The FracFocus system provides for the ability to submit chemical disclosures of hydraulic fracturing jobs performed on wells that are not associated with the production of oil and gas. This capability was added because many of the state well regulations that permit these types of wells may not differentiate between well types relative to submitting the disclosure for compliance.

Read the following "How To Guide" to understand how to submit a disclosure on a well not associated with the production of oil and gas.

Get Guide

The FracFocus system tracks disclosures on Federal and Indian lands. Because of this fact operators should be aware of the following rule when performing hydraulic fracturing jobs on Federal and Indian Lands.

Per the Final Hydraulic Fracturing Rule on Federal and Indian Lands (FF Vol. 80, No. 58 / Thursday, March 26, 2015), #167;3162.3-3 (i)(8) the operator must certify that:

i. The operator complied with the requirements in #167;3162.3-3, paragraphs (b), (e), (f), (g), and (h) of the section;

ii. For Federal lands, the hydraulic fracturing fluid constituents, once they arrived on the lease, complied with all applicable permitting and notice requirements as well as all applicable Federal, State, and local laws, rules, and regulations;

iii. For Indian lands, the hydraulic fracturing fluid constituents, once they arrived on the lease, complied with all applicable permitting and notice requirements as well as all applicable Federal and tribal laws, rules, and regulations.

FracFocus has an implemented security policy that if a user has not been active in the system for more than 6 months their account will be locked. Users will need to do a "Forgot Password?" option from the login screen to get a new password issued by the system and sent to their email.

This policy assures that the user's email is still active with their company, as an active email is required to get a new password.

See: Submissions involving Bankruptcy or Business Closures

Issue

A Hydraulic Fracturing job was performed on a well and the disclosure has not been submitted to FracFocus, and one or both of the principals (i.e., Operating Company or Service Company) involved in the job has gone out of business.

FIRST: For definitive guidance always consult the state agency for which the disclosure is being submitted.

SECOND: Consider the steps defined in News Link

LASTLY: For definitive guidance consult the state agency for which the disclosure is being submitted.

Find Links to your state here: Regulations

To become a “FracFocus” participating company please follow the instructions below:

1. Open the website: www.FracFocusData.org
2. Click on Register in the header on the left hand side of the home page
3. Complete the form and submit (follow instructions in email sent from site)
4. Validate your email address
5. Wait for a confirmation e-mail (follow instructions in email sent from site)
6. Login and review the User Guide
7. Establish yourself as a Data Submitter if desired
8. Assign/Add other Supervisors and Data Submitters (as necessary)
9. Begin entering and submitting disclosures

Please note that any number of supervisors and data submitters can be approved. Supervisors can approve Service Companies and Registered Agents to do work for their company. Data Submitters can submit disclosures.

Use the web form, linked here, to apply for a new company account to be used to submit chemical data to the registry.

Note: Upon submission of application for a new company, notice will be sent to the Hydraulic Fracturing Disclosure Administrator for approval. The new user must also validate their email address before the application can be approved. Please allow 2-3 business days for approval.

Upon receiving approval:

• Establish yourself as a Data Submitter if desired
• Assign other Supervisors and Data Submitters (as necessary)
• Begin entering and submitting disclosures

Please note that any number of supervisors and data submitters can be approved. Supervisors can approve Service Companies and Registered Agents to do work for their company. Data Submitters can submit disclosures.

FracFocus limits registration to one Company Registration per corporate entity. If your company has multiple regional offices, and each submits disclosures to FracFocus, then all users for your company should be managed under a single "Headquarters" corporate entity. FracFocus does not track separate corporate subsidiaries as separate registrations.

The most likely cause is that the FracFocus administrator has been unable to certify that you work for the company for which the registration was submitted. If you do not receive a response from the administrator within 1 week of submitting your registration you should contact the administrator at fracfocus@gwpc.org to verify the cause for the delay.

Is your company a service company performing fracturing jobs for operators or do you only supply 3rd Party chemicals to operators for inclusion to their fracturing jobs?

