Interior Secretary Ken Salazar

The Interior Department is within weeks of releasing new regulations for drilling for natural gas on federal lands, according to statements made by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a breakfast event  for reporters hosted today by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, DC.  A report by the Monitor quotes Salazar as saying, “Hydraulic fracking is very much a necessary part of the future of natural gas….and can be done in a safe way, in an environmentally responsible way, and in a way that doesn’t create all of the concerns that it is creating across the country right now.”

A Greenwire story on the event stated that several news outlets reported that Salazar intimated that the new rules may include more than simply chemical disclosure. “We may be a month or so out before we actually put the specifics of it out”, Salazar said.