Federal Court Rules Against BLM on Oil/Gas Lease Issue in Utah

[MarvB]

A federal district court in Salt Lake City late Wednesday handed the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) a defeat in its fight to open up more federal lands to oil and natural gas leasing, ruling that BLM violated federal environmental laws when it sold leases on 16 parcels of so-called "wilderness-quality lands" in southern Utah.

Environmental group attorneys issued a statement lauding the ruling and predicting it would have "West-wide" implications in curbing BLM efforts, but it was not clear what it meant for lands already leased in the West.

"This is a tremendously important decision," said Stephen Bloch, staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Society. Sharon Buccino, land program manager for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the court's ruling showed that "we don't need to sacrifice our wild and precious places to meet our energy needs."

The lawsuit had challenged the first oil/gas lease sale following a controversial 2003 settlement between Utah staff officials and the federal Interior Department. It was commonly called the "no more wilderness" settlement, the environmental groups said in making the announcement on the court's action.

BLM allegedly was given the right to make the lease sales in some of Utah and parts of other western states. Since then, BLM reportedly has sold oil/gas leases on more than 100 separate parcels in Utah alone, totaling more than 125,000 acres. The agency itself, when pressed, acknowledges the "wilderness caliber" of the lands, according to the Wilderness Alliance and NRDC attorneys.

"It is common sense that the BLM should consider an area's wilderness character before deciding whether to allow oil/gas drilling," said NRDC's Buccino. "Now the court has ruled that it's the law."

 

[MarvB]

Here's another (different) bit of info in the news...

Wyoming Lease Sale Revenue Up 40%

Wyoming's Bureau of Land Management garnered more than $6.17 million for leasing rights and rental fees offered at its bimonthly federal oil and gas lease auction held in Cheyenne Aug. 1. That marks a more than 40% increase over proceeds from the state's previous sale in June. By comparison, the June sale garnered $4.4 million. The state gets half of the sale proceeds.

Oil and gas leases on 10 parcels in the Bridger-Teton National Forest sold for $905,852. Bits totaling nearly $5.93 million ranged from the federally mandated minimum of $2 per acre to a high of $2,700 per acre. Successful bidders also pay $130 per parcel as an administrative fee and yearly rental of $1.50 per acre. It is the U.S. Forest Service that decides which of its parcels will be sold at BLM lease sales.

Overall, 147,428 acres in 196 parcels were leased. Parcels that didn't receive bids at auction are available non competitively for the yearly rental fee and a $335 administrative fee.

Oil and gas operations on BLM-administered public lands and federal mineral estate in Wyoming produced more nearly 29.82 million bbl of oil and more than 1.41 Tcf of gas and generated about $799.22 million in federal royalties last year. Half of the payments were disbursed within Wyoming.

The next sale will be Oct. 3 in Cheyenne.

 

[Oak]

Industry reps say they face too many development obstacles

By JUDITH KOHLER - Associated Press Writer - 08/08/2006
DENVER — The Rockies, from Montana to Mexico, are the single greatest source of untapped domestic energy in the lower 48 states, and the oil and gas industry needs to do more so lawsuits and other obstacles don’t tie up vital resources on Western public lands, speakers at an energy conference said Monday.

Although environmentalists and people facing drilling on or near their land believe the pace of energy development is skyrocketing, industry representatives said they face too many obstacles.

‘‘Through lawsuits and other actions, it’s more and more difficult to get leases on public land,’’ Duane Zavadil of the Bill Barrett Corp. said during a summit sponsored in part by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Association, a trade group.

The Rockies hold 224 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, or 41 percent of the reserves in the lower 48, Zavadil said. About 70 percent of the region’s minerals are on federal land, he added.

‘‘In most other countries that would be considered a good thing. We’d have some self determination in our source of natural gas,’’ Zavadil said. ‘‘But the federal land management is in fact imposing requirements that limit access to 137 (trillion cubic feet) of that 224 tcf.’’

Creating more obstacles is litigation by environmental groups and protests of leases issued by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, said attorney Bret Sumner of the Washington-based law firm of Fulbright and Jaworski. He encouraged energy companies to get involved early and help head off lawsuits by hiring outside experts versed in ‘‘sound science’’ and pointing out potential problems to public officials.

The industry also needs to get its message to the public in the face of growing alliances among traditional environmentalists and hunter and anglers, said Ken Wonstolen, senior vice president and general counsel for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. He said while the groups typically have different political viewpoints, ‘‘it’s an effective marriage of convenience right now.’’

‘‘It’s something we have to address very seriously in this industry,’’ Wonstolen said.

Other worrisome signs include calls by such typically pro-industry politicians as Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., and Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., for limits on drilling, Wonstolen said.

Thomas has said national forests generally should be off-limits to drilling. Burns has proposed legislation banning new energy development on federal lands along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, which environmentalists and hunting and fishing groups want left alone.

The Rockies are experiencing an energy boom, with record rates of new gas wells and hundreds of thousands of acres of leases issued on federal land. BLM officials have said they’re struggling to keep up with the number of drilling permit applications, which increased 27 percent between 2004 and 2006.

A report released last year by the Government Accountability Office found the BLM is so busy processing energy permits that workers are having trouble meeting their responsibility to care for wildlife, cultural resources and the environment.

Nada Culver, an attorney with The Wilderness Society, said the figures tell a different story from the one told by the industry.

‘‘There have been very few lawsuits actually brought on these issues,’’ Culver said. ‘‘If you actually looked at the number of acres of federal and public land, especially BLM land, made available to oil and gas leasing, the total acreage (litigated) would be a very small percentage.’’

Industry officials, though, pointed to protests filed on proposed leases. In Colorado, protests have been filed on 131 of the 158 parcels covering nearly 170,000 acres to be offered in an oil and gas lease auction Thursday.

