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.

Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) is one of the 32 congressional representatives who comprise the bipartisan Natural Gas Caucus.  Capito and her Caucus colleagues signed a Jan. 5th letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar indicating opposition to regulation of the natural gas industry being considered by the Department of the Interior.  One of the arguments in the letter is that the industry is “properly managed and regulated at the state level”.  An analysis of campaign contributions showed that in total the 32 members of this group of reps received $1,742,572 from the gas industry.  Shelley Moore Capito received $49,900 from the gas industry in campaign contributions.

Pro Publica reports that a week later, 46 House Democrats followed up by signing a letter to Salazar urging him to at least adopt the disclosure requirement (for fracking chemicals used in wells on federal lands)because, as Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., said, “communities across America have seen their water contaminated by the chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process.”

“The public has a right to know what toxins might be going into the ground near their communities, and what might be leaking into their drinking water,” said the letter, which was sent by the three initial sponsors of now-stalled legislation to regulate fracturing (Frac Act), Hinchey, Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., and Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo.

Pro Publica story: Opponents to Fracking Disclosure Take Big Money from Industry