The White House has pledged to appeal a decision by a federal judge in Wyoming to strike down the administration’s rules for hydraulic fracturing on public lands, which oil and gas companies claimed were an “egregious overreach”

Obama had been trying to toughen fraccing regulation on lands controlled by Washington due to safety concerns, but producers argued it was merely the first step towards full federal regulation of all fraccing activity, taking away states’ rights.

A District Court judge last week ruled that the US Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management lacked Congressional authority to set fraccing regulations for federal and Indian lands.

The rules would have required fraccers to follow the Western Australian model of providing data on chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing and forcing them to prevent leaks in all wells drilled on federally-owned land.

The ruling has no real impact as just 20% of production takes place on federal lands, and most of that is in the offshore Gulf of Mexico.

In North Dakota, the second-largest producing state, primarily from the Bakken Shale, roughly 16% of oil output comes from American Indian-controlled lands, which would have been subject to the new regulations.

“This ruling protects private and state-owned minerals from being subjected to unauthorised federal rules,” North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources boss Lynn Helms said.

The rules have been on hold for the past 12 months while industry groups and four states tried to stop them from being implemented.

The court found that the George W Bush White House had pushed the Energy Policy Act through Congress in 2005, exempting fraccing that did not involve diesel from Environmental Protection Agency regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The Department of the Interior said: "It's unfortunate that implementation of the rule continues to be delayed because it prevents regulators from using 21st century standards to ensure that oil and gas operations are conducted safely and responsibly on public and tribal lands".

Congressional Republican leader Paul Ryan welcomed the ruling, saying it would stop “Big Government” from meddling in oil and gas company’s affairs, and that only Congress had a right to set the rules.

In Louisiana, the Supreme Court has also ruled that only the state government has the legal authority to regulate fraccing.

The court held that an ordinance by the local government of St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana to prohibit fraccing was pre-empted by state law.

The court also found that only the state government had the legal authority to grant fraccing permits over the objections of local governments.

The ruling ends a two-year legal battle between a local environmental group and Helis Oil & Gas, which wants to drill a well in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale play.

The judge refused to even hear legal objections from environmentalists.

Helis said it could get operations underway as soon as next week.

The oil and gas industry has historically been regulated by the states, not Washington or local governments, and industry is worried that local rulings could create a regulatory patchwork across the nation.

Colorado’s Supreme Court struck down local fraccing bans in early May and a federal judge did the same thing in West Virginia in mid-June.

In Colorado, industry is now taking aim at a proposed ballot initiatives that would impose a 750m setback between wells and any occupied structure or ”area of special concern”.

A review published by the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission indicates that 90% of the surface acreage in Colorado would be unavailable for future oil and gas development or hydraulic fracturing if the initiative gets onto the ballot in November and is passed.

While the survey claimed most people would not want a well within a few hundred metres of their homes, and occupied structures would only lock away 22% of the state, the identified areas of special concern include water bodies of small and large sizes, making up a significant part of Colorado.

A company like Anadarko Petroleum, one of the state’s largest oilers, would lose 98.2% of its shale acreage, Rystad Energy calculated, while Noble Energy would lose 90.5%.

The rule would also mean that 4685 horizontal wells could not be re-entered, and that at least 9650 wells would not be drilled.

Voters will have their say on Prop 78 in November if activist groups secure sufficient signatures, but there are also three other anti-oil and gas ballot initiatives are in the signature gathering stage.

Initiative 63 would change the state’s constitution to declare “that a healthy environment is an essential component to the health, safety and welfare of natural persons”, giving local governments the power to protect the environment, and potentially trump the state regulator.

Initiative 75 would also change constitution to meet similar goals.

A fourth oil and gas initiative, 138, would confirm the COGCC as the official regulator, but would give councils more power, potentially crippling opportunities for fraccing.