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Oil and gas

Public Lands Lease Report: Wild Speculation in Wild Places

Posted on by John Rader

While local governments, businesses, and individuals wrestle with the impacts of coronavirus, public lands leasing to the oil and gas industry continues unabated. But this irresponsible federal leasing in Wyoming started well before the pandemic. In recent years, the Bureau of Land Management has drastically ramped up the amount of acreage available for leasing. Hundreds of thousands of acres of public land in Wyoming — including some of our most cherished landscapes and wildlife habitat — have been auctioned for development, with many parcels going for bargain basement prices.

The BLM is required to manage public lands for “multiple use,” balancing a wide range of activities and uses on our public lands — from outdoor recreation to wildlife habitat, preservation of historic and cultural sites, livestock grazing, industrial uses, and more. But today, over a third of all federal public lands in Wyoming are already leased to oil and gas companies for development. At a national level, 90 percent of BLM lands are available for leasing and new federal resource management plans across the West are opening up even more lands to industry, putting recreation and wildlife at risk. 

At the Wyoming Outdoor Council, we wonder where the balance is — and why our exceptional wildlife, outdoor recreation, and historical and cultural resources are being ignored.

That’s why we’re publishing a two-part report on the management of public lands in Wyoming, which includes infographics, photos, and interactive maps so you can better understand what’s at stake. 

Part I, which we’re releasing today, focuses on speculative oil and gas leasing in Wyoming. Specifically, we touch on the scale of leasing in Wyoming, where leases are located, and what resources they are impacting.

Part II, which we’ll publish along with the release of the long-awaited BLM draft resource management plan for the Rock Springs field office, will focus on this plan.- The RMP will dictate the management of millions of acres of public land in Wyoming for decades to come. The region includes treasured places like the Red Desert and irreplaceable wildlife habitat like the Red Desert to Hoback mule deer migration corridor and the Golden Triangle.

READ THE REPORT HERE

Should Energy Companies be Exempt from Environmental Protections During the Coronavirus Pandemic?

Posted on by John Rader

The global outbreak of Covid-19 has upended our lives. Economic activity around the world has slowed at an alarming rate as many of us stop traveling, shutter our businesses, and stay in our homes. In Wyoming, families are feeling the strain, including our energy workforce. Oil prices continue to tumble as demand slows, companies slash spending, and Saudi Arabia and Russia flood the oversupplied markets with cheap crude, furthering a massive oil glut. Across the nation and in Wyoming, major oil and gas companies are already laying off workers.

In these lean times, it’s important to take stock of and be responsible with our resources, support our communities, and plan for a secure economic future. But while individuals and industries across the country are tightening their belts, energy companies are requesting exceptions from basic environmental protections that protect public health — shifting the burden to the public and future generations in a time of crisis. 

Last week, the National Mining Association, the lead lobbyist for the coal industry, requested a temporary reduction or elimination of royalty payments and fees to the Treasury Department. Shortly thereafter, oil and gas companies asked the Environmental Protection Agency for a pass on regulatory requirements, claiming companies can’t afford to pay the employees who are responsible for ensuring compliance. 

On March 26, the EPA issued a sweeping and unprecedented suspension of its enforcement of environmental protections telling companies they do not need to comply with environmental regulations during the outbreak — including protections for water, air, and land quality that prevent pollution and protect public health.. The EPA has not set an end date for this suspension. The new policy would allow companies to both ignore environmental protections and avoid routine monitoring and reporting obligations with no penalty or repercussions for noncompliance. 

At the same time, the Bureau of Land Management is continuing to lease public land to oil and gas companies at unreasonably low prices, and is threatening to open up new lands to development in Resource Management Plans across the West during the pandemic. These actions raise serious fiscal and resource concerns. Should leasing and permitting be allowed to move forward if the energy industry has conceded it will be unable to meet its most basic environmental and public health obligations? Should it get special accommodations while the public faces additional roadblocks to participation? Should the public shoulder additional cleanup and public health costs to prop up an industry beleaguered by global markets?

In response to the pandemic, governors across the country have requested a halt to leasing, RMP revisions, and other federal actions on public lands. This week, conservative and taxpayer groups asked the federal government to suspend public lands leasing, calling it “fiscally reckless” in the current financial market. The financial return to taxpayers from public lands leasing is already far below the market rate, and the current oil glut is depressing returns even further. In BLM’s last Wyoming lease sale, only 61 percent of the acres that were offered actually sold — and 42 percent went for the minimum bid of $2 an acre for a 10 year right to develop. The parcels that weren’t bid on are now available noncompetitively for just $1.50 an acre. Conservation groups have also asked for a halt to leasing, concerned that the public can’t safely convene at meetings or even access important documents. 

