|
The Bureau of Land Management's long-awaited new management plan for the Pinedale, Wyo., area — one of the most productive natural gas fields in the country — sets aside some areas for various levels of development and others for wildlife habitat.
The preferred alternative for the revised resource management plan for the Pinedale area, which includes the highly productive Jonah and Pinedale Anticline fields, divides the area into four sections with different management prescriptions to allow the area's rich natural gas resources to be tapped while protecting habitat for sage grouse, mule deer, pronghorn and other wildlife, said Kellie Roadifer, planning coordinator for BLM's Pinedale office.
"What we were trying to do was provide at least to some extent a balance," Roadifer said. "We're trying to provide some habitat while the anticline and the Jonah fields continue their development, because of the realization of the impacts we're having on wildlife in those fields."
The four areas proposed in the draft plan, which will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow, include: intensively developed fields, minimally developed areas, large block "no surface occupancy" areas, which could only be accessed through directional drilling, and unavailable areas, which would be managed for wildlife.
The plan, which will replace the BLM's existing 1988 resource management plan for the area, will guide the agency's management of nearly 923,000 acres of public land, as well as 1.2 million acres of subsurface federal minerals. About 7,804 new wells are expected to be drilled in the area within the next 20 years.
Steve Belinda, energy initiative manager for the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a coalition of environmental and hunting and fishing groups, who also used to work as a wildlife biologist in the BLM's Pinedale office, said the plan could be a step in the right direction but added that parts of it are unclear.
For instance, "minimum development" is not well defined, and the plan's provisions for mitigating damage to wildlife habitat in developed areas are likely to be inadequate, because "we just don't have enough information yet" about how to undertake such mitigation measures, he said.
Belinda also said he is concerned that various drilling proposals are under way, including environmental impact statements for proposals for the Pinedale Anticline and the South Piney area, that may not gel with the final RMP.
"What you've got is not just the cart before the horse, what you've got is a runaway horse, because you've got EISs coming out before the RMP is done, and the RMP coming out before EISs are completed," Belinda said. "So you could actually grant a whole lot of stuff that may not be available under the final RMP.
Roadifer said BLM attempted to consider the existing development proposals as it drafted the plan to ensure that the new RMP was not in conflict with those proposals. Considerable research on the effects of development on wildlife has been done since the original RMP was finalized in 1988, and the new document uses the best information available to try to protect wildlife while allowing drilling, she added.
Randy Teeuwen, a spokesman for Encana, one of the biggest producers in the Pinedale area, said the company was still looking over the document and could not comment on it.
Click here to read the draft RMP.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
