Bureau of Land Misuse

[Oak]

The BLM is becoming a one-trick pony around here. I suppose we've got to sacrifice something for our natural gas. Winter range is as good as anything.

(Couldn't find this picture on the net, so this is a photo of the newspaper)

Christopher Tomlinson/The Daily Sentinel
The level of development on private property along Parachute Creek is such that viable critical winter range for deer and
elk virtually is non-existent. The Division of Wildlife is pushing energy companies to preserve winter range along the Roan Plateau.

Bureau of Land Misuse
Drilling on Roan could negatively affect wildlife

By DAVE BUCHANAN
The Daily Sentinel
Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Bruce Gordon banked his small plane and stared down at a line of drill pads marching across the top of the Roan Plateau. Gordon’s attention was fixed at the sight of the six scars on the plateau’s winter-bare landscape, an umbilical road tying them together like knots on a rope, each one edging along an unnamed ridge toward the westernmost edge of the Naval Oil Shale Reserve.

“I can’t believe it,” said Gordon, the lead pilot and president of EcoFlight, a wildlands conservation group based in Aspen. “I flew over here earlier this summer and there’s so much more development now. It’s like a land rush.”

Gordon was leading one of his group’s semi-regular trips across the Roan Plateau, giving various public groups the rare opportunity to see first-hand the level of development happening up there.

As energy development continues to ravage parts of western Colorado, and in particular creep closer to the still-unmarked top of the Roan Plateau, more voices are expressing opposition to the Bureau of Land Management’s energy leasing policies.

“The BLM is becoming a single-use agency,” said Ron Velarde, northwest region manager for the Colorado Division of Wildlife. “I don’t blame the energy companies, I blame the BLM for letting this happen on our public lands.”

Trout Unlimited is concerned that “development could result in impacts that would severely harm or even wipe out the sensitive populations of Colorado River cutthroat trout on the Roan,” said Corey Fisher, energy field coordinator for Trout Unlimited. He quoted a BLM analysis that said effects could be irreversible, “especially those that eliminate genetically unique resources ... such as genetically pure Colorado River cutthroat trout.”

While most of the drilling around and on the Roan Plateau is occurring on private land, some is being done on public lands around the base of the plateau. Some interests have written off the bottom of the cliffs as a quasi-sacrifice zone to energy development, but the DOW is quick to differ.

“The base of the plateau is critical (big game) winter range,” DOW spokesman Randy Hampton told Daily Sentinel reporter Bobby Magill. “If (the energy companies) hammer the bottom, there won’t be any wildlife on top.”

Still, much of the focus now is on preserving what little unmarred habitat remains on the top of the plateau. The federal lands up there haven’t yet been leased, although that may occur as soon as late next summer.
Wildlife managers, hunters, anglers and conservationists all know that once the BLM opens the plateau to drilling, the effects from development will forever change the Roan Plateau.

The best option, obviously, would be to disallow any energy development in the still untouched parts of the Roan, but that’s unlikely to happen.

What critics of the drilling would like to see is moderation, a slow staging of the development so effects could be properly addressed. Stipulations and restrictions could address such problems as controlling runoff, habitat fragmentation, and loss of public access before they happen.

And, Velarde emphasized, these are public lands, no matter how often that point is overlooked by pro-development interests.

However, once the development begins, the constant traffic, noise and disturbance compromise wildlife and recreational uses to where the land becomes a industrial zone and little else.

Part of the 73,600 acres of federal land on the plateau won’t be developed, said BLM spokesman David Boyd. Some of it is too steep or in riparian areas and some of it is managed with NSO (no surface occupancy) restrictions.

“Nothing on the top of the plateau is closed to leasing but a little less than half of it is NSO,” Boyd said. That means in order to extract the gas, a company has to use off-site directional drilling.

Other restrictions Boyd listed from the BLM’s Roan management plan include “staging” the development along the ridge lines and making sure one well pad is finished and reclamation is under way before another pad can be started.

Of the leasable federal lands, approximately 34,758 acres, only 1 percent can be disturbed at any one time, Boyd said.

“We think most of the development will be accessible by existing roads but some of the roads probably will have to be improved,” Boyd said. “We think this will motivate them to reclaim things more quickly.”

But it’s the cumulative effects that cause the most concern for sportsmen and conservationists.

It’s long-lasting effects on water, wildlife and air quality. A clear day is rare in western Garfield County because of the dusty haze from constant traffic on gravel and dirt roads. A glance last week at upper Parachute Creek revealed clouds of dust reminiscent of nuclear bomb tests 50 years ago.

Uncontrolled runoff from well pads and roads could damage or destroy isolated populations of cutthroat trout, especially if development reaches down the sides of the ridges.

“The key is to protect the watersheds from ridge top to ridge top,” Fisher said. “Gas development (currently) is not precluded in headwaters of the (cutthroat) stream reaches.”

Velarde said the 1 percent disturbance limit and requiring mitigation on pads before others are built might soothe some of the DOW’s concerns.

“But if they are able to drill all over the Roan Plateau, we have problems,” he said.

A provision introduced by Reps. Mark Udall and John Salazar in the House-approved version of the 2007 Energy Bill includes NSO restrictions across the top of the plateau while allowing off-site (directional) drilling to tap the resources below.

