{"id":4953,"date":"2017-08-12T08:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-08-12T14:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/?p=4953"},"modified":"2024-09-23T22:46:54","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T04:46:54","slug":"western-leaders-applaud-interiors-rollback-obama-era-methane-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/western-leaders-applaud-interiors-rollback-obama-era-methane-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"Western leaders applaud Interior’s rollback of Obama-era methane rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2014 Published with Permission of WesternWire.net \u2014<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

“[T]he BLM believes that the 2015 final rule unnecessarily burdens industry with compliance costs and information requirements that are duplicative of regulatory programs of many states and some tribes,” agency officials\u00a0wrote<\/a>. “As a result, we are proposing to rescind, in its entirety, the 2015 final rule.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Western officials are applauding the Bureau of Land Management’s\u00a0plan<\/a>\u00a0to withdraw and rewrite\u00a0an Obama administration rule<\/a>\u00a0aimed at limiting<\/a> hydraulic fracturing on public lands.<\/p>\n

“The Obama-era BLM fracking rule is unnecessary and burdensome\u2014costing the oil and gas industry over $32 million annually,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a statement to\u00a0Western Wire<\/em>. “Each state has their own laws regulating energy production, to meet their own specific needs and address new and changing technology.”<\/p>\n

The\u00a0rule<\/a>, which would have added federal requirements to oil and natural gas development to existing state regulations, is challenged in court by the attorneys general of\u00a0Colorado<\/a>,\u00a0Wyoming<\/a>,\u00a0Utah<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0North Dakota<\/a>, the\u00a0Ute Indian Tribe<\/a>, the\u00a0Independent Petroleum Association of America<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Western Energy Alliance<\/a>, a supporter of\u00a0Western Wire<\/em>. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for Thursday in Denver.<\/p>\n

Mark Barron, a Denver-based Baker Hostetler attorney representing industry groups in the pending litigation,\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0the agency’s proposal is “consistent with what the industry petitioners have been saying all along: that the 2015 version of the rule did not provide any incremental environmental protection and was just a meaningless imposition of costs on industry.”<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0proposal<\/a>\u00a0published in the\u00a0Federal Register\u00a0<\/em>yesterday, the BLM noted that complying with the rule would have cost the oil and natural gas approximately $32 million to $43 million per year.<\/p>\n

“[T]he BLM believes that the 2015 final rule unnecessarily burdens industry with compliance costs and information requirements that are duplicative of regulatory programs of many states and some tribes,” agency officials\u00a0wrote<\/a>. “As a result, we are proposing to rescind, in its entirety, the 2015 final rule.”<\/p>\n

Lawmakers across the West, including the\u00a0Congressional Western Caucus<\/a>, have claimed the agency’s decision as a win for their states, emphasizing that the practice of hydraulic fracturing, essential for oil and natural gas development today, is already regulated at the state level.<\/p>\n

“The Obama Administration continuously pandered to extremist groups, enacting senseless regulations which were not based on science that punished job creators in the process,” Caucus Chairman Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.)\u00a0said<\/a>. “BLM’s duplicative fracking rule was no exception. Scrapping this unnecessary Washington mandate is a major victory for the West and something Western Caucus members have been leading the charge on for years.”<\/p>\n

“This is a major victory for New Mexico and other western states that were targeted by this job-killing regulation,” Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.)\u00a0said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Interior Department’s decision on the rule is part of its response to a March\u00a0executive order<\/a>\u00a0directing the agency to “review existing regulations that potentially burden the development or use of domestically produced energy resources” and to recommend suspending, revising, or rescinding those that “unduly burden the development of domestic energy resources beyond the degree necessary to protect the public interest or otherwise comply with the law.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2014 Published with Permission of WesternWire.net \u2014 “[T]he BLM believes that the 2015 final rule unnecessarily burdens industry with compliance costs and information requirements that are duplicative of regulatory programs of many states and some tribes,” agency officials\u00a0wrote. “As a result, we are proposing to rescind, in its entirety, the 2015 final rule.” Western officials […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":150,"featured_media":4956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[306,8,476,23],"class_list":["post-4953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-blm","tag-federal-lands","tag-fracking","tag-obama","cat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/150"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16435,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4953\/revisions\/16435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}