overview
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Federal Lands
The Federal government owns a large
percentage of the land within each of the intermountain
states:
Colorado - 36.9%
Montana - 29.9%
New Mexico - 41.8%
Utah – 57.5%
Wyoming - 42.3%
From: Federal
Real Property Profile, 2004
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Oil and gas development is regulated by all levels of government --
Federal, State, and local. Some statutes deal with oil and gas operations
directly, while others are more generally concerned with protecting
human health, air, land, wildlife, water or other resources and incidentally
apply to oil and gas. After laws are passed by Congress or a state legislature,
it is the task of an administrative agency such as the Bureau of Land
Management, the Environmental Protection Agency, or a state agency or
commission, like the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, to
issue regulations, further defining, and consistent with, the original
law. Beyond their regulations (also called rules), the agencies might
also issue policy or guidance documents to further explain the law.
At the local government level, the law itself, usually called an ordinance,
is the most detailed provision of law.
Which laws are applicable to a particular development depends in part
on who owns the land and who owns the minerals. For federal lands or
minerals, the process can involve all three levels of government. For
private or state lands and minerals, the process is mostly state and
local, although all development needs to comply with the national environmental
laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. For additional information on the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other laws applicable to oil and gas development, go to the index page of the Federal Laws Section on the Red Lodge Clearinghouse website and choose a topic.
Where there is a “split estate” -- different parties owning the surface
of the land and its minerals -- regulation can be even more complex.
Confusion and frustration can also arise where more than one level of
government claims jurisdiction. When Federal, state, and local governments
all try to regulate development and their laws conflict with one another,
the doctrine of preemption dictates that the federal laws will prevail
over conflicting state or local laws, and that state laws will prevail
over conflicting local laws. While this hierarchy may appear clear-cut,
it is not always clear if there is an actual conflict of law that would
trigger preemption.
Special Topics
The staff of the Intermountain Oil and Gas BMP Project is available to help with
specific research topics. After helping with a research request, we will make the
research report publicly available.
U.S. Chemical Safety Board: Public Safety
The Summary Comparison of Public Safety Provisions is a collection of local and
state regulations in the five-state area relating to site security and fencing
requirements during oil and gas development. The comparison report was
created in an effort to assemble and compare a range of public safety
provisions from local and state governments. Often where state regulations do
not exist, local provisions can be found. The project was initiated by a request from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.
Colorado Rulemaking Stakeholder Meetings
The following five-state comparisons of oil and gas regulatory provisions were created by UNiversity of Colorado Law student volunteers in conjunction with a 2009 Colorado rulemaking process. These summaries were designed to provide background information for post-rulemaking stakeholder meetings.
Summary comparison
of wildlife provisions
Summary comparison
of riparian provisions
Summary comparison of
reclamation provisions
Summary comparison
of setback provisions
| How do Best Management Practices fit into “Law”?
“Best management practices (BMPs) are state-of-the-art
mitigation measures applied on a site-specific basis to reduce, prevent,
or avoid adverse environmental or social impacts.”
- Bureau
of Land Management BMP website
Many people associated with oil and gas development think of BMPs as
strictly voluntary practices. In the Intermountain Oil and Gas BMP Project
Database, we have taken a more expansive view of BMPs, in part because
what is voluntary today may be required tomorrow or may change from
one jurisdiction to another. Consequently, we have included both voluntary
and required practices in our database. We designate BMPs as either
“Required” or “Recommended” in the database and provide our rationale
for this designation in our bibliography.
Only a small percentage of BMPs are designated as “required” practices
because they are codified in law or regulation. Many more BMPs are required
by regulatory agencies but not through statute or regulation. For example,
the may be required BMPs because they are stipulations on leases, conditions
of approval on permits, or otherwise agreed to by industry as mitigation
during the environmental impact analysis process. Still more BMPs are
designated in the BMP Database as “Recommended” -- simply voluntary
practices being implemented by industry or recommended by various entities
to minimize the impacts of development.
To learn more . . .
About the federal, state, and local regulation of oil and gas extraction,
please see Federal,
State and Local Regulations or Split
Estates on the Oil and Gas Resource Development page of the Red
Lodge Clearinghouse website.
For an in-depth view of the preemption issue from a Colorado local
government perspective, see the article Preemption
Is Not Assumed.
Add Information
If you have or think we should have additional information for any
of our laws pages, please contact us. Go to ADD
INFO. Warning: We do our best to keep this
section current, but please check with the appropriate jurisdiction
for the final word on current laws and regulations!
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