Oil and gas reforms necessary

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

By Matthew Irwin

Included in the U.S. Department of Interior’s new oil and gas policy is an order for guidance from Bureau of Land Management headquarters to field offices to review leases issued under the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005.

This order is a necessary compliment to the main provision that the review process be more detailed and open to public scrutiny.

Progressive environmental thinking requires that we not only review future oil and gas developments, but review mistakes in processes that may have endangered wildlife habitats and watersheds, as well as hindered human access, on public lands.

Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal met with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to oppose both reforms, arguing that they would increase bureaucracy and decrease jobs in the state. The contents of their meeting are unknown, but Freudenthal will reportedly meet with additional Interior and BLM officials.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 established five “categorical exclusions” that allowed developers to initiate oil and gas activities without certain environmental reviews.
The act described the exclusions as necessary to streamline the review process, but environmentalists say that the act was a Bush-era doctrine that put public lands in the hands of the oil industry. The Government Accountability Office also slammed the BLM’s actions under the act, saying the agency violated the National Environmental Policy Act.

NEPA allows exclusions for projects on public land without extensive environmental review if the overseeing federal agency determines the project will have little impact.

The new rule establishes “extraordinary circumstances” for exclusions, or a process to determine whether individual actions within requests merit further environmental study.

In a letter to the Interior secretary, Gov. Freudenthal warned that the new restrictions would require more manpower than available in Wyoming. Indeed state oil and gas regulators across the country are already too few, leading to unchecked violations and environmental hazards in states such as West Virginia, Texas and New York. Wyoming had a 12-member enforcement staff for 39,086 wells in 2008.
The main article of reform adds Master Leasing and Development Planning for potential new leasing and developing areas – a concern not addressed by current policy – requiring field offices to analyze the areas, identify key environmental issues on those lands and gather public input.

On the topic of competitive oil and gas sales, currently subject to a “quick internal data and plan review,” the new order adds a comprehensive, interdisciplinary review of proposed parcels and on-the-ground reconnaissance.

The reform continues, stipulating that environmental protections once regulated only by the land-use plan be subject to public review of resources, which must then be used to determine mitigation measures. 

While the governor’s concerns are justified from the point of view that the new regulations may create more work for industry and state officials, he is wrong in his opinion that the additional labor itself is a reason to halt the reforms.
Failures in oversight due to lack of staff, furthermore, do not support a rollback of regulation, but rather an increased effort to fund enforcement.

Finally, these reforms and enforcements are important to implement now, before oil and gas resources become too scarce and measures to capture them more desperate. JHW

Sources: Casper Star-Tribune, Wyofile, ProPublica, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Government Accountability Office, U.S. Department of the Interior.

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Oil and gas reforms necessary | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

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