North Dakota joined Wyoming’s lawsuit against the Department of the Interior (DOI) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over recently imposed fracking regulations last week after a vote from the state’s governor.
North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple and Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem voted last Tuesday to join Wyoming in the lawsuit. Both officials said the imposed regulations inhibit growth and are too similar to regulations already in place in the state. This statement matched arguments made by Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead.
“Gov. Mead is happy to have North Dakota join the petition against the BLM,” Dave Bush, communications director for Mead, said. “Gov. Mead has a good relationship with Gov. Dalrymple and looks forward to working together as much as possible to repeal the recently announced BLM rules.”
Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics from February 2015 show that North Dakota has the second-lowest unemployment rate in the United States at 2.9 percent, just behind Nebraska. The low unemployment rate has been attributed to an oil boom in the state beginning in 2008.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in 2014 that North Dakota was the second-highest oil producing state behind Texas with 12 percent of the United States’ total oil production.
Stenehjem said the state could be granted a variance if existing state rules are deemed equal or more protective than the BLM’s.
“This requirement, however, interferes with the state’s existing primacy to enforce our own underground injection control program pursuant to the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Stenehjem said. “In addition, it appears that a variance could be revoked at any time, which provides further instability within the state’s program.”
