January 12, 2006 (Washington, DC) - An analysis of 11 pending and completed oil and gas plans for key Western areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management shows that BLM has increasingly overridden its own policies to facilitate dramatically expanded drilling on public lands. The analysis of 11 BLM priority plans, which affect more than 30 million acres in Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Utah, shows that the plans will lead to more than triple the amount of wells allowed to be drilled, as compared to current conditions.
"In its rush to open more and more Western land to oil and gas development, the Interior Department has essentially abandoned its mandate to manage these lands for a variety of uses, including recreation and conservation," said The Wilderness Society's Nada Culver, who analyzed the plans. "Instead, the agency is auctioning off public lands to the semi-private profitable domain of oil and gas companies. The amount of land dedicated for planned oil and gas development will exclude other uses and will inevitably permanently damage these places. The lack of balance in these plans is shocking and has grave implications for Westerners and wildlife that depend on these lands."
Resource management plans have significant ramifications for the West because they guide how natural resources and activities will be managed during the next 15 to 20 years. These plans, which take several years to develop, spell out such details as which lands will be open to oil and gas development and off-road vehicle use, or for other non-consumptive uses like protection of wildlife habitat, wilderness values, and non-motorized recreation. The Wilderness Society analysis is notable because it presents the first comprehensive overview of the 11 plans prioritized as "time sensitive" by BLM in 2001 explicitly to address oil and gas development.
"Funding for this planning initiative was originally sought by the Department of Interior in order to ensure that BLM could properly manage the public lands in light of the heightened conservation mandate tied to the establishment of new national monuments, conservation areas and other special places," said Culver, "but this Administration basically hijacked the funding to focus on changing plans to open more lands to oil and gas drilling."
BLM's fast-tracking efforts were slowed by public opposition to the oil and gas bias, public advocacy for the protection of other uses, such as recreation, and the application of existing laws regarding planning and multiple-use management. The BLM has made radical changes in policy, such as the elimination of a policy that required that oil and gas leasing and development projects be denied if they could interfere with alternatives that could be considered in the planning process, such as protection of wilderness quality lands. In February, 2004, BLM issued formal guidance stating that oil and gas development could and should be permitted regardless of ongoing planning processes. The guidance then went further, requiring field offices that wanted to delay leasing to get approval from the state director and submit substantial amounts of documentation.
A case in point: The Draft Plan for the Price, Utah Field Office would approve 99% of legally available lands for oil and gas development in an area containing close to 1 million acres of wilderness quality lands (as acknowledged by the BLM), stretches of three rivers nominated for Wild and Scenic River designation, and priceless cultural resources in Nine Mile Canyon, a place about which the BLM said, "Nine Mile Canyon contains a regionally significant concentration of cultural resource sites within a steepwalled canyon. The rugged canyon contains numerous petroglyphs and other cultural resource sites visible from the county road that follows the canyon bottom" (Draft RMP, p. 3-23). The Price plan is currently more than two years behind schedule - not surprising given the incredible natural values at stake. In the meantime, following its newly-minted policy to lease regardless of the plan, the BLM has continued to issue new leases and is currently working on approval of a project for 750 new wells on at least 500 separate locations - even though the new plan has not yet been completed.
"Over the past five years, the BLM has shown a dogged determination to open nearly every last unprotected acre to oil and gas drilling, often at the expense of wildlife or water protection," said Culver. "When faced with public opposition or by the agency's own long-standing internal barriers to making oil and gas development the only use of public lands, BLM's response has been simply to revise policies and plow forward."
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