Posted on 07/18/2013 6:01:44 AM PDT by thackney
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell on Wednesday defended the Obama administration’s plans to stiffen requirements for oil and gas wells drilled on federal lands, saying it was important to establish baseline standards that apply nationwide.
At issue is a proposed rule from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management that aims to boost the integrity of oil and gas wells to prevent contamination, would force companies to disclose the chemicals they pump underground and would make drillers adopt plans for managing water at the sites.
Oil industry representatives and their allies on Capitol Hill say states are better equipped to regulate the activity.
“The states are already doing a good job,” said Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., during a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on Wednesday. “Why not let the states — who know their own hydrology and geology better — do their own regulation, rather than a bureaucratic fiat from Washington?”
But Jewell would not be swayed.
“As an engineer, I understand fracking,” she told the panel. “I understand there are baseline standards that apply no matter the geology.”
The proposed rule would apply only on public lands managed by the Interior Department — a small sliver of the U.S. — but could set a regulatory model for states. The measure also would effectively update Interior Department requirements that haven’t gotten a rewrite in decades, well before energy companies began combining horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to pull oil and gas out of dense rock formations.
“Technologies have moved us: horizontal drilling, multiple fractures within a reservoir, much higher pressures than we saw before,” Jewell said. “Minimum acceptable standards need to be out there. Part of my job is to make sure we’re watching over the federal estate effectively.”
But Jewell repeatedly stressed that federal regulators intend to defer to states who have established equivalent — or better — requirements. She cited Colorado and Wyoming as doing a particularly “nice job” regulating hydraulic fracturing and drilling activity.
“In many cases, the standards don’t exist or are very old within states, so we felt they needed to be modernized on federal lands,” Jewell said. But for states with strong regulatory regimes, Jewell added, “we will be working to accommodate those.”
Democratic lawmakers criticized the Interior Department’s decision to allow oil and gas companies to reveal the chemicals they pump underground at well sites only after the work is done and accept disclosures via an industry-backed website known as FracFocus, rather than a new, government-run system.
Critics say there are questions about how long FracFocus might retain data, given that it is a non-public entity. Since it’s not a government website, FracFocus also doesn’t abide by the same public records requirements. They also have complained that the registry is incomplete and is too opaque.
Jewell acknowledged that FracFocus is “imperfect,” but noted that it is being updated in response to criticism.
The BLM’s fracturing rule proposal would allow the government to ask companies for proprietary information that might otherwise be shielded from view as a trade secret.
A public comment period on the proposal has been extended until Aug. 23. Afterward, the BLM is expected to review the comments before issuing a final rule.
Of course, that isn’t preordained. Although the Bureau of Land Management proposed a similar regulation last year, the agency withdrew it after a flood of critical responses.
The Saudis are ready to cut heads.
Farmers and ranchers are lovin’ the lease payments they are getting from the gas and oil industry. The only ones missing out on the boom are the feckless feds and the enviro-nazi states.
There. . .fixed it.
Would be interesting to chart the production from federal land...
The gummint gonna have to get a handle on this, there is WAY too much prosperity goin’ on out there.
The boom going on in North Dakota, where almost unimaginably huge reserves of now recoverable crude and natural gas are now being extracted, and would be available everywhere, except for the endless environmental “reviews” the Feds insist upon burdening the prospective exploration companies with.
Environmental reviews and concerns were once a relatively simple matter, but as someone who may not be a favorite of the Current Regime now squatting in the White Hut might just make a few extra bucks (and thus able to pass more revenue into the US Treasury via taxes paid on this new profit center), this initiative has to be crushed and stymied immediately.
America is not already in the depths of a vast and long-term Great Depression II only because there is still a largely dynamic and not yet suppressed avenue of economic activity that works to reduce international trade deficits.
Every barrel NOT imported from Venezuela or even Mexico, is one less barrel that is held hostage to the demands of local tyrants and despots. Every quantity of natural gas that is used to generate electrical energy is that much less coal that has to be extracted and burned, which one would think would be pleasing to the “environmentalists”, but in fact, has caused vast displacement in industries in already depressed localities.
Now, if West Virginia could extract natural gas in much the manner of the “fracking” process used in North Dakota, they could very well share in a similar surge of prosperity. But this avenue has to be shut down as quickly as the regulators can get the rule books written and in force.
Although I’ve never been a proponent of “peak oil” theory, I’ve wondered if all this regulation and limitations on drilling will actually artificially induce a peak oil scenario.
When you consider the number of hands from WY and CO in ND and MT because the Feds have shut down drilling in WY and CO compared to what it could be (and that Pavilion, WY is the one place the Feds have targeted to prove a problem with fracking, even though that is highly unlikely) there is a rat in the mix somewhere.
There have been no incidents of fracking contaminating an aquifer in ND, even amidst all the Bakken/Three Forks activity, most of which has occurred on private land.
Even an engineer should understand frac pressures are related to the geology of the formation, and that to ignore the geology is ridiculous. Individual State Geologists are more familiar with local geology and potential hazards than the Feds ever will be, and a one-size-fits all standard is like a one-size fits all standard for insulating homes--from Pt. Barrow to Key West.
If it is such good policy, why does it need to be defended?
Is becoming small in comparison to what is going on in Texas.
"The proposed rule would apply only on public lands managed by the Interior Department — a small sliver of the U.S."
Almost 10% is a small sliver? And down forget our entire coastline.
Sales of Fossil Fuels Produced
from Federal and Indian Lands,
FY 2003 through FY 2012
http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/federallands/pdf/eia-federallandsales.pdf
You say that this is the first step in shutting down fracking.
You probably don't know this but all O&G states have fracking registries. 12 states, including Texas, use FracFocus as their registry. But somehow if Obama uses FracFocus for a federal registry, that is shutting down fracking.
What are you talking about?
For example: you say "Don't forget our entire coastline"
There is no fracing of shale formations offshore.
Everything you say in in #11 is goofball stuff.
They are talking about two things. (1) conventional offshore drilling (2) onshore drilling using fracking.
The 4th ppg from the bottom says "potential for inland natural gas production through fracking"
Let me explain it to you. When they drill a well in a shale formation, even after they spend a lot of money to frack it, it doesn't produce a lot of oil or gas. And the life of the well is relatively short. So, they have to drill a lot of wells.
Drilling is expensive but offshore drilling unbelievably expensive. So the oil company will avoid offshore shale formations because they don't want to drill a lot of wells, because of the expense.
Now, the sentence above that paragraph says they would lobby Congress so the states can get natural gas or oil royalties. Do you understand that the state doesn't get a royalty. OTOH, the state makes a lot of money off the tourists going to the outer banks. So if there offshore well blowout, and the oil fouls the beach, the tourists stay away.
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