As Gordon’s small plane flew across the plateau’s well-drilled south face, his guests looked down on a couple of new, biggie-sized well pads at the base of the cliffs, where two rigs were working side-by-side. Someone remembered that Williams Energy RMT recently announced its plans to start cluster drilling.

Gordon sighed and headed his plane for home.

“It’s a cluster all right,” he observed.

 

[Wyodeerhunter]

sounds and looks like a lot of WY.

 

[Oak]

In an effort to be "fair and balanced", here's information on the recent lease sale in this area.

Record sale 'where the gas is'

By BOBBY MAGILL
The Daily Sentinel

Thursday, November 08, 2007

The quarterly Bureau of Land Management oil and gas lease sale set a state record Thursday, with one Garfield County parcel selling for $5.2 million, which resulted in an unprecedented price per acre.

The 200-acre parcel, sold to Larkspur-based Avalanche Energy, is within two miles of the Roan Plateau Planning Area, BLM spokeswoman Jaime Gardner said.

The high bid amounted to $26,000 an acre, the highest per-acre bid for an oil and gas lease in Colorado history, Gardner said. By contrast, the average per-acre bid in Thursday’s lease sale was $91.66.

The lease is under protest by the Center for Native Ecosystems, which means it won’t be granted to Avalanche Energy until the protest is resolved, she said.

Avalanche Energy could not be reached for comment.

The record-breaking bid proves the value of opening the Roan Plateau to drilling, Colorado Oil and Gas Association consultant Kathy Hall said.

“They know where the gas is,” she said. “The significance is to show the value of the Naval Oil Shale Reserve leasing area.”

Joe Neuhof, of the Colorado Environmental Coalition in Grand Junction, said it’s unfortunate Avalanche’s money is going to the federal treasury when local communities are scrambling to offset the impact of natural gas development on their quality of life.

But keeping drilling rigs off the Roan runs deeper than communities’ need to soften the impact of the energy boom, he said.

“What is the true value of our natural and national heritage in these special places?” Neuhof said. “We need to be real careful in jumping to conclusions when putting a dollar value on our heritage. That doesn’t necessarily prove the worth of drilling special places such as the Roan Plateau. Some of the values in those places are worth more than dollar signs.”

All told, Thursday’s lease sale netted the BLM $9.6 million. The agency sold 112 parcels over 102,989 acres, out of 126 parcels up for bid over 114,950 acres.

Many of those parcels were in Jackson, Moffat and San Miguel counties. Two were in Garfield County.

All of the Jackson County parcels were sold, Gardner said. About half of the parcels originally offered there were withdrawn from the sale out of concern about the effect of drilling on greater sage grouse and other wildlife habitat.

More than 30,000 acres in Grand County were also withdrawn from the sale after communities there protested.

BLM Deputy State Director Lynn Rust called the agency’s approach to leasing in Thursday’s sale “smart.”

“Our focus is on smart up-front planning, solid implementation of best practices and working with industry to reduce environmental impacts,” he said.

 

[BigHornRam]

"Joe Neuhof, of the Colorado Environmental Coalition in Grand Junction, said it’s unfortunate Avalanche’s money is going to the federal treasury when local communities are scrambling to offset the impact of natural gas development on their quality of life."

This guy sound's like Hillary when she tryed to defend Eliot Spitzer reguarding the illegal drivers license issue. Now it's a states rights issue, not a federal one.

 

[Wyodeerhunter]

Imagine being a deer up in the mountains all summer and fall and then have to come down to where all the oilfield trash is, and much worse, oil field trash from texas Heres a couple pics from WY:

 

[ELKCHSR]

It doesn't seem like the deer cares to much and it looks pretty healthy...

Fortunately our wildlife sees things a little differently and aren't affected so much by things that create eye soars to humans

 

[JoseCuervo]

It doesn't seem like the deer cares to much and it looks pretty healthy...

Fortunately our wildlife sees things a little differently and aren't affected so much by things that create eye soars to humans

Only the Cheese would think it is fortunate to see a Muley Buck like that having to spend its winter in an industrial environment.

 

[Wyodeerhunter]

ElkCHSR,
That buck is healthy because he just came down for the year to the "killing fields". Poor thing will get poached by a tex ass this winter. You wait and see.

Here are a couple more pics from the oilfield. These bobcats are going to live a healthy life in those pipes. I could keep on posting pics but they take up space on my computer so that will be all in this thread.

 

[ELKCHSR]

Nice looking cats...

They still look pretty young...

I wonder if they hang around because of the rodent population that probably lives around all that stuff...

Lets hope the deer gets a chance to do some breeding before he gets taken out so his gene pool keeps going...

That is one dandy buck...

 

[noharleyyet]

Wyo...don't be so hard on my Texazz bretheren, you may need one of them to give you a ride to the job fair when they leave town.

 

[Wyodeerhunter]

Hahahaha you may be right NoHarley, you might be right hahahahaha

 

[1_pointer]

Well, I guess at least the oil companies pay their help well. I don't think I've ever seen more nice new shiny pickups than I did in Rock Springs in February. I know I couldn't afford what those folks are driving...

 

[Wyodeerhunter]

lol........................