Land

Pennsylvania Republican Gov. Tom Corbett could soon issue an executive order to lift a nearly four-year moratorium on new oil and gas leases in state parks and forests that would continue to bar new leases for surface operations, but offer operators access to the mineral rights under state land from wells on adjoining private land.

Range Resources Corp. and EQT Corp. were given the go-ahead to drill under 135 acres of land on Thursday after the Washington County, PA Commissioners unanimously approved a permit for the land which sits beneath the Washington County Airport.

A coalition of seven conservation groups has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) allocation of more than 800,000 acres of federal lands in three western states to potential oil shale and tar sands development.

Federal and state officials concede there was a “miscommunication” between them over plans by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to put more than 4,000 acres of a state forest in Ohio up for oil and gas leasing, and the sale has been put on hold.

Continuing to fetch higher per-acre prices, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) took in $49.8 million last Wednesday, selling 87 leases totaling 19,015 acres in North and South Dakota, the BLM Billings, MT, office said. South Dakota had the most activity.

Chesapeake Energy Corp., the mega-operator that Aubrey McClendon built shale-by-shale, is being repurposed brick-by-brick as the company transitions from risky exploration to steady production.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management has made some concessions in its latest draft rule issued Thursday to avoid duplication of the states’ and tribal requirements for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on public lands (see Daily GPI, May 17).

Calling them a common sense approach that will complement state efforts, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials Thursday unveiled revised draft rules for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on all federal and Indian lands. The draft rules will now go through a 30-day public comment period.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has postponed a lease sale in California that was scheduled for May 22 due to budget constraints, a shift in priorities to inspection and enforcement of existing leases, and processing of new applications for permits to drill. This was the only lease sale that the agency had proposed in the state for the remainder of the fiscal year.