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Fracking and public lands
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All of the Eastern U.S. forest acreage leased since 2011 (with the exception of 38,174 acres in Alabama’s Conecuh National Forest) lies over shale deposits. From 2011 to mid-2012, the federal government had leased or scheduled for auction more than 384,000 acres at the request of private bidders, more than 10 times as much land as it had leased in the previous two years. Private land overlying shale deposits can sell for thousands of dollars an acre; land in 2012 BLM forest leases averaged $47 per acre.[1]
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Drilling and parks
Leasing procedures
According to environmental groups, BLM is not applying the same environmental review and public comment procedures that the Obama administration has instituted in the West. Under those procedures, BLM analyzes the site-specific environmental consequences for lease parcels several months in advance of a sale and provides its findings to the public for comment; provides maps and global positioning data for each lease parcel; and provides links to the environmental analysis supporting a sale on its Web site.
By contrast, bidders on Forest Service lands in the East don’t need to provide GPS coordinates for prospective parcels; they can describe areas by referring to local landmarks or other general terms; and a site-specific environmental analysis takes place only after leases are sold.
BLM officials say the difference lies in which federal agency is operating as the land’s surface manager: in the West, BLM, a division of the Interior Department, performs the analysis; in Eastern national forests, the Forest Service performs the task because it owns the land being leased, even though BLM officials conduct the auctions.[2]
Regulations
On May 4, 2012 the Obama administration announced proposed federal rules that will require companies to disclose the chemicals used during their fracking process after they finish operations. The rules will also strengthen well-bore integrity and address issues related to flowback water. The regulations would only account for the natural gas and oil deposits located on BLM land, which is considered a "sliver" of total lands where fracking occurs.[3][4][5] The rules would allow limited exemptions on chemical disclosure for “legitimate trade secrets.”[6]
In January 2013, the Interior Department restarted the process, announcing it was drafting a new proposal. The new language incorporated several industry requests, including: exempting acidizing, a process similar to fracturing that is used in California's Monterey Shale; making it easier to withhold fracturing fluid ingredients as trade secrets; and adopting the industry-backed FracFocus website for disclosure of chemicals. According to an EnergyWire review of White House visitor records, President Obama's top energy adviser Heather Zichal met more than 20 times in 2012 with industry groups and company executives lobbying on the proposed BLM rule, including the American Petroleum Institute (API), BP, Devon Energy, and ExxonMobil.[7]
Legal challenges
Talladega National Forest
In April 2012, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and other groups contested a planned June 2012 lease sale involving more than 43,000 acres (totaling 36 parcels) of national forestland in Alabama, saying the Bureau of Land Management failed to properly evaluate the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing to sensitive wildlife and water quality. The lease would cover 42,965 acres of industry-nominated parcels in the Talladega National Forest in east-central Alabama, and 73 acres in Conecuh National Forest in south Alabama.[8]
SELC argued in its complaint that the lease of these parcels for oil and gas development would violate multiple federal laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, and that drilling would result in significant impacts to the federally threatened wildlife, as well as to various waterways. Specifically, the SELC states that BLM's decision to authorize the lease sale is incorrectly based on environmental studies and analysis that the Forest Service used in 2004 to revise the Land and Resource Management Plan for Alabama's national forests, saying those studies are out of date and do not evaluate the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing. SELC wants BLM to withdraw the 36 Alabama national forest parcels until an in-depth environmental impact statement is conducted.[8]
The Alabama lease parcels are part of a much broader multistate oil and gas lease sale planned for June 14 covering more than 92,000 acres of federal land in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The SELC protest involves only the 36 parcels in the Talladega and Conecuh national forests in Alabama. Industry interest in the region appears to be on shale gas in the Black Warrior Shale Basin beneath Talladega National Forest. The Energy Information Administration has identified a number of active and potential areas in the area for shale drilling, which typically involves fracking.[8]
BLM spokesperson Davida Carnahan said the lease sale is still scheduled to take place and that a decision on the protest letter likely won't be made until after the sale.[8]
Bans
In 2011, officials at Virginia’s George Washington Forest proposed banning any future horizontal drilling in the forest.[9]
Reports
- "National Parks and Hydraulic Fracturing: Balancing Energy Needs, Nature, and America’s National Heritage," National Parks Conservation Association, April 2013.
Resources
References
- ↑ Juliet Eilperin, "Forest lands in the East attract oil and gas bidders, but some question rush," The Washington Post, June 8, 2012.
- ↑ Juliet Eilperin, "Forest lands in the East attract oil and gas bidders, but some question rush," The Washington Post, June 8, 2012.
- ↑ "EPA's Fracking Rules Cover Only A Sliver Of Land" Huffington Post, Lena Groeger, May 9, 2012.
- ↑ "Obama proposes fracking companies disclose chemicals" Wendy Koch, USA Today, May 4, 2012.
- ↑ "Administration issues new fracking rules" Neela Banerjee, Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2012.
- ↑ Mark Drajem and Katarzyna Klimasinska, "Fracking Rules on U.S. Lands Seen by Interior as Model," Bloomberg, Feb. 2, 2012.
- ↑ Mike Soraghan "White House huddled with industry before changes to BLM fracking rule," E&E, April 12, 2013.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Scott Streater, "OIL AND GAS: Enviros challenge BLM lease sale inside Ala. national forestland," E&E reporter, April 19, 2012.
- ↑ Juliet Eilperin, "Forest lands in the East attract oil and gas bidders, but some question rush," The Washington Post, June 8, 2012.
Related SourceWatch articles
For state-by-state information on fracking, click on the map below.
External links
- FracTracker
- Oil and Gas Management Compliance, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Office of Oil and Gas Management interactive database
- FRAC: Fracking Regulatory Action Center, Sierra Club
- Fraccidents Map
- Timeline: How We Learned to Love—and Hate—Natural Gas, Mother Jones, 2012.
- Hydraulic Fracturing Case Chart and Litigation Tracker, Arnold and Porter, 2012.
