Four in 10 oil and gas wells in high-risk areas uninspected by federal government

Al-Jazeera America: Four in 10 new oil and gas wells near national forests and fragile watersheds or otherwise identified as higher pollution risks escape federal inspection, unchecked by an agency struggling to keep pace with America's drilling boom, according to an Associated Press review that shows wide state-by-state disparities in safety checks.

Roughly half or more of wells on federal and Indian lands weren't checked in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, despite potential harm that has led to efforts in some communities to ban new drilling.

...Government data obtained by the AP point to the Bureau of Land Management as so overwhelmed by a boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that it has been unable to keep up with inspections of some of the highest priority wells.

"No one would have predicted the incredible boom of drilling on federal lands, and the number of wells we've been asked to process," said the BLM's deputy director, Linda Lance.

Since fracking reached a height in 2009, about 90 percent of new wells on federal land are drilled by the process, which involves pumping huge volumes of water, sand and chemicals underground to break up gas-rich shale rock. "The current rate of inspections is simply not acceptable to us," she said....

Fracking in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, shot by Joshua Doubek, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license