Emblem of Bureau of Land Management
Our state Legislature could take a page or two from the federal playbook on shale gas regulation on public lands. The 3 and 1/2 pages of rules proposed by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management require measures which industry should be employing routinely in the course of best industry practices. EE News reports in Greenwire on Jan 6:
The proposed rule, sped up when President Obama decided to mention it in his State of the Union address last month….. It is expected to go to the Office of Management and Budget for review later this month.
The rules would require:
- the revelation of chemicals used in fracking
- Cement Bond Logs to prove that usable water has been isolated to protect them from contamination
- documentation showing that certain safeguards were performed during well casing construction to ensure integrity of the casing
- prior to well stimulation, a successful Mechanical Integrity Test (MIT) of the casing
- during well stimulation, operator must monitor and record the annulus pressure at the bradenhead
- report sources of water and total volume of fluid used
- storage of all recovered fluids in tanks or lined pits; additional measures may be required to protect wildlife.
- proposed disposal method of fluids
It is clear that the engineering homework was done in developing these rules. I am seeing the same technical language regarding bradenhead pressures that is also found in laws that have been passed or are proposed in Western states such as Colorado that have had experience with what can go wrong in shale drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
West Virginia legislators would be wise to assign a task force to visit with their counterparts in Western states to get up to speed on the kind of laws that are needed to protect public health.
Pull the string on the industry doll baby and you’ll hear the familiar whine about federal regulation “The damaging effects that these new rules will have on job creation and robust domestic energy development cannot be overstated,” said Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research. IER. Research? Forget the fancy name …Dory Hippauf”s meticulous Connecting the Dots dissection of the web of personnel and money connections in the gas industry has already identified IER as an industry mouthpiece. It’s president is not a researcher; Pyle is a spin doctor.
It is well-recognized that the states’ regulatory bodies (Department of Environmental Protection) are not well suited to serve as guardians of the environment because of their dual and contradictory roles as regulators and promoters of industry. Thus it is understandable that industry insists that the feds not interfere with their plans to convert our national playgrounds into their shale play grounds in a manner consistent with maximizing profits, unobstructed by ‘burdensome’ requirements to take measures to protect public health. DJF
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