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The record of decision governing development of 25 trillion cubic feet
of natural gas over 198,000 acres of land located just south of
Pinedale, Wyo., was announced last week.
Department of the Interior's Assistant Secretary for Land and
Minerals Management C. Stephen Allred said the document was the product
of extensive efforts between the Bureau of Land Management and
Wyoming's Game and Fish Department and Department of Environmental
Quality to minimize environmental impacts associated with the
development.
"Our agencies worked to find ways to minimize
impacts to wildlife habitat and other resources in and adjacent to the
Pinedale Anticline area while harnessing important energy resources for
our nation," Allred claimed in announcing the ROD.
Wyoming
Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D) praised the document. "This ROD allows for
more production of the area's natural gas reserves but requires
industry to use cleaner technology to reduce impacts to Wyoming's air
quality, to protect wildlife by not developing in the areas adjacent to
the Anticline, and to use clustered development and offsite mitigation.
It represents a positive change in considering the needs of wildlife
that use this area for winter range and migration."
The new
document replaces a ROD issued in 2000. According to Cara Eastwood,
Freudenthal's press secretary, the following stipulations make the new
ROD an improvement over the previous version:
- It allows 600 drilling locations, 100 fewer than the 2000 ROD.
- It
provides a compensatory monitoring and mitigation fund of $36 million,
which helped satisfy the governor's concerns about impacts to wildlife
and habitat.
- It consolidates development in a
core area encompassing about one-third of the project, thus reducing
wildlife habitat fragmentation. Development will proceed in phases and
will only enter new areas once other areas have been completely
reclaimed.
- It encourages directional drilling
and the use of other emerging technology to better protect Wyoming's
air quality, and it requires aggressive mitigation to ensure compliance
with air quality standards.
- It also requires
mitigation responses to ensure that there is not a significant decline
in any wildlife population due to development activities on the
Pinedale Anticline Project Area (PAPA).
- It requires the creation of a liquids-gathering system to reduce truck traffic in the area and cut down on pollution and dust.
Drilling
in the PAPA is projected to generate $16 million in federal royalties,
half of which would be directed to Wyoming. Three companies -- Questar
Market Resources, Shell Exploration and Production Co. and Ultra
Resources Inc. -- have proposed the increased drilling in Pinedale
The drilling plans have been plagued with controversy, and many
conservation and local groups have fought the plans, which would entail
more than 4,000 new wells.
In June, the Theodore Roosevelt
Conservation Partnership, a nonprofit coalition of hunting, fishing and
other organizations, filed a lawsuit alleging that BLM failed to comply
with its plans to monitor and mitigate the effects of oil and gas
drilling on wildlife in the Pinedale Anticline field.
With
the release of the ROD, many Pinedale citizens rose to deride the plan.
"The BLM has failed to provide us any assurance that this plan will
protect us from more ozone pollution, groundwater pollution or other
threats to our health," said Rod Rozier, a 35-year resident of Sublette
County.
And pointing to recent announcements that low levels
of hydrocarbons had been discovered in groundwater supplying a
livestock well, Jocelyn Moore, a resident of Pinedale, said, "We're
seeing increasing numbers of wells being contaminated by hydrocarbons.
We've got more sediment blanketing the New Fork River's blue ribbon
fisheries increasing the potential for organisms that carry whirling
disease. The BLM's plan for 4,400 more wells means more damage to our
groundwater, surface water and fishing opportunities for my neighbors,
their kids and me."
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