EPA wannabe? Transportation Department goes after natural gas drilling
- Post 11 August 2012
- By Copy Editor
(Joel Gehrke | The Washington Examiner) -President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has made some efforts to limit hydraulic fracturing, a breakthrough technology in natural gas exploration, but the most damaging regulations await further study. In the meantime, the Transportation Department has reinterpreted an old rule in a way that undermines the industry.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently impeded the ability of truckers to deliver water and sand to drilling sites by reinterpreting a 50-year-old rule to limit the amount of time that truck drivers can work in a day.
“This is clearly an indication that somewhere up in the top echelons of this administration, there is a constant battle — a war going on — to try to artificially level the playing field between the oil and gas industry and the renewable [energy] industry,” Rep. Jeff Landry, R-La., told The Washington Examiner in a phone interview yesterday.
The new spin on the old rule “declares that [commercial motor vehicles] hauling water and sand in furtherance of oilfield activities are no longer able to use the waiting time exception,” Landry and over sixty other lawmakers wrote to Transportation Secretary LaHood last week. The new “guidance” on the old rule means that trucks carrying water and sand cannot stay at the work site for longer than 11 hours a day. ... continues...
"Question all which is 'taught,' dig deeper, think clearly, respond profusely. Conformity is the antithesis of free thought and self-determination." -- Standard Pearls