API Says Reform Needed for Hydraulic Fracturing Permitting Process (USA)

API’s President and CEO Jack Gerard told reporters yesterday that the states have demonstrated competency, efficiency and expertise in regulating hydraulic fracturing in oil and natural gas development, raising a fundamental question about the need for the Bureau of Land Management’s own proposed regulations:

“The shale revolution is changing the face of American energy development. It’s boosting domestic oil and natural gas production, putting hundreds of thousands of people to work, and delivering added billions in revenue to state and federal government. It’s also strengthening our nation’s energy security and reducing our trade deficit. But it could do even more.

“How much more will depend in part on government regulations – and, in particular, on BLM’s newly proposed hydraulic fracturing rules. Unfortunately, the rules are headed in the wrong direction. They would create superfluous, costly requirements, threatening jobs, revenue and energy production while providing little or no environmental or safety benefit.

“One must ask, where is the need?

“What we need more than new federal rules is reform of the permitting process. It takes 14 days to get a drilling permit to work on private land in North Dakota. It takes more than half a year on average to get a federal drilling permit for development on federal lands. A report by SWCA Environmental Consultants concluded that lengthy delays by BLM in reviewing projects in Wyoming put the development of an estimated 17,000 wells on hold. Address these delays and fix this process – and let the states continue to handle the regulation of hydraulic fraction which they’ve shown they know how to do very well.”

API represents more than 500 oil and natural gas companies, leaders of a technology-driven industry that supplies most of America’s energy, supports 9.2 million U.S. jobs and 7.7 percent of the U.S. economy, delivers more than $86 million a day in revenue to our government, and, since 2000, has invested more than $2 trillion in U.S. capital projects to advance all forms of energy, including alternatives.

[mappress]
LNG World News Staff, May 10, 2012