An influential group of scientists has urged US officials to step up their policing of shale gas operations and to consider stronger regulations to reduce environmental and health risks at the facilities.

The scientists called on regulators to revisit, and in many cases beef up, their guidelines to avoid surface spills at shale gas works, and to ensure the safe storage and disposal of toxic fluids used in controversial hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations.

Though some US states have updated historic oil and gas regulations to encompass fracking and shale gas work more generally, many lag behind and lack enough qualified people to enforce regulations properly, the researchers said.

Writing in a major report released this week, the scientists found 'little or no evidence' to support claims that fracking had contaminated aquifers, but recommended that states do more to prevent accidents, such as spillages, underground leaks and gas explosions.

Rules should be in place to establish responsibility if groundwater supplies become contaminated by shale gas works, with clear guidelines set out for replacing water supplies when drinking wells are affected, the report adds.

More stringent rules and better surveillance of well construction could prevent future cases of houses exploding after methane from fracked wells seeped along underground fractures and collected beneath homes. A handful of high-profile blasts have been traced to shale gas wells in Ohio, Colorado and other states.

The independent review of fracking by senior academics at the University of Texas in Austin said that the development of shale gas was 'essential to the energy security of the US and the world', but that the process had become mired in controversy after claims that fracking causes damage to health and the environment.

Fracking uses high pressure water mixed with particles and chemicals to break gas-rich shale rocks apart more than a kilometre underground. Critics have blamed the technique for a range of undesirable effects, from air pollution and contaminated water to minor earthquakes. In Britain, the protest group, Frack Off, has staged demonstrations at fracking test sites, while Greenpeace has argued that exploitation of shale gas deposits draws momentum away from alternative green energy projects.

Charles Groat, associate director of the university's Energy Institute and lead author of the report, said: 'The most important underlying scope of this study has been separating fact from fiction. The resource is so important to the US and the globe that if there are legitimate concerns about the impact on the environment of producing and transporting this resource, we need to understand that.'

Shale gas production rose nearly fivefold in the US between 2006 and 2010, when it accounted for 23 per cent of the nation's natural gas. By 2035, nearly half is expected to come from shale gas operations.

The authors focused on three major shale works in the US, namely Barnett shale in north Texas, Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and Haynesville shale in western Louisiana and northeast Texas. They found that many problems blamed on fracking were common to all oil and gas drilling operations, and that reports of water contamination could often be traced to surface spills of waste water.

But the authors made clear that their environmental review of shale gas was hindered by the industry's limited disclosure of chemicals added to fracking fluids, and a widespread failure to sample and record baseline levels of water quality in aquifers before drilling began.

'In many, if not most places, what the water was like before oil and gas development took place is not recorded, so how do you know whether you have had an effect or not, or whether the effect that's happening is due to what you're involved in, or what someone else is involved in?' Groat said. Improving baseline records of water quality, better groundwater sampling, and reliable ways to confirm the causes of problems were crucial for policy makers to draw up, amend and enforce regulations, he added.

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