Fracky Friday

The Department of Energy says that fracking did not contaminate drinking water in Pennsylvania.

A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told The Associated Press.

After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said. Although the results are preliminary — the study is still ongoing — they are a boost to a natural gas industry that has fought complaints from environmental groups and property owners who call fracking dangerous.

And the Brits, in a fit of good sense and economic logic, aim to encourage the revolutionary technology of fracking in their oil and gas sectors by lowering taxes on shale gas producers.

The UK government has announced large tax breaks for shale gas producers in the country, as part of a consultation on a proposed tax regime for shale gas.

HM Treasury stated Friday that companies will have to pay a profit of just 30 percent on any shale gas they produce in the UK, compared to the current 62 percent tax that is levied on hydrocarbons produced by conventional means on the UK Continental Shelf. This "pad" allowance for shale gas is based on existing field allowance for oil and gas production that are expected to help encourage nearly $21 billion of investment in 2013, according to the department.