ATHENS — “Essentially, the Forest Service seems to have concluded that the impacts of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, though it’s widely acknowledged to be a more aggressive and high-volume method of extracting oil and gas than traditional vertical drilling methods (event those that employed fracking), are – in the words of the SIR – ‘not different in kind from the effects of conventional drilling.’
Therefore, the agency has decided, it can deal with any new proposals for horizontally fracked wells the same way it has dealt with proposals for oil-and-gas drilling in the past.
In a telephonic news conference, Carey and Wayne spokesman Gary Chancey explained that the decision to not amend the forest plan relied heavily on information provided by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, in the form of a ‘Reasonably Foreseeable Development Scenario’ (RFDS).”
— Jim Phillips, Athens News
