Salazar: Natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing rules on way soon

The Obama administration is poised to swiftly advance plans to stiffen standards governing natural gas drilling on federal lands, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said today. A rule that would impose new standards on shale gas extraction from public lands “is still in formation,” Salazar told reporters. “We’re maybe a month or so out before we actually put the specifics out.” The Interior Department last year launched a broad review of whether it needed to step up its oversight of natural gas drilling on the roughly 700 million acres of public land under the federal government’s control. Salazar and other administration officials have signaled that they are likely to require oil and gas companies to disclose what chemicals they use when hydraulically fracturing wells. The hydraulic fracturing process involves blasting a mix of water, sand and some chemicals underground and at high pressures to unlock natural gas trapped in dense shale formations. But Salazar said fear about that process jeopardizes public support for natural gas, an essential part of the U.S. energy portfolio...more