House Speaker John Boehner promised Friday Republicans will “do all we can” fight Obama’s new regulations on fracking, reports The Hill.
“The Obama administration is so eager to appease radical environmentalists that it is regulating a process that is already properly regulated,” Boehner said.
Republican Sen. James Inhofe, senior member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, believes the new regulations will simply add “a new layer of top-down bureaucratic regulation that duplicates what is already being done effectively by the states.”
The standards focus on better well construction to minimize water contamination, but many see them as a brake on the oil and gas boom fueling the economy and energy security.
The Hill also reports that the oil and gas industry is filing a lawsuit against the new rules. Both the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Western Energy Alliance claim the new regulations lack “the factual, scientific or engineering evidence necessary to justify them.”
Barry Russell, president of IPAA, mentions that fracking has been done safely for the past 60 years and that these new rules “will add burdensome new costs on our independent producers, taking investments away from developing new American-made energy, much-needed job creation and economic growth.”
Tim Wigley of WEA agrees with Inhofe that the Bureau of Land Management “should be delegating more to the states in recognition of their exemplary environmental and safety records.“
