Public

Deep divisions and a litany of concerns were laid bare at a hearing in rural Washington County, PA, on Wednesday, where roughly 200 people attended to hear about the state Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) latest revisions to a proposed package of oil and gas regulations.

Deep divisions and a litany of concerns were laid bare at a hearing in rural Washington County, PA, on Wednesday, where roughly 200 people attended to hear about the state Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) latest revisions to a proposed package of oil and gas regulations.

The Department of Interior (DOI) will release a final rule governing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on public lands within days, and it is months away from unveiling standards designed to cut methane emissions from drilling on public lands as well, according to Secretary Sally Jewell.

The two organizations that jointly run FracFocus.org, the national registry that provides the public with a list of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking), said several improvements will be made to the system this year.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said at the end of January it had begun the public scoping period for a proposed natural gas drilling project on federal lands in Duchesne County in northeast Utah, part of the Uinta Basin.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) released the results of what it believes to be “the most comprehensive radiological study of the oil and gas industry ever conducted,” finding in most cases that the radioactivity of shale rock is of little danger to the public and workers.

More than 3,700 onshore drilling permits were approved in fiscal 2014 (FY2014) by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), on par with 2013, and “half-again as many authorizations” than the industry used to drill on public lands last year, federal officials said Tuesday.

As the Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) email scandal continues to unfold, a California regulator on Wednesday blasted allegations that he was more chummy with a PG&E executive than had previously been disclosed.

A former top official at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) says the issue of induced seismicity related to oil and natural gas activity is not going away anytime soon, and he urged both the industry and state regulators to work to ease public concern and prevent future incidents.