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leased federal parcels are adjacent to state or private acres where drilling has or will occur. But red tape has slowed the permitting process on federal lands, he said.
• "It's extremely hard and burdensome to try and get a federal permit," said Ness, whose group represents hundreds of companies working in the state's oil patch.
• But BLM officials say the agency is working hard to clear its permitting backlog and is progressing toward its goal, announced last year, of cutting the approval time from about 300 days to 60 days.
• Paul Kelley, a BLM assistant field manager in Dickinson, said the agency has added 15 new positions boosting the agency's North Dakota workforce by about 30 percent. The agency also has utilized "strike team" members from other states to help process permits, he said.
• The agency has about 462 pending drilling permits at present in North Dakota. Over the past year, the BLM has averaged about 47 permits applications a month and has cleared an average of about 40, he said.
• "From what I'm seeing here, we're doing them pretty quickly," Kelley said.
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Victim of Rapid City fatal crash identified
• RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) -- Authorities have identified a man who died in a Rapid City crash in which another man was arrested for vehicular homicide.
• Police say 31-year-old Calvin Bissonette, of Wanblee, was a passenger in a vehicle driven by 27-year-old Joshua Cuny, of Rapid City. Cuny's vehicle collided with another at a Rapid City intersection late Saturday afternoon.
• Police say Bissonette died at a hospital. Cuny was arrested on several charges including vehicular homicide and drunken driving. A working telephone number for him could not be found, and it was not immediately clear if he had an attorney.
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Mines physicist who apparently killed himself ID'd
• RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) -- Authorities have identified a South Dakota School of Mines and Technology faculty member who apparently killed himself on campus.
• Thirty-seven-year-old Alberto Lemut (luh-MOOT') died last Thursday. Police say he died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Rapid City school canceled classes in the Electrical Engineering/Physics building that day and made counselors available.
• School President Heather Wilson says Lemut was a physicist and the principal investigator for an experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead. She says he joined the School of Mines faculty this semester from the Law (Continued on page 30)
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