ABSTRACT
The concept of environmental federalism helps us to understand the sharing of regulatory authority between the federal and state governments in addressing environmental problems of varying magnitude. Although states prefer to regulate without the federal government’s intervention, sharing of regulatory authority is required for various reasons. In regulating the oil and gas industry, the federal government has exempted fracking from several important federal regulations. The oil and gas industry had secured these exemptions by claiming that fracking is an unconventional drilling procedure and therefore should not be subject to the regulations imposed on the conventional vertical drilling procedure. Politics and the industry’s influence in rulemaking have only added to the federal government’s reluctance to impose any new regulations on fracking. As a result, the federal regulations on fracking are weak and fragmented and this chapter has offered a glimpse into such regulations. They do not offer adequate protection to the public from the negative externalities of fracking and it is difficult to introduce new ones in a political climate that favors the decentralization of authority and lacks bipartisan support.
