FracFocus serves as the collector and manager of fracking chemical disclosures of the oil and gas industry. It delivers published disclosures to state regulators and it operates a website to help the public see those disclosures and offers a bulk download of the disclosure data. While it started in 2011 as an experiment, disclosing to FracFocus is now required by many states.

Open-FF, which is the project associated with this web site, is independent of FracFocus, the industry and state regulators. Open-FF adds to the FracFocus data to correct errors and reduce ambiguity, calculate chemical quantities and provide perspective. Data, code and tools generated by Open-FF are open source and available to everyone. Development on Open-FF began in 2018. The FracTracker Alliance has sponsored Open-FF maintenance and development since 2023.

Cleaning, curating, and organizing the data to produce a value-added data set. This set includes the original FracFocus data along with features generated by Open-FF that calculate masses, flag errors, identify trade secret claims, link to hazard information and more. These data sets are currently updated monthly and we provide summaries of new disclosures.

Providing an online data browser that offers perspectives on specific chemicals, companies and locations without downloading or coding. For example, using this tool, users can quickly see (a) where a company is operating and its pattern of trade secret use, (b) how many times a specific chemical such as ethylene glycol has been used and its hazard profile and (c) what is the pattern of fracking within a given state.

Producing reports of data errors and omissions. These reports outline specific problems we have discovered such as massive misreporting of water use. We try to inform companies of the issues so that they can correct them. We are currently planning a series of error reports on issues such as sand-dominated disclosures, duplicated records, and inconsistent mass reports.