Open thread for night owls: Oil and gas leases now found on six percent of all U.S. land

Amy Mall blogs a National Resources Defense Council analysis that says nearly six percent of total U.S. land is being leased by 70 of the largest oil and gas companies, including 38.5 million acres of public land:

According to a new NRDC analysis, at the end of 2011, seventy of the largest oil and gas companies operating in the United States held leases covering at least 141 million net acres of American land'an area greater than California and Florida combined. Given the sordid environmental history of oil and gas development that has already occurred across the United States, NRDC is extremely concerned about the additional harmful environmental, health and safety impacts that oil and gas development of this magnitude will bring in the future. Since it has been reported that more than ninety percent of oil and gas wells are fracked, there is a lot of new fracking slated for our future--tens of millions of acres of new fracking. Clean air, clean water, healthy communities, wildlands, and wildlife habitat are all threatened. These astounding numbers illustrate just how much of America's land is already at risk from oil and gas development. In the face of this reality, clean air, clean water, healthy communities, and the health of these lands across the country depend on the strongest possible state, local and federal rules, as well as the inspections, monitoring, and record-keeping needed to enforce them over such a large area. On top of this, of the total acreage leased nationwide, 38.5 million acres'an area slightly bigger than Florida'were leased for federal oil and gas resources. This is worth noting because the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is in the process of creating new rules for fracking that takes place under federal leases nationwide. These new rules will determine how oil and gas companies are allowed to operate in a wide range of places. That's because the federal leases occur everywhere from national forests and public wildlands, to municipal and private drinking water supplies, on Indian land, and on private property when landowner's do not own the mineral rights below the surface. Unfortunately, BLM's initial draft of the rules was woefully inadequate, and earlier this month a second draft was leaked to the press, revealing that the rules are becoming even weaker in some aspects. [...]

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