7/25/2017

Rail News: Federal Legislation & Regulation

President Donald Trump's administration today officially filed its proposal to rescind an Obama-era regulation that governs hydraulic fracturing on federal and tribal land.



The Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) proposal to repeal the regulations of "fracking" was published today in the Federal Register. President Barack Obama's administration implemented the rule in 2015 to set standards in areas such as the disclosure of chemicals used by the oil and gas industry in the fracking process.



"The BLM is now proposing to rescind the 2015 final rule because we believe it is unnecessarily duplicative of state and some tribal regulations and imposes burdensome reporting requirements and other unjustified costs on the oil and gas industry," the bureau stated in today's post in the Federal Register.



The proposed rule would return the regulations to the language that was in place prior to the 2015 rule's publication, the BLM stated.



In March, Trump issued an executive order calling on his administration to review certain rules governing the energy industry. The 2015 fracking rule was among those rules.



The BLM is soliciting public comment on the proposal for the next 60 days.