Red Lodge Clearinghouse

Most recently, the groups -- which include Amigos Bravos, the Center for Native Ecosystems, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Oil & Gas Accountability Project and Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action -- filed a protest yesterday challenging the Bureau of Land Management's decision to open up more than 174,000 acres in Colorado to oil and gas drilling at its May 8 lease sale. The groups charged that the agency is ignoring the energy industry's global warming pollution as it promotes a drilling boom in the Rocky Mountain West.

Oil and gas drilling is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas pollution in Colorado, but BLM does not require energy companies to use the latest technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The environmental groups contend that climate change is a major threat to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. An August 2007 report by the Government Accountability Office found that federal land and water resources are vulnerable to a wide range of effects from climate change, some of which are already occurring.

In his 2007 "Climate Action Plan," Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) reported that climate change driven by fossil fuel pollution will lead to prolonged heat waves, more air pollution, snow-starved winters, deeper droughts, more wildfires, widespread beetle infestations wiping out forests, and the spread of West Nile virus. Ritter has called for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2050.

Chris Canaly of the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council said one of the biggest climate change impacts her group is concerned about is effects on high mountain meadows, which are important habitat for big game species, predators and smaller prey mammals such as the snowshoe hare. "If these meadows start drying up, we're in trouble," she said.

Another big concern is water, Canaly said, noting that the areas proposed for leasing include the headwaters of the Rio Grande. Colorado has obligations under a compact with New Mexico and Texas to deliver a certain amount of water to those states, which could become more difficult if climate change reduces snowpacks.

"Global warming might mean that we're no longer going to have the water deliveries to the states that we used to in the past," Canaly said. "That also then affects our economies, not just of Colorado, but of northern New Mexico in particular."

While the natural gas industry promotes its product as a "cleaner-burning fuel," environmentalists say the global warming impact of natural gas, also known as methane, is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. In Colorado, preliminary inventories show that accidental leaks and deliberate releases inject more than 5.6 million tons of methane and carbon dioxide into the air every year.

The protest

The formal protest is similar to protests that have been submitted in Montana and New Mexico in recent weeks. The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Oil & Gas Accountability Project and Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action have led the protest effort, joined by the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, Amigos Bravos and San Juan Citizens Alliance in New Mexico.

Neither the New Mexico nor the Montana BLM office has responded to the groups' protest yet.

Montana moved ahead with its lease auction April 8, bringing in more than $3.2 million. Montana BLM spokesman Greg Albright said no parcels were removed from the lease sale because of protests, noting that the agency does not typically pull parcels on the basis of a protest.

New Mexico held its auction April 16 without a hitch, receiving more than $13 million in bids. The state BLM did drop 32 leases in Sierra County from the lease sale because of concerns about an ongoing lawsuit related to mineral leasing in Otero and Sierra counties, spokesman Hans Stuart said. Altogether, BLM withdrew a total of 60,000 acres out of 112,000 initially offered, including the Sierra County parcels and 14,000 acres that were pulled because tribal consultations were not completed.

Stuart said the agency is convening a group of planning and environmental officers from its field and state offices to look at the groups' protest.

The agency has worked within the last decade to reduce venting and flaring of gas, which has reduced pollution by 50 percent to 80 percent, he said.

Stuart also questioned whether stopping oil and gas development in New Mexico through lease protests would really help address global climate change. "If the U.S. gets its gas from other parts of the world where there's much more flaring and venting of gas and other forms of pollution, is that really solving the problem?"

BLM cannot officially issue the leases until it has formally responded to the protests.

Climate change concerns

The groups charge that BLM's failure to address climate change defies several bedrock federal environmental laws, as well as an order issued by the Interior Department in 2001 that required Interior agencies to consider the effects of climate change in their decisions. The Government Accountability Office has criticized BLM for not developing any guidance for implementing the order.

But Montana BLM spokesman Greg Albright said climate change is addressed as part of the agency's environmental impact statements and resource management plans. "Climate change is part of that umbrella environmental impact statement," he said, noting that "everything we do has to fit under that umbrella."

Nichols disagreed. "If you look at the project-level documents or even the resource management plans, there's no mention of climate change at all. Even in some of the recently adopted plans such as the Farmington plan, climate change gets no attention whatsoever. This has got to change," he said.

In New Mexico, climate change is largely affecting the state's water supplies, according to Rachel Conn of Amigos Bravos. The New Mexico State Engineer's Office has predicted the state will witness extreme heat waves, which will reduce the state's snowpack and therefore its spring snowmelt, as a result of climate change.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) has called for a 75 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2000 levels by 2050. Last year, New Mexico became the first state in the nation to require the oil and gas industry to track and disclose its greenhouse gas emissions.

Accidental leaks and deliberate releases inject more than 20 million tons of methane and carbon dioxide into the air every year in New Mexico. Most of this pollution comes from natural gas drilling in northwestern New Mexico, which is one of the largest gas-producing regions in the United States. In Richardson's 2006 executive order calling for a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for gas drilling operations, his administration estimated that $360 million in gas simply disappears every year.

A research team at Purdue University recently ranked New Mexico's San Juan County as the sixth biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the nation. The county emits more than 8 million tons of carbon per year and is also a hotbed of energy development.

"We want to make sure that oil and gas development in the state takes into account climate change issues to ensure we protect the water resources here in the state," Conn said.

U.S. EPA has identified more than 80 ways the oil and gas industry can reduce methane emissions and help protect the climate, including maintaining oil and gas facilities to reduce methane leakages from valves and equipment. Methane capture technologies can reduce methane emissions by at least 95 percent.