Some federal actions, like RMP revisions, can dictate land management for decades. It is critical that local stakeholders can provide input on these plans, understand them, and ask questions of government officials. Based on our concerns about public participation, the Wyoming Outdoor Council and Powder River Basin Resource Council sent a letter to Gov. Mark Gordon on March 26, requesting a pause on public comment periods for state permits and rule changes. The Outdoor Council, along with other conservation and sportsmen’s groups, has also requested a delay of the Rock Springs RMP draft release until public meetings can safely resume. 

In Wyoming, we look out for one another in times of hardship. Many people’s livelihoods are on the line, and people in all lines of work are struggling. But cutting environmental regulations that protect the public’s health and leasing public land at bottom of the barrel prices is not a smart response to this crisis. It’s fiscally irresponsible, shortsighted, and jeopardizes the quality of life and natural resources Wyoming will need for a stable future.

Now is the time to come together and rally around our shared values, work for the well-being of our state, and protect its resources for future generations. That means not loosening the protections Wyoming people depend on for clean air, clean water, and abundant wildlife. In times of crisis, environmental protections are more important than ever. Public participation in government decision making is critical. And fiscal responsibility is even more essential. We should not rush to give away the resources that secure our state’s future — our public lands, our clean air and water, and our outdoor way of life. 

Public lands leasing at bargain basement prices

Posted on by John Rader

For the past nine years, the BLM has been revising its long-term “resource management plan” for more than 3.5 million acres of public lands in southwest Wyoming — including the Red Desert. Once finalized, this plan will dictate which lands are available for oil and gas leasing — and which will be protected because of their wildlife, cultural, scientific, recreational, or other values. And for nine years, the Wyoming Outdoor Council has been advocating strong protections that will safeguard invaluable resources like our big game migration corridors, historic trails, archaeological and scientific resources, and Native American sacred sites. But if similar plans around the West released under this administration’s “energy dominance” policy are any indication, we can expect the upcoming Rock Springs plan both to remove current protections and open even more lands to development. 

Where’s the balance?

Wyomingites walk the talk when it comes to strong ties to the land and natural resources. We recreate outdoors at far above the national average — hunting, fishing, camping, climbing, skiing, you name it — and the vast majority of us support conserving the landscapes we love and the wildlife that rely on them. We recognize that responsible industrial development on our public lands can benefit our communities, but only if it is done right, in places that don’t sacrifice Wyoming’s natural beauty, open spaces, and abundant wildlife. We might choose to develop our resources carefully, but we all tend to agree: our outdoor heritage is not for sale.

Today, the federal government is not respecting the balance Wyomingites have long fought for. Most of the 30 million acres of public lands in Wyoming are managed for “multiple use,” a congressional mandate to balance a wide variety of resources and values — from hunting and fishing, outdoor recreation, and conserving wildlife habitat to livestock grazing, and industrial uses like mining and oil and gas development. In the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, Congress instructs the BLM to manage public lands to

protect the quality of the scientific, scenic, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resource, and archaeological values … preserve and protect certain public lands in their natural condition … provide food and habitat for fish and wildlife and domestic animals; and … provide for outdoor recreation and human occupancy and use.

This congressional act also directs the agency to prioritize designating and protecting “areas of critical environmental concern” — places with extraordinary historic, scenic, cultural, and wildlife values. In the Rock Springs Field Office, this designation protects some of our most treasured public resources including the Steamboat Mountain desert elk herd, Historic South Pass, the Killpecker Sand Dunes, and the Oregon and Mormon national historic trails.

Today, the federal government is not managing for multiple use or prioritizing our most treasured landscapes. That’s bad for Wyoming. Across the West, the BLM is leasing millions of acres of public lands for oil and gas development in places with low oil and gas potential potential, while risking other values, such as wildlife and recreation. 

Since 2018, the federal government has leased about 2 million acres of public land in Wyoming — an area the size of Yellowstone National Park — to oil and gas. Much of this leasing has occurred in sensitive wildlife habitat. In fact, in the past two years, the BLM has leased about 55,000 acres within Wyoming’s prized mule deer migration corridors, while roughly half of all leases since 2018 have been in core greater sage grouse habitat, undermining the collaborative West-wide effort that has so far prevented an Endangered Species Act listing for the bird.