Sumner noted that a federal judge last week struck down the leasing of more than a dozen parcels in Utah, saying the BLM didn’t consider the wilderness characteristics of the land.

Some communities and counties are also exploring enacting their own regulations to keep energy development off certain areas, Wonstolen said.

A group in Grand Junction is trying to get a measure on the November ballot that would give the western Colorado city the right to strictly regulate any gas drilling in its watershed. Earlier this year, the BLM approved leases in the watersheds of Grand Junction and neighboring Palisade, but agreed to suspend the leases for a year to address residents’ concerns.

The Rocky Mountain Natural Gas Strategy Conference and Investment Forum and the simultaneous Rocky Mountain Natural Gas Geology and Resources Conference run through Wednesday at the Colorado Convention Center.

 

[MarvB]

Oak, one thing that got me in the article was that

Parcels that didn't receive bids at auction are available non competitively for the yearly rental fee and a $335 administrative fee.

Are companies, just for sake of tying up the land, actively leasing the non-comp areas because they only have to pay $1.50 and acre + a one time $335 admin fee? And how can three hundered bucks come anywhere close to cover the cost of processing the paperwork on something like this unless its strictly a rubber stamp operation? Amazing..........

 

[Oak]

I can't answer that, Marv. It does seem ridiculously cheap. I guess the cost of the leases definately isn't one of the 'obstacles.'

 

[MarvB]

I hear that....I would guess that most these co's would poney up a great deal more coin though just to hold it as an "option". You hear so much flack about how the $/AUM for grazing is too cheap but yet this amounts to yet even more of a giveaway IMHO. ...

 

[MarvB]

Here's another one of interest for ya!

House Lawmaker Calls for Probe of BLM Activities in Utah

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) has called for an internal Interior Department investigation into an e-mail from a Utah lobbyist that he believes suggests that agency officials conspired behind closed doors to "fix" new land-use plans to assure more oil and natural gas development on wilderness-quality lands in the state.

The disclosure of the e-mail came on the heels of a federal court decision last week in Salt Lake City, UT, that handed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) a defeat in its fight to open up more federal lands to oil and gas leasing. The court ruled that BLM violated federal environmental laws when it sold leases on 16 parcels of so-called "wilderness-quality lands" in southern Utah (see Daily GPI, Aug. 7).

"In making promises behind closed doors to certain parties who are primarily interested in maximizing the economic exploitation of these lands, BLM officials may have not only undermined the integrity of the agency's land-use planning process, but may have made commitments that will result in the permanent impairment of the environmental integrity of these lands for generations to come," wrote Hinchey Wednesday in a letter to Interior Inspector General Early Devaney. Hinchey serves on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, which oversees BLM's budget.

The e-mail in question came from Robert Weidner, a lobbyist for several Utah counties, and it reported on a July meeting with Henri Bisson, acting director of the BLM office in Utah, and Interior official Jim Hughes that addressed oil and gas and other issues in ongoing Utah BLM resource management plans (RMPs), according to Hinchey. Weidner's e-mail to his clients said, "We as counties owe it [to] each other to strike while the iron is hot in finalizing these RMPs. As the governing documents over public lands for the next 20 years, working with the new state BLM director and state to 'fix' these RMPs is an opportunity which may never come."

The "clear implication of the Weidner e-mail is that BLM and the Bush administration have breached the public's trust. BLM has apparently agreed to manipulate its blueprint for managing the public's lands to benefit the oil and gas industry," said Stephen Bloch of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which along with the Natural Resources Defense Council and The Wilderness Society, filed the lawsuit that led to BLM's defeat in court last week.

In response to the Weidner e-mail, Hinchey has asked Interior's Inspector General to conduct an inquiry into the July meeting between Bisson, Hughes and Weidner, as well as into the larger question of whether the RMPs are being rigged in favor of the oil and gas industry. A response from BLM was not immediately available.

 

[Oak]

Interesting....

How about this? (from an obviously biased source)
_______________________________________________________________

BLM Asks the Public to Trust Oil Companies to Pay for a Balanced Management Plan for Sensitive Colorado Landscapes


The White River Field Office (WRFO) of the Colorado BLM recently announced its plans to let the oil and gas industry hire a contractor to prepare a critical document that would determine the management guidelines for almost 1.5 million acres of public lands in western Colorado that contain spectacular wilderness-quality lands, important big game and sage grouse habitat, sensitive plant species, and fabulous recreation opportunities – an area also targeted by the industry for oil and gas development.

The current White River Resource Management Plan (RMP) was completed in 1997 and predicted that 1,100 wells would be drilled over the 20-year life of the plan. Recently, however, oil and gas companies operating in the area informed the BLM that they expect to reach the 1,100-well threshold as early as 2008, and would like to drill as many as 15,000 additional wells – an order of magnitude increase over the number of wells envisioned in the current management plan. While the BLM acknowledges that this drastic increase in oil and gas development is a major change in circumstances, in response the BLM is simply planning to amend its WRFO management plan rather than doing a full plan revision that considers the effects this dramatic increase in oil and gas activities would have on land-allocation decisions such as protection of wildlife habitat and proposed wilderness areas. Adding insult to injury, the BLM has entered into an agreement with eight oil and gas companies whereby the companies will hire a contractor to prepare this isolated “oil and gas amendment” to the White River RMP—calling into question whether other public values will be adequately addressed or protected, and giving the perception that the oil and gas industry is calling the shots on management of Colorado’s public lands.

 

[MarvB]

Any bet that "critical document " is likely half written already by the oil/gas lobbying group?

 

[1_pointer]

As related to me from a long-time BLM employee from a friend of his who is a 'well-to-do' in The Nature Conservancy, "We long for the days when grazing was THE issue..."