The US Department of Interior on Thursday extended the comments deadline for a proposed rule governing hydraulic fracturing on public lands by an additional 60 days after industry groups protested the original 30-day comment window.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced the extension during testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. She said that a request for more time was "one of the consistent things I've heard" since the revised proposal was announced on May 16.
She said a 60-day extension "will give ample time for people to express their views on it, but we do need to get on with this regulation that's been over 30 years in place and technology has moved forward."
Interior's Bureau of Land Management had originally proposed a rule governing hydraulic fracturing on federal and Indian lands in 2012, but delayed any further action after receiving 177,000 comments.
The revised version proposed in May was more flexible than the original, bowing to industry requests not to duplicate existing state regulations.
The proposal defers to states that already have rules in place that exceed the new federal standards such as Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota, and Texas.
The rule still requires disclosure of chemicals used in fracking, but will allow operators to submit affidavits requesting that those chemical cocktails remain confidential as trade secrets. The rule also allows operators, in some cases, to report chemicals through the online database FracFocus.org.
The rule also gives operators more flexibility in choosing the methods used to prove well integrity.