The FracFocus service company registration is for companies performing frac jobs and then uploading chemical disclosures to operators. Uploading/Submitting a single or small subset of chemicals used during the fracturing job is not a complete disclosure for submission. Each fracturing job performed should only have one disclosure in the system. If you are supplying 3rd party chemicals to the job, and operators need that information to be able to submit a complete disclosure, please supply that information directly to the operator or service company that performed the job.

If your company does need to upload a complete or near complete disclosure to an operator so that they can submit, then please register as a service company.

The most common causes of login failure are:

1. Failure to include the special character you used in your password
2. Use of an incorrect e-mail address.

In order to submit a disclosure you must use the Manage Organization Users to make yourself a Data Submitter if you are an Operator, or a User if you are a Service Company. If you select Manage Organization Users you will see options to update user roles by clicking check boxes. The user roles control what features are available to individuals in the system.

The most likely cause of this error is that the e-mail has either been submitted for registration before or is already in use by another user. E-mail addresses must be unique. Try to register a new company by using another e-mail address.

Since a supervisor is the highest ranking person for a company in FracFocus, a user cannot remove their own supervisor status. Other supervisors in the company can update other supervisors. Every organization must have at least one active supervisor in the system. If you need to change a company supervisor, contact fracfocus@gwpc.org.

Warnings will not prevent submission of a disclosure. However, Errors will. Warnings are designed to let you know that one or more of your entries does not match the standard format of a FracFocus field (e.g. Excessive Water Volume) or there may be an issue with entered data. These Warnings should be checked but they will not prevent submission of a disclosure. Errors must be corrected before a disclosure can be submitted.

The following are some common issues found in XML Files:

1. The first 3 lines and last 2 lines of the xml file do not appear as follows at a minimum:
   1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   2. -<FracFocus4_0 xmlns="FracFocus4_0.xsd" >
   3. -<FractureJob>
   4. ...
   5. </FractureJob>
   6. </FracFocus4_0>
2. There is a null value in a required field (E.g. Datum), OR
3. This is a blank tag in a numeric element such as TVD – True Vertical Depth

FracFocus uses GIS data of the identified county of the well to test the location spot provided for the well. The well's location is required to be entered in Decimal Degrees. The validation test is to make sure that the well is located within the county identified from the API Well Number. Many times an operator will have the well’s location reported to them in a format know as Degrees-Minutes-Seconds (D-M-S) and that location may appear as:

NAD83:
Lat: 32o06’03.458”
Long: 101o39’04.112”

The above format is not correct for entering into FracFocus. We have seen a number of operators try to enter this information in as 32.0603458 and -101.3904112. Again this would be incorrect. The proper way is to convert the above information from Degrees, Minutes and Seconds to Decimal Degrees. There are a number of conversion tools available for free on the internet.

By entering the above numbers into the conversion tool we get the following Lat/Long in Decimal Degrees that can be entered into FracFocus.

NAD83:
Lat: 32.100961
Long: 101.651142

Historically chemical companies that supply individual or limited numbers of products on a hydraulic fracturing job are not registered in FracFocus. We have added some new features to FracFocus 4.0 that may support a chemical company client’s need.

New Features:

1. Operators can now use an XML file to append chemical data to an existing disclosure. As a chemical company if you supply a FracFocus 4.0 formatted XML file to the operator containing your chemical data, it can be appended to a disclosure. Prior to FracFocus 4.0 appending additional chemical data from an XML Upload was not available.
2. Or, the relationship between Registered Agents and Operators has a new ability. A Registered Agent approved company can be limited to only editing a disclosure and does not always have permissions to do submissions. This may be an option for Operators to allow Chemical Suppliers the ability to add chemical data to disclosures.

How to use the above new features:

If you are going to supply an XML file with the chemical data, you will not need to register in FracFocus. Your client will be responsible for uploading the file with data to be appended. You must supply that file to the client. Please note if your client is a Service Company you will want to supply that data to the Service Company prior to the Service Company routing the disclosure to the Operator.

If you wish to become a Registered Agent, FracFocus will review an application for approval. If approved, you will then talk to your operator clients and ask them to approve your Agent company to do work for them. The operators must add you to their organization. Once approved by your operator clients, you will be able to directly edit Pending or Amend Submitted disclosures to add your chemicals.