Bureau

Questar Corp. said Tuesday a ruling by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will allow it to produce an additional 8 Bcf of gas next year from its Pinedale Anticline leasehold in western Wyoming. That’s enough gas to heat about 96,000 average American homes for one year.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is considering a proposal by several producers, including Anschultz, Shell Oil Co. and Ultra Petroleum Corp., to allow year-round drilling access in the Pinedale Anticline natural gas field of Wyoming. The 15- to 18-year operational proposal is focused on about 197,000 acres of mixed federal, state and private land south of Pinedale.

In response to the newly enacted energy bill, Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plans to put on hold portions of proposed regulations that would have allowed it to implement fees to recover costs associated with oil, natural gas and geothermal leasing, including the processing of oil and gas applications for permits to drill (APDs) and geothermal permits to drill (GPDs).

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) budget and the number of drilling permits processed both have increased, but the volume of protests against land development has far outstripped those gains, Rebecca Watson, assistant secretary of the Interior for land and minerals management, said in a speech to western producers.

Independent producers lambasted the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) plan to raise drilling fees and impose new permitting charges, saying it would increase consumer gas costs.

A dramatic increase in oil and natural gas development on federal lands over the past six years has stretched the staff of Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to a point that it has been unable to meet its environmental protection responsibilities, according to a new report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last Thursday.

A dramatic increase in oil and natural gas development on federal lands over the past six years has stretched the staff of Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to a point that it has been unable to meet its environmental protection responsibilities, according to a new report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Thursday.

Less than a week after the Passamaquoddy Native American tribe in Maine received approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to lease land to Quoddy Bay LLC for construction of a $200 million LNG terminal at Split Rock (see Daily GPI, May 23), a new competing Maine LNG project was announced for construction about 10 miles away in the Washington County town of Robbinston

The Eastern States division of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) reported Monday that 45 parcels of federal subsurface mineral estate brought in $677,000 through a competitive auction of oil and gas leases on the Ouachita and Ozark National Forests in Arkansas, the DeSoto, Homochitto and Tombigbee National Forests in Mississippi and the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia.