Mapping PFAS Chemicals Used in Fracking Operations in West Virginia

To visualize the data, Matt Kelso of FracTracker Alliance mapped the locations where PFAS and trade secret chemicals have been used to frack wells in West Virginia based on data analyzed by Gary Allison, the developer behind Open-FF, an open source project sponsored by FracTracker that makes industry chemical disclosure data from FracFocus accessible to the public.

According to Kelso, FracTracker’s manager of data of technology, mapping the wells injected with PFAS or trade secret chemicals is critical to showing the proximity of these wells to where people live, work, and recreate.

“It’s one thing to hear about some number of wells in Wetzel County or Doddridge County,” Kelso said. “Seeing them on a map gives a sense of the extent of the phenomenon, and also implicitly reminds viewers that there are people, schools, churches—all of the things that people care about—in these same communities.”

The interactive map shows the oil and gas wells in West Virginia that were fracked between 2012 and 2022 with the PFAS chemical polytetrafluoroethylene, also known as PTFE or Teflon, or at least one trade secret chemical or trade secret surfactant that are possibly PFAS. However, the extensive use of trade secret designations in West Virginia may obscure the extent to which companies use PFAS and other toxic chemicals in oil and gas extraction.

Gary Allison, the developer behind Open-FF who analyzed data for the report, says it’s a major cause for concern that the full extent of the problem isn’t known, which is primarily due to oil and gas companies and chemical manufacturers using the trade secret designation to avoid disclosing the specific identities of the chemicals used in fracking to the public.

“One of the most interesting and frustrating things is how, even though we have this data set (FracFocus) with over six million chemical records for over 200,000 fracking jobs, the degree of PFAS use is still unknown,” said Allison, the founder of Open-FF who analyzed data for the report based on oil and gas industry disclosures on FracFocus, the national hydraulic fracturing chemical registry managed by the Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC) and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC).