right to know about substances injected underground.

Broad Patterns in Texas

Quantity of chemicals masked as trade secrets:

10,300,000,000 pounds

Frequency of Claims: How common are trade secret claims in Texas?

Across all valid Texas chemical records, 16.3% are marked as trade secrets. Trade secret claims appear in 86.1 % of all disclosures.

And the breakdown of the frequency of trade secrets within Texas disclosures is: 

Compared to Other States: How does the trade secret use in Texas compare to other fracking states?

Texas accounts for roughly one half of FracFocus records. The number of total trade secrets claimed is by far the highest across Texas. In terms of percentage of disclosures that contain trade secrets, Texas is in a small group of states with the highest percentages, as seen in the figure below.

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Examples of Trade Secret Use in Texas

We summarize specific examples to highlight the various ways the trade secret designation is applied. Here are some typical scenarios we observed:

Large Percentage of Records as Trade Secrets

In some disclosures, a substantial proportion, sometimes even the majority, of the listed ingredients are marked as trade secrets. This leaves the public with very little information about the chemical composition of the fracturing fluid used in that specific well.

Example: Consider the well operated by Atlas Operating-LLC in Dimmit County. (Click on images to open map and disclosure.)

In this disclosure, 85% of ingredients are listed as trade secrets. The list of trade secrets for that fracking job are below. The only chemical identified by CAS number is water. While some IngredientNames look specific enough to identify, FracFocus instructs us to give primacy to the CASNumber, in this case, the “proprietary” label. End users are therefore left with ambiguity.

TradeName	IngredientName	CASNumber	mass (pounds)
Sand (Proppant)	silica substrate	Proprietary	28,100,000
LFS – 144	petroleum distillate hydrated light	Proprietary	59,500
M-12	methyl alcohol	Proprietary	13,500
FF Diverter	far field diverter	Proprietary	10,800
GQ – 510X	didecyldimethyl ammonium chloride	Proprietary	7,060
LFS – 309	diethylenetriaminepenta sodium salt	Proprietary	4,020

Individual Trade Secret Records That Are High Mass

Occasionally, a single ingredient marked as a trade secret represents a significant mass or percentage of the total fluid volume reported in a disclosure. This means a large component of the fracturing fluid’s composition is entirely unknown.

Example: Consider the well operated by Devon Energy in De Witt County.

In this well, two trade secret entries are both reported with a mass of 5,040,000 pounds, representing a significant portion of the total fluid volume. The chemical identities of these large-mass materials are withheld.

Texas has 8,678 trade secret records with masses over 100,000 pounds.

Systems Approach Disclosures with Trade Secret Records

FracFocus disclosures are often published in the “systems approach” format that decouples product names from chemical identity. FracFocus claims that this practice “decreases the use of trade secrets in disclosures, thereby improving public transparency.” Analyses by Trickey et al. and Underhill et al. disprove that claim across the FracFocus data. Instead, we often find system approach disclosures with multiple trade secret claims – because there is nothing to compel companies to include the chemical identity.

Example: Consider the well operated by Diamondback E&P LLC in Martin County.

The disclosure for that well utilizes a systems approach format but still conceals the identity of 7 chemicals, which means 63% of ingredients are listed as trade secrets. The table below lists those records with their quantity.

IngredientName	CASNumber	mass (pounds)
proprietary2	Proprietary	118,000
proprietary1	Proprietary	59,200
mineral oil	Trade Secret	57,500
ethoxylated alcohols	Proprietary	14,200
sodium chloride	Trade Secret	9,580
polymer salt	Proprietary	7,970
fatty amine salt	Proprietary	2,370

Trade Secret Records Without Any Hints About Material Type

While it is sometimes claimed that operators must supply coarse categories for trade secrets, the data tell a different story. Some trade secret entries provide no descriptive information, such as a functional category (such as “friction reducer,” “surfactant”) or chemical group (“ethoxylated alcohol”), about the material. This makes it impossible to even guess the potential role or nature of the withheld substance.

Examples: The following table lists some of the reported IngredientNames for Texas’s trade secrets that are also reported without informative values for “Purpose”.

IngredientName	count
proprietary	35672
trade secret	11211
proprietary component	4273
proprietary blend	1575
proprietary ingredient	1537
other components	865
trade secret agent	638
trade secret ingredient	536
mixture	493

Implications for Texas

The patterns and examples of trade secret usage in Texas’s FracFocus data highlight the limitations of the database in providing
chemical transparency. While trade secret protection is a legal right when formalized, its extensive use in fracking disclosures raises questions for regulators, researchers, and the public regarding potential environmental and health impacts. Understanding how and where trade secrets are used is a crucial step in evaluating the effectiveness of public disclosure requirements in the state.

Colorado’s recent law requiring enhanced disclosure in a way that still protects intellectual property may serve as a model to improve overall transparency.

References

Trickey, Kevin, Nicholas Hadjimichael, and Prachi Sanghavi. “Public Reporting of Hydraulic Fracturing Chemicals in the USA, 2011–18: A before and after Comparison of Reporting Formats.” The Lancet Planetary Health 4, no. 5 (May 1, 2020): e178–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30076-0.

Underhill, Vivian, Gary Allison, Holden Huntzinger, Cole Mason, Abigail Noreck, Emi Suyama, Lourdes Vera, and Sara Wylie. “Increases in Trade Secret Designations in Hydraulic Fracturing Fluids and Their Potential Implications for Environmental Health and Water Quality.” Journal of Environmental Management 351 (February 1, 2024): 119611. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.119611.

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Title image credit: Becky Mansfield (modified by author)

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1. Map images ©OpenStreetMap; Disclosure tables screenshot from FracFocus PDFs. ↩︎