Frontier Fracking Showdown Pits Feds Against Western Boom States
About 90 percent of the wells on federal land rely on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the pumping of sand, water and chemicals to free natural gas and oil within subterranean rock. While fracking has catapulted the U.S. to world leadership in oil production, it’s also been blamed for air pollution, tainted groundwater and even earthquakes.
The new rules, announced in March by the Bureau of Land Management, require drillers to ensure the structural integrity of wells and disclose the chemicals injected into them. The bureau, the biggest U.S. landowner, oversees about 700 million acres of underground mineral rights.
Federal Stewardship
The rules are “premised on the unexceptional notion that the BLM, the federal agency charged with management and stewardship of those lands, would be able to set terms and conditions for their use,” federal officials argue in court filings.
The petroleum association and the Western Energy Alliance sued in March to block the federal rules. Wyoming followed with its own lawsuit, which was soon joined by Colorado, North Dakota and most recently Utah.
Each sits atop oil-rich shale: the Green River Basin in Wyoming, the Uinta Basin in Utah, the Piceance Creek Basin in Colorado and the Bakken Formation that has made North Dakota the second-biggest U.S. producer behind Texas.
A study prepared for the Western Energy Alliance estimated the federal rules will add $97,000 to the cost of each well. Federal officials estimate the additional cost at $5,500 per well.
The case is State of Wyoming v. U.S. Department of the Interior, 15-cv-00043, U.S. District Court, District of Wyoming (Casper).
To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew Harris in federal court in Casper, Wyoming, at aharris16@bloomberg.net; Mark Drajem in Washington at mdrajem@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net; Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net David E. Rovella
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