A 2005 National Energy Policy Act (NEPACT) provision designed to facilitate onshore drilling permit processing remains a target of advocates for far-reaching US oil and gas leasing reforms.
NEPACT's Section 390 authorizes the US Bureau of Land Management's use of categorical exclusions (CXs) to streamline environmental analysis of onshore drilling permit applications in certain instances. Congressional and other critics charge that it has been used to bypass the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
They point to a Sept. 15 Government Accountability Office report that found BLM's use of the provision "has frequently been out of compliance with both the law and BLM's guidance."
It noted violations that included approving more than one well under a single decision document, approving projects inconsistent with the law's criteria, and drilling a new well after time frames had elapsed.
GAO also found cases, in 85% of the BLM field offices it studied, where officials did not follow guidance, most often by failing to adequately justify a CX's use.
Lack of guidance
It blamed a lack of clear guidance and oversight for the violations. "While many of these are technical in nature, others are more significant and may have thwarted NEPA's twin aims of ensuring that BLM and the public are fully informed of the environmental consequences," GAO said.
The report's release as the House Natural Resources Committee began hearings on chairman Nick J. Rahall's (D-W.Va.) bill to dramatically reform federal minerals management policies also produced a response from one western state's governor.
"On one hand, we heard that the land use plans should not be detailed because the details would be worked out in the project-level analysis. With the passage of these categorical exclusions, we were told that the project-level analysis would not be done in favor of using categorical exclusions, relying on the land use plan level analysis they told us we didn't need in the first place," Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming said on Sept 17.
'Not discretionary'
But the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States said on Oct. 1 that GAO's report also cites instances where BLM officials should have used CXs, but didn't.
"CXs are not discretionary. GAO found many examples where BLM failed to use them, highlighting their cautious and overly conservative use," said Kathleen Sgamma, IPAMS government affairs director. "We would be very interested in seeing the data on cases where CXs were not used, even when all criteria were met."
GAO's report actually provides reasonable recommendations for BLM to exercise CX oversight, Sgamma added.
"In fact, it details mostly administrative errors, not major violations of the law. Careful analysis of the report sample shows just a 6.7% rate of errors resulting in a violation. That number can be brought close to zero if BLM implements GAO's oversight recommendations," she said.
More Oil & Gas Journal Current Issue Articles
More Oil & Gas Journal Archives Issue Articles
