Two US agencies regulating onshore oil and gas activities on federal land proposed changes that they said would improve drilling-permit application processing while protecting private surface owners and public lands.
The Department of the Interior ’s Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service, which is part of the Department of the Agriculture, said the proposed changes would update and revise regulations in a document known as Onshore Oil and Gas Order No. 1.
“The proposed onshore order establishes common procedures for obtaining drilling permits from either the Forest Service or the BLM,” Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said. He said it was part of efforts by the agencies to improve service to users of lands they administer.
The existing onshore oil and gas order has not been updated since November 1983.
“These changes are necessary to ensure that we protect the rights of surface owners and improve the health and productivity of America’s public lands,” BLM Director Kathleen Clarke said.
The proposal would establish a new approval process for multiple oil and gas wells, the agencies said in a joint release. The process, called a Master Development Plan, would enable several related drilling permit applications to be considered in a single environmental analysis.
The agencies expect this approach, with its more efficient review process, to lead to better oil and gas development planning.
The proposal also would encourage producers to use “best management practices” in developing their drilling permit applications.
These practices, the agencies explained, include drilling several wells from a single pad; establishing buffer zones to protect wildlife; painting structures and machinery to match vegetation; burying power lines and pipelines under or adjacent to access roads; and using technology to monitor production from an off-site location to minimize travel to and from the wellsite.
The proposal also would clarify BLM’s authority to require bonding for off-lease facilities, such as impoundment ponds to hold water produced from coalbed methane development, that are needed to develop a lease.
Such bonding, authorized by a 1987 federal oil and gas law, would fund restoration of any off-lease land or water affected by oil and gas activity on federal leases, the agencies said.
The proposal also aims to protect the rights of private owners on split-estate lands, where they own the surface while the federal government owns the subsurface minerals.
It would require oil and gas leaseholders to make a good-faith effort to reach an access agreement with surface owners. If an agreement could not be reached, producers would be required to obtain a bond to ensure compensation for certain economic losses as specified by law.
Comments on the proposal are due by Aug. 26. ✦