HALLIBURTON LOOPHOLE (pollution collusion)

Northern White nearly pure monocrystalline silica quartz frac sand

sourced from ~ Wisconsin

Black shale gravel sourced from Marcellus, NY

Dirt sourced from East Corinth, VT

Polyester scrim

Barbed wire

On stretched canvas and panel

30” x 49”

2026

The major expansion in fossil fuel production is possible in large part due to the 2005 Energy Policy Act (EPA) and its “Halliburton Loophole” which exempts fracking activity from regulation under the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).  The EPA and Loophole were engineered through Congress by committee headed by Dick Cheney, then US Vice President and former head of the Halliburton Company, one of the largest energy services corporations in the world specializing in fracking fluids.  Over 20 million Americans live within a mile of an unconventional fracking oil or gas well, in addition to workers who transport and handle these fluids.  Growing evidence associates fracking with a range of negative health outcomes.  Studies have linked close residential proximity to fracking wells to:  increases in hospital utilization, heart failure, risk of preterm birth, congenital heart defects, migraine headaches, fatigue symptoms and chronic rhinosinusitis (sinus infection).  Fracking fluids have been shown to contaminate surface water and groundwater that supplies drinking water.  Water contamination routes include:  leaking and evaporating wastewater pits, leaking storage tanks, discharge of inadequately treated wastewater, surface spills during transport, pipeline spills and leaks, defective and deteriorating well casings, chemical migration from fractures into shallow aquifers and decaying or abandoned wells.   Fracking is exempted from all or part of:  the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Clean Air Act (CAA), the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA).  One effect of exemption from these laws is the inability of municipalities and emergency responders to effectively and quickly mitigate fracking fluid releases because of the lack of complete information on the chemical composition of fluids. 

The following chart lists the chemical names of the molecular formulae beneath the scrim in the painting HALLIBURTON LOOPHOLE (pollution collusion) and the negative health effects of these chemicals.  These are the eleven chemicals most used in fracking by weight and voluntarily reported by fracking companies, although the Loophole protects those companies from regulation of their use.  The masses reported exceed the limits imposed by otherwise regulating laws in some cases by factors of 750,000.  Some chemicals used in fracking are not reported because the companies claim they provide a proprietary competitive advantage to their operations.  Because frac fluid that contains these and many other chemicals is returned to the surface in the fracking process along with natural gas and oil, the natural radioactivity present in the subsurface minerals the fluid encounters further toxifies the fluid as radioactive.