The Bush administration’s push for
increased oil and gas development in the West just got a boost from
the Bureau of Land Management. In April, the agency issued two
separate decisions that pave the way for 66,000 new coalbed methane
wells and 5,000 conventional oil and gas wells in the Powder River
Basin by 2011.
The decisions do “not approve any drilling
applications,” says Greg Albright, external affairs specialist for
BLM’s Montana state office. “Before we would approve a
drilling application, we would do another level of environmental
study that would be specific to a particular application.” But
environmentalists, landowners and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe have
filed four separate lawsuits against the agency. The lawsuits claim
that the drilling will deplete aquifers, pollute surface water,
fragment wildlife habitat, harm threatened and endangered species
and violate the rights of private landowners with federally-owned
mineral rights under their property.
“The (decision)
makes a mockery out of our federal public-land laws and the federal
trust responsibility to our tribe,” says Gail Small, director of
Native Action, a nonprofit Native American advocacy organization.
“They have failed miserably to adequately analyze or mitigate not
only tribal concerns, but the general public’s
concerns.”
The decisions are online at
http://www.mt.blm.gov/.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A green light for gas drilling.
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