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Legislative Oil and Gas Committee Proposes New Regulations, Just in Case

Remarkable: the South Dakota Legislature's Oil and Gas interim committee has posted drafts of seventeen pieces of legislation they may consider to regulate the oil and gas industry in South Dakota. Committee member Rep. Spence Hawley (D-7/Brookings) says the committee has already taken some of those proposals off the table. But the committee says South Dakota needs to tighten regulations, just in case the North Dakota oil boom rumbles south:

“A lot of (South Dakota) landowners were saying that they had had depredation to their land that wasn’t covered adequately,” [Hawley] said. “I see a focus on that in the next legislative session.”

... [Rep. Tona] Rozum [R-20/Mitchell] said the two most pressing issues for South Dakota are increasing the bonding requirements for oil and gas wells, which haven’t been updated in 30 years, and establishing a mediation program for surface-rights owners to negotiate with drilling companies.

Among other things, the committee also is considering establishing a depredation fund to pay for abandoned well cleanup, and perhaps requiring drillers that use hydraulic fracturing — a process that involves pumping large amounts of water, sand and chemicals downwell to tap tight oil and gas deposits — to post more information about the fracking chemicals to an online industry database called FracFocus, Rozum said [Cody Winchester, "Legislators Draft Potential Oil, Gas Protections for S.D.," that Sioux Falls paper, 2012.11.12].

The interim committee's proposals are remarkable given that the standard Republican line is that regulations stifle industry growth. The South Dakota Legislature has consistently refused to pass new bonding rules or taxes on big oil pipelines for fear of driving away oil business that's going to happen no matter what. But these same legislators are willing to propose regulations that, by the standard GOP thinking, could hinder an industry that already has minimal chances of expanding into South Dakota.

But please, South Dakota legislators, don't let my snowballs discourage you from fulfilling your basic purpose: to use sensible regulations to protect South Dakota landowners from the economic and environmental predations of unchecked corporate petro-greed.

3 Comments

  1. larry kurtz 2012.11.13

    'Fiscal cliff' has been renamed, Austerity crisis.

  2. Donald Pay 2012.11.13

    The proposals seem to be fairly moderate and commonsense. I remember sitting through a number of oil and gas hearings in the early 80s. A bunch of Harding County ranchers were very upset with forced pooling and surface disturbance that was occurring back then. The oil and gas industry is notorious for running over the property rights of minority mineral owners and surface owners. I'm not sure the proposed bills are strong enough, but it's a start.

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