Some energy companies have taken steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. For example, BP PLC, the second largest producer in the San Juan Basin, has changed its procedures for gas well completions. Previously, natural gas was vented into the atmosphere when the company completed the wells, releasing 100 million to 200 million cubic feet of natural gas per day for approximately three days. Now, the company captures that gas and sells it.

According to BP, the cost of its "greenhouse" unit, which captures the gas, is approximately 30 percent more than that of a conventional air cleanout unit. The cost of the captured gas that is sold is roughly equal to the additional cost of the greenhouse unit.

Williams Cos. has reported even higher returns for its "green completions," saying it gets $9 back for every $1 it spends.

"Part of the solution is that BLM needs to start requiring these available technologies before rushing to lease more land," Nichols said.

Other protests

In addition to the concerns that have been expressed about climate change, several other groups have filed protests of the Colorado auction, expressing concerns about the effects of oil and gas development on wildlife, wilderness and roadless areas, water supplies and air quality. The groups filing or joining protests include Western Resource Advocates, the National Wildlife Federation, Colorado Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Trout Unlimited, the Rio Grande and Saguache county commissions, the towns of Del Norte and Crestone, property owner associations and numerous individual ranchers. The Colorado Division of Wildlife has filed a comment letter signaling its concerns, as well.

Mike Chiropolos, lands program director for Western Resource Advocates, said that the number and range of protests concerning the lease sale should give BLM and the Forest Service reason for pause.

"I fully expect the agencies to withdraw the parcels from the upcoming sale because it's the right thing to do," Chiropolos said. "They're hearing from a broad range of stakeholders that they need to consult with locals and other interested stakeholders who care about these forests and Colorado's public land. That hasn't happened, and I think these parcels will be deferred and withdrawn from the sale before they proceed."

Central to those protests are more than 145,000 acres in the Rio Grande National Forest in the western San Luis Valley, including more than 19,000 acres of roadless areas. A parcel has not been leased in the Rio Grande National Forest since 1994.

The Rio Grande National Forest is touted by the Forest Service as "one of the true undiscovered jewels of Colorado." The Continental Divide runs for 236 miles along most of the western border of the forest, and the forest's ecosystems range from alpine semi-desert grasslands to lodgepole pine forests overlooked by the rugged Fourteeners of the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness.

At 1.86 million acres, the Rio Grande provides unfragmented habitat for moose, greater sage grouse, bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer, American peregrine falcons, Gunnison's prairie dogs and bears, and is a core recovery area for the endangered Canada lynx. Creeks and rivers in the forest support populations of native Rio Grande and Colorado River cutthroat trout and serve as the source waters for the Rio Grande and North Platte rivers and as the town of Del Norte's municipal water supply.

Areas proposed for energy development by BLM parallel stretches of the Rio Grande classified by the Colorado Division of Wildlife as "gold-medal waters," a designation reserved for the state's highest-quality fish habitats. One-hundred-and-sixty-eight miles of Colorado's more than 9,000 miles of waterways have received such a designation, including 22.5 miles on the Rio Grande.

The region is characterized by steep slopes prone to erosion and landslides, adding to concerns about harm to water quality from oil and gas activities.

The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, in its protest covering more than 162,000 acres offered in the lease sale, said BLM's decision to lease areas of designated Rio Grande and Colorado River cutthroat trout habitat without consulting the Colorado Division of Wildlife violates the terms of conservation agreements signed by the agencies. TRCP also claims that BLM has failed to take a "hard look" at new information such as a 2006 study showing that sage grouse avoid energy development sites in breeding and wintering seasons.

In a protest filed by the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council and the Citizens for San Luis Valley Water Protection Coalition, the environmental groups argued that federal energy planners have failed to analyze the impact of developing the forest's 145,000 acres. Exploration and development would displace or marginalize the other uses of the forest, such as angling, hunting and camping and other recreational activities, that BLM is legally obligated to protect, they argue.

The lease parcels include 23 grazing allotments encompassing 133,000 acres in the Rio Grande National Forest. Some of these allotments have been used by the same families for four generations, and ranchers are concerned that oil and gas development could make them unusable for livestock grazing.

Five of the lease parcels are in the sensitive watershed area created by the 2002 Million Fire. Local groups worry that further disturbance to this area will compound erosion and downstream sedimentation and prevent the recovery of wildlife habitats.

Some of the lease parcels are also within 2 to 8 miles of four designated wilderness areas, leading to concerns that they will be affected by noise, air and light pollution related to oil and gas development.

The Rio Grande National Forest also includes archaeological sites that have not been fully surveyed. More than 150 archaeological sites have been identified in the lease sale area, including at least 16 that are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places and some that date back to the Ice Age.

Once a parcel is leased, the Forest Service, which manages the forest but not the minerals beneath, legally cannot prohibit future development. It can only try to minimize the impacts of development.

"The agency can no longer say 'no' once the leases have been issued," Chiropolos said. "They need to have a good discussion [with interested stakeholders] before those leases are issued."

The management plan for the forest has not been updated since 1996. At the time, the Forest Service analyzed 120 acres for oil and gas development, with a maximum number of 23 wells projected in its "reasonable forseeable development" scenario.

"This is the largest land grab in Colorado's history," said Canaly of the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council.

"In my opinion, the administration sees this as an opportunity to grab land that they've [the oil and gas producers] considered marginal," Canaly added. "Well, this 'marginal land' they're looking at happens to be some of the wildest territory left in the lower 48 [states]."

Gable is an independent energy and environmental writer in Woodland Park, Colo.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Name

Email

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment