Obama Administration to Industry: Frac-As-Usual on Public Lands

Briana Mordick, Staff Scientist, San Francisco
With the release of its revised draft rules for hydraulic fracturing, BLM signaled to industry that it's business-as-usual when it comes to oil and gas drilling and fracking on public lands.
And it also signaled to the people who live, go to school, get their drinking water from, and work on or near public lands that they'll be protected by the same outdated, inadequate rules that have been on the books for more than 30 years. Which is to say, they won't really be protected at all.
The impacts are far-reaching. The rules would not only be used to oversee fracking in many of the country's last remaining wild places, but also in places that supply drinking water for millions of Americans, including private wells (when the federal government owns mineral rights below private property) and watersheds that supply drinking water for Washington, D.C., Denver, and parts of California's Monterey, Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. And oil and gas companies have already leased an area of public land larger than the entire state of Florida.
This new proposed draft rule is largely unchanged from a version that was leaked earlier this year. As I and my colleague, Matt McFeeley, blogged then, the leaked draft was even weaker than the proposal released in 2012. The changes between the 2012 proposal and today's release include:

• Limiting the scope of the rule, so that it applies only to hydraulic fracturing and not to other forms of well stimulation, like acidizing - which can pose similar risks.
• Not requiring operators to submit the results of tools that are used to tell how effectively the steel casing and cement are isolating drinking water, called cement evaluation logs (CELs), until *after* the well is drilled and fractured, or in some cases not requiring them to even use these tools in the first place. This defeats the purpose of CELs, which are used to identify and fix any problems with the well that may endanger drinking water *before* fracturing begins.
• Allowing operators to submit generic, rather than well-specific, information to receive multiple permits to frac. This means that regulators will be making decisions to issue permits without critical information about drilling and fracturing operations, and therefore without a complete understanding of the environmental risks.
• Gutting chemical disclosure requirements by allowing industry to continue to keep the identity of some fracturing chemicals a secret from both regulators and the public, thereby preventing them from fully understanding the risks to the environment and human health.

However, this new draft also contains some potentially problematic changes that didn't appear in the leaked draft. One such change is a significantly revised "variance" provision, through which big chunks of State or Tribal lands that overlie federal minerals could be exempt from parts or all of these new rules, as long as the State or Tribe has or proposes rules that the BLM claims, "meets or exceeds the objectives" of the BLM rules. This could mean that not all public lands are provided the same level of environmental protection.
Finally, as we feared, the scope of the draft rules remains unchanged, meaning that entire categories of regulation critical to reducing environmental risk, like well design and construction and waste water handling, will likely not be updated at all.
We will continue to analyze these new changes and the possible implications in the coming weeks.
But one thing is clear: It's business-as-usual on public lands, both for the oil and gas industry and for the American people who must live with its impacts.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/bmordick/obama_administration_to_ind

Obama Administration Energy Blueprint: paying companies to drill

Amy Mall, Senior Policy Analyst, Washington, D.C.
Last week the Obama Administration issued a new Energy Blueprint. There are some excellent elements in the White House proposal, including doubling renewable electricity generation by 2020, cutting energy waste, and supporting energy efficiency.
But there are also dirty and depressing energy proposals in the plan. Among them: "monetary incentives to get oil and gas leases into production." We haven't seen details on this yet, and need to learn more, but the oil and gas industry doesn't need more giveaways from the taxpayers.
In FY 2012, the BLM leased more than 1.75 million acres of federal oil and gas resources. That is in one year alone. So far in FY 2013, it has already has seven more lease sales across the country. This administration is already moving full speed ahead with dirty oil and gas leasing.
As I recently blogged, the BLM's own internal investigation found that the agency is unable to properly inspect oil and gas activities or enforce its own rules on the current leased areas. This investigation found a lack of enforcement, inadequate inspections, and overall low-quality environmental review as office struggle to keep up with exploration and production activity.
And as my colleagues have blogged, while BLM is going to be proposing new rules for fracking under federal leases, the rules may be much too weak to protect America's drinking water. As the largest manager of oil and gas resources in the U.S., the BLM needs to do better.
A new energy plan is needed, but the focus should be on efficiency and renewables so we can have a clean energy future, with clean air and clean water. America doesn't want the oil and gas industry's dirty energy future. The administration plan also includes an electronic, streamlined oil and gas permitting system; modernization is welcome, but any streamlining of permitting should not shortcut the necessary environmental review.
If you'd like to know where all this new oil and gas leasing is taking place, our intern Cathy Lu made a great map to show how many acres were leased in each state in FY 2012 alone:

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amall/wh_energy_blueprint.htm

Reviewing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline: The more we learn, the worse it looks

Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, Director International Program, Washington, D.C.
The State Department released its draft environmental review of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would take tar sands from Canada to the US Gulf Coast for export. Past reviews severely underestimated the very serious harm to our climate, health, communities and water from the Keystone XL pipeline and expansion of tar sands extraction and refining. Unfortunately, this draft review is no different. My colleague Anthony Swift has already outlined here, the five necessary ingredients for an environmental review of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. As my colleague Danielle Droitsch writes here, the State Department review misses the mark on all five.
This draft environmental review fails our climate, our communities, our waters and our health. At several key moments over the past months - election night, his Inauguration Address, and the State of the Union, President Obama has responded to widespread public concerns about the need to fight climate change with strong words calling for action. Action to fight climate change must include stopping dirty projects as well as putting clean energy alternatives into place. It is time for the US to draw a line and say no to dirty energy projects starting with the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
Yet, this draft review makes the same mistake as earlier reviews of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. It fails to acknowledge that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will drive expansion of the tar sands. With alternative pipeline proposals to the west and east coasts stalled due to public opposition and rail such a high cost option, Keystone XL remains the gateway to the higher prices of overseas markets for expensive tar sands. NRDC has analyzed the ways in which the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will make climate change worse.
What we already know from existing analysis is that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in our national interest. The pipeline means worsening climate change. Piping it through the US heartland would put our ranchers and farmers at risk from difficult to clean up oil spills. And sending it to the Gulf Coast only makes our country a dirty oil gateway to overseas markets. This is a project where multi-national oil companies reap in the benefits while US communities take the risks.
We'll continue taking a hard look at this draft environmental review. And we know that the many people across the US and Canada who are concerned with tar sands expansion and the Keystone XL pipeline project will be weighing in to make their voices heard. A draft environmental review is just the first step in the process to assess this project and to determine if it is in the national interest. During the next step, the public can make its voice known. We are still far from a decision on this project and it would be premature to mistake a draft environmental review for the end of the process.
This post was updated by the author.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/sclefkowitz/reviewing_the_keystone_x

Even Kids Get It: End Mountaintop Removal Now

Melissa Waage, Campaign Director, Washington, DC
Today our friends at Appalachian Voices present kids in Appalachia explaining why mountaintop removal mining is a disaster for people and the environment. (Blowing up mountains and dumping mine waste into streams is not a good idea: so simple a child can understand it.) They're asking the Obama administration to end mountaintop removal mining right away and support economic transition for Appalachian communities, here.
Departing Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson once said of mountaintop removal, "The people of Appalachia shouldn't have to choose between a clean, healthy environment in which to raise their families and the jobs they need to support them." In his second term, the president has a chance to show that this is true by getting serious about ending mountaintop removal.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mwaage/even_kids_get_it_end_mountain