BLM Will Propose Rule to Revise Policy On Five Exemptions From NEPA Reviews

摘要

The Bureau of Land Management will propose a rule to establish guidelines for the use of five specific categorical exclusions that reduce environmental analyses of oil and gas activities on federal onshore lands, a BLM official said Sept. 9. Mike Pool, BLM deputy director, said the rule will take into account criticisms that a federal judge in Wyoming expressed when she vacated a 2010 Interior Department and Forest Service guidance on those categorical exclusions. The rule will not simply take the language of the rejected guidance and put it through the notice-and-comment procedures of a rulemaking, he told the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources.