Western Energy Alliance and IPAA Move to Enjoin New BLM Fracking Rule

BLM’s new fracking rule is scheduled to take effect on June 24, 2015, but the Western Energy Alliance and Independent Petroleum Association of America moved for a preliminary injunction on May 15 to keep that from happening. They allege irreparable harm because the new rule lacks the factual, scientific, or engineering bases to sustain it. “BLM has neither substantiated the existence of problem this rule is meant to address, identified the gap in existing regulations the final rule will fill, or described the objectives the final rule will achieve.” Motion for Preliminary Injunction at 24.

And BLM’s new rule will cost a lot. BLM concedes that the additional cost will be at least $11,400 per well drilled on federal lands, but the Alliance and IPAA assert that the real extra costs per well, depending on particular circumstances, could be:
• $74,400 for using tanks instead of pits for storage of recovered fluids.
• $75,000 to $100,000 for extra mechanical integrity tests.
• More than $100,000 for obtaining more data on total dissolved solids (TDS), or $8,000 to $12,000 per well if sampling is done only on representative wells.
• $111,200 to run a cement evaluation log (this is BLM’s own estimate, but BLM states it will rarely be an additional burden required by the new rule).

Motion at 36, 38, 41, 48. Despite these significant economic burdens, “BLM has no evidence that its costly proposed rule will be any more effective in practice than existing state regulations protecting water and other environmental values.” Motion at 26.

In addition to the additional costs, the new rule would also cause its own negative environmental impacts by requiring greater use of the surface for water tanks. For example, a 150,000-barrel hydraulic fracturing operation may require approximately 2 acres of surface for a single pit, but 325 tanks used to hold the same water would take up almost 5 acres. Motion at 43.

The Alliance and IPAA conclude by arguing that implementation of the new rule should at least be delayed because their members would suffer irreparable harm and there is no urgent reason for the rule to take effect next month. BLM began work on the final rule in November 2010 and “has not identified a single groundwater contamination incident resulting from site preparation, drilling, well construction, completion, hydraulic fracturing stimulation, or production operations that the agency contends its final rules would have prevented.” Motion at 52. What is the rush?