First, the gas industry should
admit that it is changing Pinedale, and not all the change is good.
Don’t tell us we should be happy to have industry
and the jobs and money that come with it. Certainly, gas
exploration and drilling have made our economy stronger than ever,
and finally, many of us are making a decent living.
But
we gladly lived here before you came, and we endured lean, tough
times. Why? Because we liked living in a small town with its low
crime rate, good hunting, fishing, climbing and hiking, beautiful
mountains, blue lakes and clean air. The gas boom and the new
people moving to Pinedale as a result are putting pressure on these
values. Don’t sugar coat this.
Treat us like
adults. I’ve heard too many industry executives proclaim they
were doing some great good by drilling in Sublette County because,
“the country needs energy.” Last year, Sublette County provided
just 2.5 percent of America’s natural gas supply. If we
turned off the all the gas flowing from Sublette County tomorrow,
fields in Texas, Colorado, or Canada would increase production to
take over this 2.5 percent. The companies drilling here are
publicly held companies run by CEOs who have one mandate from their
board of directors: “Make money for stockholders.”
Despite proclaimed commitments to our gas fields and communities,
Shell, EnCana, Questar, Ultra and BP could sell their leases in
Sublette County tomorrow — just as Anschutz did last summer.
We’re booming now because natural gas prices are at record
highs, and the companies want to drill as fast as they can to sell
as much gas as possible while prices are up. We’re not
stupid. We understand this.
Move your decision-makers to
Pinedale. The Jonah Field earns EnCana $35 million per day and
Jonah alone accounts for 25 percent of EnCana’s produced
natural gas. Yet the Jonah Field team leader, Mike Kennedy, and
senior engineers, geologists, and administrative staff working
exclusively on the Jonah project live in Denver, along with Diana
Hoff, Questar’s General Manager for Pinedale, and the senior
operations people for Ultra. Only three companies —
ExxonMobil, Shell and EOG resources — place their senior
people living close to their fields in Sublette County.
Address issues before they become problems. Forty-five rigs were
drilling in Sublette County last summer. Locals didn’t bring
those rigs in, companies did. Yet the companies seemed surprised
when issues such as air quality, affordable housing and traffic
arose, and they turned to local government for solutions. By now,
all the major operators in Sublette County know how many rigs
they’ll have drilling next summer, how many wells they want
completed, how many new pipelines need to be built. They have a
good estimate on how many new people this activity will bring in
and therefore can reasonably predict what the impacts will be.
Industry should be working now with local government, not offering
belated help in the middle of a crisis next summer.
Designate a local contact. Cally McKee has been a godsend for both
EnCana and Pinedale. Everyone knows she is EnCana’s first
person to call for everything Jonah and EnCana-related. Her
availability alone makes EnCana much easier to work with than any
of the other operators drilling here now. No other company
operating in the Jonah or Pinedale Anticline fields has a similar
accessible contact person. They need one.
Show genuine
concern about the inevitable environmental impacts. Jonah is the
perfect place for a natural gas field, and the Pinedale Anticline
isn’t very far behind. But you can’t drill without
doing some harm to the environment. Mat drilling, flareless
completions, centralized production, directional drilling,
multi-well pads, wildlife studies — all are great. Keep them
coming and do more.
Respect our community and culture.
Too many times I’ve met with oil and gas company executives
who fly into Pinedale on a private jet from Houston or Denver, and
who immediately badmouth my town: “It’s too small, there
aren’t enough restaurants, service is slow, where is your
stop light?” They describe us as Podunk and backward and worthwhile
only because we’re at the heart of their oil fields. We
don’t ask you to understand why we’ve chosen to live
here; we ask you to respect that we do.
Donate generously
to local causes and improvements; we very much appreciate it.
Finally, give locals a chance at jobs and contracts. We understand
that you don’t owe us employment. All we ask is that you give
us a chance to apply.
Rob Shaul is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News (hcn.org). He is the publisher of the
Pinedale Roundup in Wyoming, a small town at the
epicenter of Wyoming’s gas boom.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
