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FracFocus This file was generated on May 17, 2025 |
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Contents:¶
General Statistics Number of disclosures per week, geographic spread
Chemicals used Common patterns and chemicals used; trade secrets
Water Use Weekly: Median, Total and Max water used
Proppant Use Weekly: Sand, other proppants
Companies represented Operators and Suppliers
Products reported Trade names of products used
Downloadable Data Sets water and sand use, by disclosure
General Stats¶
The figures below use filtered data (no duplicate disclosures or records) for Jan 1, 2011 to the most recently published and curated data. Because of publishing delays, the most recent months are under represented.
In the early data, roughly 2011 - May 2013, the bulk download does not include chemical records. However, the PDF files for that period are still served through "Find_A-Well" and document the reported chemicals. Some projects have attempted to scrape those chemical records into an organized data set but they come with caveats such as they may contain records that the industry no longer considers valid; or they are incomplete because many of the PDFs are poorly formatted and therefore difficult to scrape. If you are interested in those scraped data sets, contact Open-FF.
Where are they?¶
For more detailed maps of each state, see the "States and Counties" pages.
Chemicals used¶
Chemical Index¶
Browsable list with all reported chemicals. Includes stats and hazard profiles and a links to detailed chemical reports.
Analysis of Substance Classes¶
Chemical Structure Classifications¶
Typical Water : Sand : Additive percentages¶
How many records are resolvable to an authoritative identity?¶
Of the resolvable records, what are the most common?¶
| Resolved CASRN | EPA preferred name | Number of records |
|---|---|---|
|
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Number of chemicals added each year¶
Starting with 2014 because previous years' chemical data is not included in many disclosures.
| year | total number of chemical resolved | added this year |
|---|---|---|
|
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Trade Secret designations¶
Most states allow operators to declare some materials as trade secrets or proprietary. Although there are many records that are not resolvable to a specific CAS number, Open-FF only categorizes a record as "proprietary" if the record explicitly uses a term like "proprietary" or "confidential business information" in the identity.
More than 80% of disclosures claim at least one chemical as a trade secret.
Gallons used, recorded as TotalBaseWaterVolume¶
Proppants¶
Most 2011- mid 2013 disclosures do not have chemical records. Proppants are, therefore, missing in those years in the figures below.
The majority of disclosures report "sand" (CASRN: 14808-60-7) as the primary proppant. Secondary proppants are shown separately below.
List of "other proppants" graphed:
bgCAS epa_pref_name
0 1302-74-5 Corundum (Aluminum oxide)
1 1302-76-7 Kyanite (Al2O(SiO4))
2 1302-93-8 Mullite (Al6O5(SiO4)2)
3 1318-16-7 Bauxite
4 1344-28-1 Alumina
5 14464-46-1 Cristobalite
6 308075-07-2 Sand
7 66402-68-4 Ceramic materials and wares, chemicals
Operators¶
Operators are the companies that manage the permits, the wells and submit the disclosures. There is a single operator for each fracking job.
There are many Operator companies. A large fraction of them manage only a handful of fracking jobs/wells. The dominant operators have thousands of wells. To explore individual Operators, use the Operator Index
The data field in Open-FF named bgOperatorName is a form of the FracFocus field OperatorName that allows for more comprehensive searches.
Total number bgOperatorName: 1673, number with fewer than 20 disclosures: 1066, with fewer than 5: 654
Suppliers¶
Suppliers are companies that may supply the products used in a fracking job, they may be the oilfield service company or even a transport company. Because a supplier is associated with single records within a disclosure, there are often multiple companies named as suppliers on a single dislcosure.
The data field in Open-FF named bgSupplier is a form of the FracFocus field Supplier that aggregates variations in spellings and typos to allow for more comprehensive searching.
Total number bgSupplier: 1673, number with fewer than 20 disclosures: 951, with fewer than 5: 578
Fracking "Products" Reported¶
These are the trade named products as reported on disclosures.
Some names on the disclosure indicate that the product name has been withheld or is disconnected from a chemical record:
"Ingredient Container"
"MISSING"
"Other Chemicals(s)"
Note that some product names have more than one spelling or capitalization and therefore will be found on more than one line.
For example, type "lo-surf" into the Search bar.
On some disclosures, operators concatenated all product names onto one line. When these multiple product records are longer than 30 characters, they are not included in the table below.
| TradeName | Number of disclosures |
|---|---|
|
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Summary Data¶
Data sets that offer quick access to the Open-FF data for commonly requested fields. (If you have data you would like to access regularly, let us know and we can add a link to this section.)
| Data Set with link | Description |
|---|---|
| Water, Sand and BTEX use | - all locations from 2011 to last major update in FracFocus - Total base water volume (in gallons) Masses below are in pounds and are for disclosures for which mass is calculable. - sand (CASRN: 14808-60-7) mass - benzene (CASRN: 71-43-2) mass - toluene (CASRN: 108-88-3) mass - ethylbenzene (CASRN: 100-41-4) mass - xylene(CASRN: 1330-20-7) mass - "OperatorName" is field as given in FracFocus. - "bgOperatorName" is a generated field to standardize multiple names for the same company. - "APINumber" is a 14-digit number (as text string) from the FracFocus; early disclosures with only 10-digits are filled out with 'XXXX' - "api10" is a simple 10-digit version of the APINumber (as a text string) |