There is a reason why many of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plans to lease Colorado for oil and gas development have been protested of late — the Bush administration is pushing to open places that are better managed for other uses, generally without adequate analysis.
On the leasing block in the last few years have been Colorado state parks and wildlife refuges, tens of thousands of acres of roadless national forest, municipal watersheds, critical habitats, and important recreation land.
Meanwhile, oil and gas companies in the area have already locked up well over a million acres of public lands in Colorado, but have as of yet only put about one-third into production. Williams, one of the larger operators in Garfield County, recently admitted it had over a 10-year stockpile of drilling sites.
And profits are good. A quick perusal of investor and corporate Web sites shows that most of these companies project very rosy scenarios for investors as Colorado’s gas gets shipped off to the Midwest, driving up local prices as well.
Regarding the Roan Plateau, there is an oft-heard claim that only 1 percent of the area would be disturbed and that over half is entirely off-limits to drilling. Both these claims are false, and those who repeat them have either not read the BLM plan or are intentionally misleading the public.
After an area has been bladed and drilled, a company merely has to have started interim reclamation and they can move on to the next location, with that land no longer counting (in BLM’s view) as developed. Buried in the BLM plan the agency admits that restoration of wildlife habitat could take 20 years or more, although the BLM public relations team never repeats that fact.
Few areas on the Roan Plateau would be off-limits to drilling, in spite of claims that over half is protected by so-called No Surface Occupancy (NSO) stipulations. A quick review of the announcement for the upcoming August lease sale — in which the Bush administration plans to offer up all the Roan’s remaining unleased public lands — shows that all stipulations can be waived, most at the whim of BLM. Are riparian areas off-limits? No, 100 feet per every mile of stream can be developed, according to the sale announcement. Most other NSO stipulations have similar caveats (and BLM reserves its ability to change all of them) although one would be hard-pressed to find BLM spokespeople admitting that when spinning their plan.
The Roan Plateau Planning Area represents a tiny portion of the Piceance Basin, where over 90 percent of the BLM lands are already leased and much of the private land is under control of oil and gas companies. It is also among Colorado’s top places for wildlife habitat and biological diversity — rivaling several of our national parks.
One day Colorado’s gas will be gone — most having been shipped out of state — and with it the jobs and revenue that comes from this activity. The question remains, what will be left for the wildlife and human inhabitants that remain?
Pete Kolbenschlag works on natural resource issues and is one of the founders of the Save the Roan Plateau campaign. He lives in Paonia.
