There goes the Everglades..................Inland drilling rules under review
Colliers seek more Big Cypress wells
BY CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@herald.com
The possibility of oil rigs springing up off Florida's coast may be fading, but pressure is growing for more drilling inland -- specifically in the sprawling Big Cypress National Preserve.
The Colliers, the namesake of the Southwest Florida county that encompasses the preserve's cypress stands, swamps and tree islands, are stepping up plans to drill 24 exploratory wells, a proposal that would vastly increase the impact of an energy industry that now has 10 working wells in two small pockets.
Environmental groups, while acknowledging the Colliers have the legal right to drill, don't like the idea.
``This is a national park unit, and it's simply not appropriate to develop this as a natural gas and oil field,'' said Mary Munson, South Florida director of the National Parks Conservation Association. ``If this comes to fruition, and they start to drill, it would be a disaster. It would be just as bad as drilling offshore.''
Munson and other environmentalists intend to voice their concerns as the preserve, which is managed by the National Park Service, begins the process of overhauling its oil and gas exploration rules beginning with a public meeting Wednesday in Miami.
Their options, however, are limited.
Though most commercial enterprises are banned in the preserve, oil and gas exploration is just as protected as the 729,000 acres of wild lands prowled by panthers and bald eagles.
``If we had our preferences, yeah, we'd like to eliminate oil and gas activity in the preserve, but that's not an option open to us,'' said Ron Clark, chief of resources management for the preserve, which lies just west of Broward County's undeveloped water preservation areas and north of Everglades National Park.
LONG PRESENCE
Though it has drawn little attention, oil drilling has taken place in Southwest Florida for more than 60 years, with the first thick sludge percolating from a well sunk in 1943 into a formation called the Sunniland Trend.
The site on which that well rested was owned by the Collier family, descendants of Barron G. Collier, an advertising tycoon who bought 1.25 million acres, literally the southwest corner of the state, after arriving in 1928. In the 1974 deal that created the preserve, his heirs sold the land to the federal government but Congress agreed to allow them to keep mineral rights to 400,000 acres.
The area has produced a steady supply -- 110 million barrels since the first well -- but was never considered enough of a potential mother lode to create an oil rush.
``It's been consistent,'' said David Mica, executive director of the Florida Petroleum Council, an industry group based in Tallahassee. ``I don't know if you can say it's been rich.''
Ten wells, which are clustered in the preserve's northwest and southeast corners in places called Bear Island and Raccoon Point, produce about 3,400 barrels of oil a day. Interest in expanding drilling has been limited for various reasons, Mica said. The oil is difficult to extract. It's not free-flowing crude, but rather a thick substance locked into the rock 15,000 to 17,000 feet below the surface of isolated and environmentally sensitive terrain.
SWAP OF RIGHTS
As far back as 1994, the Colliers proposed swapping their mineral rights in the Big Cypress and in other nearby areas for the right to develop other federal property -- most recently, for surplus land at Homestead Air Reserve Base in Homestead.
The Colliers were part of a team that proposed a mixed-use development there as an alternative to a proposed commercial airport. But the Air Force, while rejecting the airport plan, gave Miami-Dade County six months to develop its own mixed-use plan.
The Colliers first filed the new drilling applications more than two years ago, but the uncertainty surrounding the Homestead project, an improving oil market, and promising new technology has seriously intensified interest, said Robert Duncan, president of Collier Resources Co., which manages the family's mineral rights.
``There is a large amount of the area that has been relatively unexplored,'' he said. Some estimates put the amount of untapped oil as high as two or three times the number of barrels already being pulled from the ground. Because the oil sits in what Duncan called relatively small underground ``puddles,'' it has long posed economic and geological challenges to pinpoint promising areas.
`3-D SEISMIC'
The company plans to explore with a technique called ``3-D seismic,'' which would allow geologists to assess petroleum deposits by measuring sound waves generated by small dynamite charges in three-inch holes drilled 25 feet into the marsh and rock. A one-kilogram charge is dropped in, the holes are refilled, and . . . boom!
The Colliers' plan would call for 14,700 charges in an area covering 40 square miles. The testing would also require the use of miles of hand-laid cable.
``It's a standard of the industry and has a much greater success in finding deposits,'' Duncan said.
Though Duncan said the Colliers are still open to the possibility of land swaps with the federal government, the company isn't interested in getting into a bidding battle for the Homestead property if it's run by Miami-Dade County.
Environmentalists say they have numerous concerns with the Colliers' plans.
The biggest threat isn't from spills, as it tends to be with offshore drilling. The Big Cypress oil emerges as a tar-like goo that is fairly easy to contain, and the area doesn't have a record of damaging spills. The biggest concerns are increased impacts on the land from roads, pipelines and the equipment required to drill all those little blasting holes.
``Even with the most well-maintained wellheads in the business, you still have the problems of creating a lot of disturbances,'' Munson said.
Frank Jackalone, director of the Florida Sierra Club, said he wasn't fully briefed on the Colliers' plans, but ``we will look very skeptically at any effort to increase oil production in the Big Cypress.''
Munson said one possible solution is for the federal government to buy the Colliers' rights. But that's complicated by the wide estimates of their values, ranging from $50 million to $700 million.
FOCUS ON IMPACT
That sort of proposal will be beyond the scope of Wednesday's meeting, which will focus on the impact of such new exploration techniques as 3-D seismic and directional drilling, Clark said. A draft plan will be produced by summer 2002.
Though the Bush administration has been campaigning to open more federal lands to oil and gas exploration, politics played no part in the timing of the revision, Clark said, and neither did the Colliers' influence. The rules were more than a decade old, he said, and the preserve has also added 150,000 acres since they were written.
DRILLING RULES
The Colliers' plan, which has been under review for years, faces at least one hurdle in the existing drilling rules. When drilling operations affect more than 10 percent of the preserve, an elaborate environmental study is required. Those generally take months, even years. The preserve estimates its impact area is now at about 8 percent or 9 percent.
The Colliers might get one or two additional test wells but additional wells would trigger a more rigorous study of the industry's impact on the natural system. The Colliers oppose the 10 percent limit.
Wednesday's meeting is 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Graham Center Ballroom West at Florida International University, 11200 SW Eighth St. Another meeting is set for the same hours Thursday in Naples at The Conservancy of Southwest Florida. |
