The federal government is the 800-pound gorilla of land usage. With mineral rights of over 700 million acres, the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is the largest landowner in the country, so when it speaks, anyone with a vested interest in land use is wise to listen carefully.
The BLM has recently spoken with a revised proposal to regulate how hydraulic fracturing is to be performed on federal and Indian-owned land. Put into perspective, land under the jurisdiction of this proposal represents 13 percent of current domestic natural gas production. With stakes so large, it should surprise nobody that the energy industry thinks new regulations are unnecessary while environmentalists say they don’t go far enough.