The U.S. Forest Service on Tuesday proposed rules to allow certain small oil and natural gas drilling projects in national forests and grasslands without requiring lengthy environmental reviews.
The policy change would speed approval of drilling permits on federal leases, and put needed oil and natural gas supplies on the market more quickly. But the proposal could also mar federal lands with more roads, pipelines and drilling rigs.
Under the proposed rules, an energy company’s exploration plan would be excluded from the normal environmental review process as along as the project did not involve more than one mile of new road construction or road reconstruction, three miles of new pipeline or exceed four drill sites.
Each drill site may include more than one well to reduce disturbing the surface area, the Forest Service said in in a notice of the proposed rules in Tuesday’s Federal Register.
“Our forest managers have reviewed similar oil and gas projects over the last five years and have learned that projects of this scale do not carry significant environmental effects to human health or the environment,” said Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth.
The proposed regulations would cover drilling projects that now require environmental reviews of six months or longer, the agency said. Review time would be reduced to two months for appropriate drilling projects.
The proposal would cover projects that would not have ”supplicant effect” on the human environment or “adverse effects” on threatened and endangered species or their habitat, wilderness areas, wetlands and archeological or historic sites, the Forest Service said.
The agency said new oil and gas fields allowed under the proposal could be located next to existing developed fields.
The Forest Service manages about 193 million surface acres in 42 states and Puerto Rico, and oversees more than 4,600 leases on about 4.6 million sub-surface acres in national forests and grasslands.
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