The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is attempting to convince the Denver federal appeals court to overturn a decision that brought the agency’s fracking rules to a screeching halt last year in Wyoming.
It is the case where the states of Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota and Utah and the Western Energy Alliance sued the BLM to stop the agency from implementing frack rules on oil and gas drillers. This week, the BLM filed an opening brief with the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, stating that a Wyoming judge was wrong in staying the rules last year.
“Because Congress has never excluded hydraulic fracturing from BLM expressly delegated authority, the district court erred,” wrote the federal lawyers. “Substantial scientific and technical evidence in the record supports BLM’s expert conclusion that today’s greatly expanded hydraulic-fracturing operations pose a risk to groundwater, especially if well casings are inadequately designed or constructed.”
The Wyoming judge who ruled against the BLM said Congress had not granted or delegated to the BLM, the authority to regulate fracking.
“I suspect the intiial strong ruling by the judge in our favor is what’s causing the government to act in a perplexing manner,” said Kathleen Sgamma, vice president for government and public affairs at the Western Energy Alliance in an interview with The Daily Caller.
She said it’s clear the Department of Justice is not used to getting such a strong ruling from a federal judge, who she noted, was appointed by President Obama. Sgamma told the newspaper she thinks the federal government’s wasting its time with legal maneuvering.
“The appeal briefing continues to assert BLM can regulate without demonstrating a need for the rule, an argument that has already fallen flat with the court.”
