lawmakers are holding a hearing about that regulating the practice for more i'm joined now by ronald bailey a science correspondent reason dot com welcome ronald so over there in monterey california drilling could bring and bring in fifteen billion barrels of oil and this is making gas executives very excited but what about regulating the practice to make sure it's done safely and sustainably well in fact it does seem to be already well regulated for safety in the united states no cases yet been confirmed contamination has occurred because of this you can process of course any industrial process could have through use an exchange really what you've had is well. because of fracking but because they were well designed to cause problems but it was not a problem with fracking at all it was just bad design wells and that can happen and needs to be watched very carefully and i think that we're going to be doing so above but right now in california there's very little regulation fracking received an exemption from the clean water bill and that means oil companies don't have to reveal what chemical