WildEarth Guardians

Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Commentary: Money Talks Big In The West

In N.M. and its neighbor states, leases are given to oil and gas companies so rapidly, even drilling can't keep up. And yet, these companies want more and we are no closer to energy independence
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

The New Mexico Oil and Gas Association ("Mine the lands," Insight & Opinion, Jan. 10) proclaims that advocating protection of our best remaining natural places, and urging a shift to clean energy sooner rather than later, are hindering industry's ability to drill. An industry that is enjoying record profits, while the rest of us pay sky-high prices at the pumps and in our homes, has a lot of nerve suggesting it is concerned about the public interest.

Moreover, the association's claims don't ring true. Despite nearly unlimited access to the same lands the American public treasures for their natural values, the industry clamors for more.

In the United States, since 1982, more than 229 million acres of public land have been leased to oil and gas companies. That's larger than the combined size of New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona. In just the past three years, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the N.M. State Land Office have leased more than 1.2 million acres in New Mexico to oil and gas companies.

While federal environmental safeguards should mean these areas are offered for lease only after cautious reflection, in fact the BLM is violating these safeguards by failing to consider impacts to wildlife and public health before it turns our public lands over to industrialization by oil and gas companies.

In BLM's Jan. 18 quarterly lease sale, we identified significant environment concerns on nearly 80 percent of the acreage offered up for lease. Incredibly, there is no formal public oversight of environmental impacts from the State Land Office's oil and gas program.

The speed of leasing is matched by the government's swift rubber-stamping of drilling applications. For example, in 2004, the BLM approved approximately 5,800 new wells in five Western states, versus 3,600 new wells in 2003. BLM announced last fall that it is hiring 35 more staff people in New Mexico to process new well applications even more quickly. BLM will increasingly fast-track new wells by exempting them from public review, thereby failing to protect the public from harmful impacts to air quality, groundwater and wildlife.

The Washington Post reported in 2005 that there are many more wells that have already been approved by the government than the oil and gas companies have been able to drill. For instance, in New Mexico in 2004, while 1,321 wells were approved by the BLM, only a little over half of that number - 726 wells - were drilled.

In addition to the rubber stamp being given to new wells in already developed oil fields on our public lands, consider also the government's push to open up our best remaining natural areas to industrialization by oil and gas companies: the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Otero Mesa, a jewel of the Chihuahuan Desert; northern New Mexico's "Valley of Life," the Valle Vidal; and the unique and diverse Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Roswell. There is no replacing these precious natural areas once they have been destroyed by oil and gas operations.

Most of us recognize the wisdom of safeguarding these wild areas, but the Bush administration is increasingly cutting the public out of environmental decision-making. A witness to this are attempts to dismantle our nation's effective and popular environmental safeguards, particularly the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.

We don't deny that leases and royalties provide money for the state and local governments. However, massive costs are being paid in terms of wildlife extinction, lives disrupted with noisy compressors, landscapes fragmented by new wells, roads and pipelines, precious water supplies polluted, our air despoiled by nitrogen and carbon dioxide from compressors, and climate change linked to fossil fuel emissions. As a society, we cannot tolerate deferring these significant costs to our children and grandchildren.

So, 229 million acres of public lands later, are we any closer to achieving energy independence? Since 1982, U.S. dependence on foreign oil has more than doubled, and dependence on foreign natural gas has tripled. Can there be any doubt that we must step up energy conservation and transition to clean energy, instead of continually slaking industry's unquenchable thirst to develop the last meager pockets of petroleum on public lands?

Rather than being over-regulated, the industry is enjoying a golden age, where it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell where the oil and gas industry ends and the Bush administration begins. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and others in the administration all have or have had close ties with oil industry executives, and the Bush energy plan is a disastrous scheme to turn over as much of our public land as possible to this industry, despite the ecological hazards of drilling and the impossibility of restoring precious natural areas once they have been destroyed by oil and gas operations.

We must insist on a precautionary approach by government and especially public land managers, so that undue costs are not borne by fragile wild places and future generations of people and wildlife.

New Mexico's rich natural heritage deserves even more safeguards from a government that is bending to the profit-driven whims of the oil and gas industry.

Rosmarino is conservation director for the WildEarth Guardians in Santa Fe.

Copyright 2005 Albuquerque Tribune - Reprinted with permission