US oil and gas companies are facing a new source of pressure from shareholder coalitions who have urged nine producers to explain their strategies for managing growing concerns about a possible link between oil and gas drilling and the contamination of drinking water. The investor groups are responding to concerns that have already been raised by environmentalists, politicians, federal officials and state governments about hydraulic fracturing, a technique that is widely used in the US to boost oil or gas flows from "tight" rock formations (OD Sep.14,p1).
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