WASHINGTON D.C. — IER President Thomas Pyle released the following statement concerning the proposed federal regulations for hydraulic fracturing announced today by the Department of Interior:
“This regulation places an unnecessary additional burden on American energy producers, and ultimately on energy consumers who will pay for it in the form of higher energy prices. The rule is another power grab by the Obama Administration, which is forever seeking to fix a problem even former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said does not exist. Despite sixty years of safe hydraulic fracturing in more than one million successful wells, the Interior Department will now add another layer of sluggish bureaucracy for everyone seeking to harness the tremendous economic and energy potential on taxpayer-owned federal lands. Already, an unresponsive and often hostile federal government has made these lands all but undesirable for energy exploration amid the greatest boom in oil and gas production increases in U.S. history.
“President Reagan so aptly articulated what can now best be described as the Obama Doctrine: ‘If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.’ At a time when the Interior Department can’t even do its job under existing law, bureaucrats have decided they must involve themselves trying to fix something that isn’t broken.”
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