In July 2010, Congress ordered the Securities and Exchange Commission to adopt a resource extraction rule within 270 days (i.e., by April 17, 2011).  The SEC did not adopt rules until August 22, 2012, missing the Congress' deadline by 1 year, 4 months and 2 days (or a total of 490 days).  In 2013, however, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the rule and sent it back to the SEC.  American Petroleum Institute v. SEC, 953 F. Supp. 2d 5 (D. D.C. 2013).  When the SEC failed for over a year to adopt a new rule, Oxfam America sued and it is now under a court order to promulgate a rule.  Oxfam Am., Inc. v. United States SEC, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 116982 (D. Mass. Sept. 2, 2015).  On December 11, 2015, the SEC published a proposed rule for comment.  The original comment period was divided between an initial comment period (ending January 25, 2016) and a period for reply comments (ending February 16, 2016).  Last week, the SEC gave itself an extension - the due date for initial comments is now February 16, 2016 and the due date for reply comments is March 8, 2016.  According to the SEC, the extension was granted at the request of the American Petroleum Institute.  The SEC's accession to the API's request is not surprising in light of the fact that the API was successful in challenging the SEC's initial rulemaking efforts.  For the record, the SEC is now 1,744 days (or 4 years, 9 months, 8 days) late.

Typically, a flood of comments are filed on the last day of a comment period.  When I last checked, only six comments had been posted on the SEC's website, including my own very brief comment and the API's request for more time.