As promised by Secretary Jewell in March, see previous post, BLM is initiating a rulemaking process– Announcement of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR)– to “solicit public comments and suggestions that may be used to update the BLM’s regulations related to royalty rates, annual rental payments, minimum acceptable bids, bonding requirements, and civil penalty assessments for Federal onshore […]
The Wyoming Historical Society published an interesting piece by Wyoming reporter Dustin Bleizeffer on the history of coalbed methane development in Wyoming, “Coalbed Methane: Boom, Bust and Hard Lessons.” The article covers the boom of the early years of 2000’s and the current bust that has left companies bankrupt and the State addressing the abandoned […]
Last week, the United States Senate passed a largely symbolic budget amendment sponsored by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski (chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee) that “supports” the idea of selling, transferring or trading federally-managed public lands to the states. The idea of western states “taking back” public lands has been around since […]
On March 20, 2015, after considering more than 1.5 million comments, the BLM released its much anticipated fracking rule for oil and gas wells on Federal and Indian lands. More than 90 percent of all wells, including those on Federal and Indian property, are hydraulically fractured by injecting water, sand and chemicals under high pressure […]
On March 17, 2015, Secretary Jewell presented what was billed as a “major speech” to describe her vision of a “balanced prosperous energy future” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Directly tying the U.S. “energy transformation” to the recovered U.S. economy, she noted, “The energy revolution we experienced in the past six years […]
On Tuesday, February 10, 2015, Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed an executive order directing state agencies to implement additional state-level protection measures aimed heading off a potential federal listing of the sage grouse as “threatened” or “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act. Under a settlement reached in 2012, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services have […]
In the 2015 Appropriations Bill (Cromnibus), via a rider, Congress prohibited Interior from writing or issuing any final listing rule under Section 4 of the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) for several species of grouse. It now looks like that action could result in some unintended consequences for the recently listed Gunnison Sage-Grouse, a bird whose […]
In a new twist in the ongoing debate between states and the federal government over the management of wildlife, the Nevada Association of Counties sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”), arguing that the highly publicized and controversial 2011 settlement of a lawsuit between the FWS and environmental groups that forces listing determinations by […]
At the end of September 2014, BLM released the proposed rule to create a competitive leasing process for solar and wind energy development on public lands. While most of the proposed rule relates to the renewable energy right-of-way (“ROW”) procedures under the Federal Land Management Policy Act (“FLPMA”) regulations (43 CFR 2800) announced in 2012, […]
So, what is a Master Leasing Plan anyway?As part of a suite of federal oil and gas leasing reforms introduced by Secretary Salazar in 2010, the BLM introduced the concept of master leasing plans (“MLPs”). The MLP is a federal land use planning tool that allows the BLM to amend a governing resource management plan […]