In the midst of Rio Arriba County’s fight against gas and oil development in environmentally sensitive areas in the County, the National Forest Service decided to allow the gas industry into nearly 5,000 more acres within the County — about half of which is habitat for the endangered Mexican spotted owl.
The new drilling will take place in the Carson National Forest’s Jicarilla Ranger District in an area that sits about 50 miles east of Farmington. District Ranger Mark Catron said about 98 percent of the District’s 153,000 acres has been available for drilling for so long Catron has not seen any new land leased since he came on with the District a decade ago.
Forest spokeswoman Audrey Kuykendall said 4,992 new acres are set to open up after a decision by former acting forest supervisor Erin Connelly. Catron said the decision followed several years of meetings and comments from the public and public officials.
He said Governor Bill Richardson made statements in opposition to an initial Service proposal he thought was too restrictive to drilling and could prevent much of the mineral in the District from being brought to the surface. While he has more recently directed the state to create special conditions for areas in the County where drilling isn’t happening now, he asked the Service to allow drilling to go on as before in already developed areas in the County. Catron said the Service was proposing to retroactively apply restrictions to already leased lands, and Richardson argued they would infringe on existing lease rights.
The Service withdrew its initial proposal. The new leases will have limitations, however.
“They do have stipulations,” Kuykendall said.
She said about half of the acreage will allow no “surface occupancy,” which means companies will have to drill directionally from elsewhere to get to any minerals under those areas. She said those areas were selected for special care because endangered Mexican spotted owls live in them.
Kuykendall said another 18 percent of the new acreage will have “steep slope” restrictions to help stem erosion problems, and no drilling will be allowed on the new leases during the winter months so wildlife is not disturbed. She said production activities, such as site maintenance and hauling waste, will still be allowed during that time.
According to a Service release, the District is currently home to more than 600 gas wells, 400 miles of roads and pipelines, four compressor stations, two injection wells for waste and other facilities. The release states more than 700 new wells could be developed on existing leases but does not speculate as to how many could be drilled on the new acreages. Kuykendall said the Service does regularly check existing wells to make sure they are compliant, but the Service has more say in what happens to its lands before they are leased.
“We only have control over what we’re about to lease,” she said.
Catron said the biggest operators in the District include ConocoPhillips, Energen, Williams Production and XTO Energy.
“We have 11 primary operators,” he said.
Kuykendall said the restrictions should help protect the area’s wildlife and landscape, but County drilling consultant Don Schreiber said he is not so sure.
“Once you open it to drilling, trying to control what happens is really, really tough,” he said. “Anything you can do helps it, but it’s still a train wreck for the ecology.”
Schreiber said he sees the opening of the acreage as a victory for oil and gas companies and a demonstration of their federal influence. He also lives about 17 miles away, in Gobernador, and thinks the impacts will be visible and lasting.
“I grew up in that forest,” he said. “It’s a sad thing for me to see the forest go that way.”
County officials and employees were not too familiar with the decision, but County Planning and Zoning Administrator Gabe Boyle said he hopes the Service looks closely at the concerns of the County and its residents as it moves forward with leasing the additional acreages.
“It seems like this is happening all over the country right now, the rush to oil,” he said.
The County extended a oil and gas drilling moratorium that was first enacted in April for six additional months in August. But that temporary ban only prohibits new drilling on private lands, not as in this case, federal lands.
Catron said about an square mile within the forest will still be closed to drilling — an area called the “gas buggy.” Kuykendall said in the 1960s the federal Energy Department detonated an atomic bomb underground to try to open up fractures and bring natural gas to the surface. Catron said the District conducts annual groundwater and soil tests in the area, which don’t show the effects of the detonation, but he thinks drilling there might bring the contaminants to the surface.
Companies that want a piece of the new acreage have to go through an auction process handled by the Bureau of Land Management before applying for a permit to drill.
The Service will then conduct archaeological and environmental assessments that can last up to a year before any drilling is allowed to commence.