The Bureau of Land Management is asking the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver not to overturn or even consider its ruling against the challenge of four states to the Obama-era hydraulic fracturing rule on federal and Native American lands.
It was in September when a three-judge panel rejected the challenges of Wyoming and Colorado, the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Western Energy Alliance as well as the Ute Indian Tribe. The states and other groups had filed suit contending the BLM’s original fracking rules exceeded the agency’s statutory authority and called them “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”
The BLM filed a brief on Monday in the appeals court trying to make a case to uphold the September ruling that overturned a lower court’s decision in Wyoming. The original ruling had been appealed by several groups including Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, Earthworks, Western resource Advocates, the Wilderness Society, Conservation Colorado Education Fund and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
The rules were originally intended to take effect in June 2015. A U.S. District judge in Wyoming set the rules aside a year later.