In the first federal court decision to directly examine an agency’s review of the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing, a federal magistrate judge in the Northern District of California has ruled that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management violated the National Environmental Policy Act when the agency failed to prepare an environmental impact statement, or EIS, prior to entering into two oil and gas leases with companies seeking to conduct hydraulic fracturing (commonly called "fracking") in the Monterey Shale. The March 31 decision, Center for Biological Diversity v. Bureau of Land Management, found that increasing interest in hydraulic fracturing has rendered prior development forecasts obsolete. If the decision is upheld, it may require greater environmental scrutiny of hydraulic fracturing proposals on public lands going forward.
Background
California is becoming a major battleground in the hydraulic fracturing debate. With the discovery that the Monterey/Santos shale play may hold 15.4 billion barrels of oil that may be extractable using hydraulic fracturing, growing interest has sparked a real estate rush in the region.
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