The BLM’s forthcoming Rock Springs plan will reassess which lands are available for oil and gas development — including those currently designated as “areas of critical environmental concern” due to their outstanding wildlife, historic, or scenic values. Our hope is that these special places will retain these strong protections, but what we’re seeing in other plans across the West doesn’t bode well for Wyoming: the BLM has consistently removed  “areas of critical environmental concern” designations, ignored public demand for conservation and access, and opened up sensitive wildlife habitat to industrial development. 

In Montana’s Lewistown draft RMP, the BLM proposed removing almost 23,000 acres of ACECs. In a draft plan in Alaska last year, the BLM proposed removing almost 2 million acres of protections from the prior plan. We’ve seen the same story play out in Idaho, Colorado, and Oregon. And Wyoming is next in line. 

But here’s the thing. Despite its “multiple use” mandate, 90 percent of BLM lands nationwide are already available for development. These recent land-use plan revisions put even more public lands on the auction block every quarter, in the very places that need the most protection.

Selling our public lands for the price of a cup of coffee

It’s disheartening to see the BLM locking up our public lands for one industry’s use and jeopardizing our wildlife for dirt cheap. Under this administration, we’re seeing rampant speculative leasing in Wyoming, with oil and gas companies leasing many parcels for the minimum bid of $2 an acre. For the price of a cup of coffee, companies have purchased the right to develop within the longest recorded mule deer migration corridor and in the Golden Triangle, some of the world’s best sage grouse habitat. To add insult to injury, many of these parcels aren’t even bid on, and are sold after auction for as little as $1.50 an acre. And almost half of the leases in Wyoming are sitting idle — tying up our public lands without producing a drop of oil and gas. 

This is a serious policy failure. The “energy dominance” mandate coming from today’s White House, which prioritizes a single use of our public lands over all others, is a top-down policy that doesn’t respect local priorities or multiple use. It locks up lands for potential industrial development even when there is low oil and gas potential potential — and risks the very resources that make Wyoming special.

We’ll need your help to Protect the Red Desert

The BLM’s widely anticipated Rock Springs resource management plan, which will direct the management of more than 3.5 million acres in Southwest Wyoming, including the Northern Red Desert, could open up even more public lands to development when it’s released in early 2020. If past is prologue, this new plan will remove key protections that Wyomingites have worked for for generations, and make more land available for oil and gas leasing. That’s shortsighted, and it’s not good for Wyoming’s future.

Please stay tuned in the coming months to learn how you can weigh in and help us advocate for a plan that respects balance and protects our most important resources. 

With winter on its way, it’s time to talk ozone in the Upper Green

Posted on by John Burrows

The winter of 2019 was a bad season for ozone pollution in the Upper Green River Basin, particularly near Boulder where monitoring stations recorded nine days in which ozone levels exceeded federal standards. 

Winter ozone is not new for this region, but increasing concentrations over the last several years have called into question whether the regulations governing fugitive emissions from oil and gas operations — and our clean air — need tightening. This was the context that led members of the local Pinedale advocacy group Citizens United for Responsible Energy Development and the Wyoming Outdoor Council to tour the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline natural gas fields with Wyoming’s Department of Environmental Quality. Our goal was to better understand current operations — and learn what state regulators are doing in response to last season’s unhealthy ozone conditions.

CURED member Jana Weber looks at the emissions from a combustor through a flare camera. These cameras can cost more than $100,000 and are used to quickly identify emission leaks.

As one might expect, there’s a lot to see in the state’s largest natural gas field. Our group visited facilities owned by the three major energy companies in the area: Pinedale Energy, Ultra Energy, and Jonah Energy. We examined lake tanks, pig launchers, combusters, disposal facilities, production units, and dehydrators with state-of-the-art flare cameras used to detect leaking emissions from a distance. Looking into these cameras is like looking under a microscope where the invisible world of gasses and heat is revealed in ghostly detail. Technological advances like this are essential for quickly identifying leaks and monitoring emissions and are a key component of what’s known as Leak Detection and Repair.

New technologies might make inspections easier and more efficient, but it remains a daunting task over such a large area. Currently, the Upper Green River Basin has more than 8,000 permitted facilities and only two full-time DEQ air quality inspectors. Even with each inspector performing hundreds of inspections annually, the vast majority of these facilities will go uninspected each year. 

