The Interior Department is within weeks of releasing new regulations for drilling for natural gas on federal lands, according to statements made by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a breakfast event for reporters hosted today by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, DC. A report by the Monitor quotes Salazar as saying, “Hydraulic fracking is very much a necessary part of the future of natural gas….and can be done in a safe way, in an environmentally responsible way, and in a way that doesn’t create all of the concerns that it is creating across the country right now.”
A Greenwire story on the event stated that several news outlets reported that Salazar intimated that the new rules may include more than simply chemical disclosure. “We may be a month or so out before we actually put the specifics of it out”, Salazar said.