Deregulatory Disclosure Regimes and Masked Absences in Fracking Chemical Data

Vocal opposition to fracking (the practice of fracturing the subsurface to increase oil and gas production), from shale deposits in Pennsylvania to oil fields in California, has led to increased disclosure about chemicals in fracking fluid. This paper questions the conflation of data abundance with meaningful action or response, drawing on the authors’ collective years of experience working with FracFocus, the most comprehensive publicly available fracking chemical database in the United States. We identify and characterize a range of absences and ambiguities in FracFocus, the most obvious of which are trade secrets, which are explicitly marked absences. Pervasive structural and systemic absences are harder to see but constrain the usefulness of FracFocus data. Using perspectives from environmental STS and critical data studies on deregulatory knowledge production, we analyze these absences to think differently about disclosure. Rather than trying to “fill in” these holes, we use their form to better understand the ways in which regulatory structures shape knowledge production, as well as the much more profound questions forced by the unruly nature of chemical behavior. If investments in disclosure-as-governance rely on longstanding ideas of isolated and discrete chemicals, these holes emphasize the importance of reckoning with chemical mutability and uncontrollability.