Blm

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Montana has postponed a Jan. 26 oil and natural gas lease sale in Billings, MT, the third time since November the agency has delayed an auction (see Daily GPI, Dec. 7, 2015; Nov. 17, 2015).

Fifteen members of the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday wrote the Department of Interior (DOI), urging that its Bureau of Land Management (BLM) move its quarterly oil and natural gas lease sales to the Internet. Currently they are conducted face-to-face in BLM field offices.

For the second time in less than a month, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has postponed an oil and gas lease sale, this time for parcels in Arkansas and Michigan.

Seeking to build on the momentum from the Obama administration’s decision to oppose the Keystone XL oil pipeline, environmental groups on Monday sought to intervene and cancel an oil and gas lease sale in Colorado scheduled for Thursday by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Judging from the tenor and content of the comments that have been filed on the revised hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rule, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) may have to go back to the drawing board on the draft rule for a third time.

The Wyoming congressional delegation Monday asked Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to exempt Wyoming and other western states currently regulating hydraulic fracturing (fracking) from the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) final rule on the practice, saying not to do so would delay permitting and discourage production on public land.

After meeting with regional officials from the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Denver on Wednesday, North Dakota’s chief regulator for oil and natural gas production, Lynn Helms, said he is convinced that there will be BLM rules covering hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on federal lands (seeShale Daily,May 17).

Under a settlement of a pending court case, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office in northwestern Colorado has agreed to reevaluate air quality impacts on 34 authorized, but not yet permitted, oil and natural gas drilling projects in the western part of the state.