Fortunately, DEQ has ways of prioritizing the most important inspections based upon factors like the facility’s previous violations, its potential for emissions, and when it was last inspected. With low compliance rates a lingering concern and priority, it was also refreshing to learn that inspectors took enforcement actions against several operators this summer for permit violations.

Touring the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline fields was a reminder of the good work and intentions of our state’s Department of Environmental Quality in the Upper Green River Basin. But, while we were pleased with what we saw, the bar for whether or not current efforts are enough will be determined by the ozone levels we see in future winters. We’re encouraged that the DEQ seems to be taking last year’s violations seriously and has set ambitious goals for engine monitoring and working to bring on a third air quality inspector in the basin this winter. However, funding for the department’s two current full-time inspectors will need to be added to the DEQ’s budget next year, due to the elimination of the federal contribution for this work. 

We have to make sure that DEQ has the resources it needs to prioritize inspections and improve compliance rates to achieve better air quality in the Upper Green. You can be sure that the Outdoor Council will be advocating for this at the 2020 legislative session in Cheyenne. 

The DEQ’s annual pre-season ozone meeting is slated for November 18 at the Boulder Community Center in Boulder, WY. Outdoor Council staff and CURED members will be in attendance. More information can be found here. 

Deal withdraws 24,000 acres in Wyoming Range from oil and gas drilling

Posted on by Lisa McGee

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In what made for an especially happy Fourth of July, a deal was struck to protect 24,000 acres in the Wyoming Range from oil and gas drilling. This is tremendous news and gets us one step closer to realizing the collective vision behind the 2009 Wyoming Range Legacy Act: To protect the wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities in our state’s namesake mountains, today and for future generations.

Our gratitude goes out to our partners at The Trust for Public Land for negotiating and the Wyss Foundation for funding the purchase and retirement of the last remaining valid, existing oil and gas leases in the Wyoming Range. Our gratitude also extends to Gov. Matt Mead for supporting this outcome. “The Wyoming Range offers vistas, great outdoor recreation and diverse wildlife habitat,” Gov. Mead said in a statement. “The BLM worked with these companies to close out these leases and provide a good balance of development and environmental considerations.”

Here’s the backstory:

In the 1990s, Stanley Energy had already acquired oil and gas leases in the Wyoming Range (see leases in green on map). It sought to acquire additional acreage in the national forest and nominated nearby parcels. Despite public opposition, in 2005 the U.S. Forest Service consented to lease more than 40,000 acres along the eastern edge of the Wyoming Range. The BLM auctioned the leases and Stanley Energy was among the high bidding companies (see leases in orange on map).

Protests and appeals lead by the Wyoming Outdoor Council and joined by citizens, sportsmen and outfitter partners were ultimately successful. The Forest Service and BLM were instructed to go back and remedy oversights made in the initial and improper decision to lease. If the values considered on the whole caused the Forest Service to make a different decision — a no leasing decision — the contested oil and gas leases could be cancelled.

Passage of the Wyoming Range Legacy Act in 2009 made clear that the fate of these 40,000 contested acres was in the hands of the Forest Service. The agency could authorize or cancel them based on a thorough and updated analysis. If the leases were cancelled, the high bidders would get their money back — and, more importantly, because the Act prohibits future oil and gas leasing, the area would never be leased again.

After more than a decade and two environmental impact statements, the Forest Service reached a final decision in early 2017. Thankfully, it was the right decision — one we worked hard to secure, and one we celebrated with our members and partners. The roughly 40,000 acres of contested leases would be cancelled and high bidders would be refunded their money.

Because the BLM cannot legally authorize oil and gas leases over the objection of the Forest Service when mineral leases underlie national forest land, the BLM is obligated to issue cancellation letters and refunds to the high bidders. In exchange for accepting the BLM’s decision to cancel the leases and refund the money Stanley Energy spent to bid on the 21,000 acres of contested oil and gas leases (orange), an offer was made that its 24,000 acres of valid, existing oil and gas leases (green) would be purchased.

Thanks to The Trust for Public Land’s work and the generosity of the Wyss Foundation, another 45,000 acres in the Wyoming Range will be forever protected for its wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities. We couldn’t be more grateful.

 

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This map (click to enlarge) depicts more than 10 years of efforts to retire and remove oil and gas lease parcels from the Wyoming Range, where a broad coalition of citizens sought to protect the area for its unique wildlife and recreational opportunities. (Map created by the Wyoming Outdoor Council.) 

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