Gas-Drilling Permits in Rockies Outstrip Ability to Tap Resource

As industry scrambles to catch up with existing drilling permits, state and local governments across the Rocky Mountain West, as well as a number of local and national environmental groups, are becoming increasingly concerned -- and in some cases, outraged -- about the environmental and social consequences of increased gas production on federal land.

"When you have a huge portfolio of unused leases, why does the Bush administration continue to issue more, especially in environmentally fragile areas?" asked Dave Alberswerth, who analyzes energy exploration on public lands for the Wilderness Society.

Responding to these concerns, John Wright, a spokesman for the Interior Department, said: "We only lease in areas on public land where there is gas and where we can do it in an environmentally sensitive manner. More important, these decisions are based on land management planning, which is a public process."

Much of the recent grumbling about gas drilling in the West, however, comes from ranchers who say their rights as owners have been trumped by federal mining law.

They complain about the "split-estate." Many ranchers in the region own only surface rights to their land, while the BLM owns sub-surface mineral rights. Oil and gas companies can lease those mineral rights from the BLM and operate on a rancher's land, building roads and drilling wells, even without the rancher's permission.

In an unprecedented response to constituent anger over the split-estate, five state legislatures -- in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, North Dakota and New Mexico -- this year considered laws to protect and enhance the rights of surface owners in disputes with energy companies. Wyoming was the one state to enact such a law (in Montana and Colorado, bills were narrowly turned back).

The Wyoming law calls for negotiations on damage payments, requires land reclamation when drilling is done and spells out rules for mediating disputes. In the other four states, similar or tougher laws are likely to be considered again next year, said Kevin Williams, a field organizer for the Western Organization of Resource Councils, which coordinates local land-use groups.

"It's about polluted water, it's about noise, it's about dust," Williams said. "A lot of people are angry, and this is not going to die down."

Here in the Pinedale area, a report by the Wilderness Society says that the rapid pace of drilling is damaging "a wildlife resource of national significance." The report says that road building associated with drilling has fragmented winter habitat for some of the West's largest and longest-migrating herds of pronghorn antelope and mule deer, while reducing breeding and nesting areas for the sage grouse, a bird many experts regard as threatened.

Local BLM chief Mecham concedes that intensive gas drilling and road construction in the Jonah Field near Pinedale in the past four years has caused some environmental damage, especially to habitat for the sage grouse.

According to Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D), that is an understatement. In a recent letter to Mecham, he said the Jonah Field is an "example of what not to do in the future." Surface disturbance from roads, wells and pipelines is so great, he wrote, that any measure to mitigate the damage would now be a "futile attempt to 'perfume the pig.' " In an interview at her office here, Mecham said that "there are lessons to be learned from Jonah" and that the BLM is now in a better position to control the drilling that has begun in a nearby gas field, called the Pinedale anticline, where there are winter herds of pronghorn and mule deer.

Many local residents, having witnessed the frantic pace of drilling in the past four years, are less sanguine.

"The country needs this energy, but it is insane what happened at the Jonah Field, and there is still no development plan for the Pinedale anticline," said Gordon Johnston, a Bush supporter and former Marine who until January was a Republican county commissioner in Sublette County, which includes Pinedale.

Asked whether he believes the BLM will now ride herd on the gas companies and protect wildlife in the Pinedale anticline, Johnston smiled sadly.

"There is not a doubt in my military mind," he said. "That will not happen."