Nov 20, 2013 IPAA Applauds U.S. House of Representatives’ Passage of Important American Energy Production Legislation
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, America’s oil and natural gas producers applauded the U.S. House of Representatives for passing two energy bills that not only protect successful state regulatory programs and the environment, but also ensure the nation’s energy sector continues its historic growth.
H.R. 2728, the Protecting States’ Rights to Promote American Energy Security Act, was approved to address a new Interior Department proposed rule that would increase federal regulations for oil and natural gas well construction and hydraulic fracturing on federal lands. This rule would undercut states’ authority to regulate energy production, a realm in which they have been successful for decades.
“This legislation, H.R. 2728, safeguards natural gas and oil development on federal lands by empowering states to regulate energy development, as they have been doing safely and responsibly. The long history of effective state regulation demonstrates that a one-size-fits-all federal requirement is unnecessary and will not increase environmental protection,” said Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) President and CEO Barry Russell.
IPAA represents more than 10,000 American oil and natural gas companies that drill 95 percent of the nation’s wells.
In official comments on the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rule, IPAA and the Western Energy Alliance said that the Interior Department’s economic analysis estimates costs of $3,138-5,011 per well for a cumulative cost to industry of $12-20 million. However, a Western Energy Alliance / IPAA study released in July found BLM’s analysis to omit several significant categories of cost to the industry. In reality, the rule would cost $96,913 per well for a cumulative annual cost of $345 million.
Russell continued, “For more than a century, state regulators have done an outstanding job regulating onshore energy development. They have experience both with the environmental issues on the ground and the geology that varies widely within each shale play.”
IPAA also commended passage of H.R. 2850, the EPA Hydraulic Fracturing Improvement Act, which holds the EPA’s hydraulic fracturing study, currently in progress, to basic scientific principles and requires EPA to undergo an objective and rigorous third party review process.
Please click here to see the IPAA / Western Energy Alliance economic analysis on the impacts of the BLM’s hydraulic fracturing rule.
Please click here to read IPAA’s comments on the rule.
From IPAA comments: States are continuously updating their regulations. Of the approved permit applications to drill on federal lands, 98 percent were in seven states. Six of those seven states have updated their regulations, and the seventh (California) issued a regulation addressing operations standards and fluid disclosure in December 2012.
