Draft Final BLM Rules Under White House Review
The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has taken another step towards finalizing updated regulations for hydraulic fracturing on federal and Indian lands, by sending a revised final rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. The revised rule was published in the Federal Register in May 2013. During the subsequent public comment period, BLM received a large number of comments on the rule from both public interest organizations and industry groups. Any revisions will not become public until OMB completes its review and the final rule is published, perhaps by late fall of this year. The rule would apply to hydraulic fracturing operations conducted on the approximately 700 million acres of federal mineral estate and 56 million acres of Indian mineral estate overseen by BLM.