Well, that was worth waiting for!

~ susie

Somehow, I’m not surprised:

On May 16, the Obama Interior Department announced its long-awaited rules governing hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) on federal lands.

As part of its 171-page document of rules, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), part of the U.S. Dept. of Interior (DOI), revealed it will adopt theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bill written by ExxonMobil for fracking chemical fluid disclosure on U.S. public lands.

ALEC is a 98-percent corporate-funded bill mill and “dating service” that brings predominantly Republican state legislators and corporate lobbyists together at meetings to craft and vote on “model bills” behind closed doors. Many of these bills end up snaking their way into statehouses and become law in what Bill Moyers referred to as “The United States of ALEC.”

BLM will utilize an iteration of ALEC’s “Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act” – a bill The New York Times revealed was written by ExxonMobil – for chemical fluid disclosure of fracking on public lands and will do so by utilizing FracFocus.org‘s voluntary online chemical disclosure database.

In a way, it’s all come full circle. As we covered here on DeSmogBlog, the original chemical disclosure standards and the decision to utilize FracFocus’ database came from the Obama Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) industry-stacked Fracking Subcommitteeformed in May 2011. DOE gave a $1.5 million grant to FracFocus.

Thanks to Thomas Soldan.

Published by susie

4 thoughts on “Well, that was worth waiting for!”

  1. The MMS is back from the dead. I wonder how much blow Exxon had to spread around the BLM to get this adopted?

  2. Has anyone gotten the message yet that our energy industry should be nationalized? Taken away from private, free market, Capitalists? When the oil companies have no more money they will go away. Forever. And so will the all of the politicians that their money buys. Making laws is great even if they are corrupt and not enforced. But taking action is even better.

  3. No, I’m not suprised. It’s what I expected of the Corporatist running dog lackey we have as president.

    But it doesn’t mean I don’t feel like throwing up. Obama may well be our worst president ever. He is surely the worst (purported) Democratic president ever.

    Wall St and other Big Corporations sure got their money’s worth in funding Obama.

  4. @jb – Yes, they did jawbone.

    The “ROI” on their “investments” in the Nobel Peace Prize winning Drone Man must be off the charts.

Comments are closed.