**************In developing Wyo, who decides?
By Brodie Farquhar
Star-Tribune correspondent
Sunday, November 4, 2007 2:05 AM MST
There are places in Wyoming that shouldn?t be developed and simply left alone.
On that, a Wyoming energy executive with plans to develop coal-bed methane wells, and a Wyoming labor leader whose constituency includes sportsmen and women, agree.
Yet the open question left unresolved between the two is ?Who decides??
At the latest installment of the ?Delicate Networks? lecture series, sponsored by the University of Wyoming Helga Otto Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, UW/Casper College Center, UW Outreach School and the Casper Star-Tribune, guest speakers and the audience wrestled with the sense that this latest energy boom is both flooding state coffers with tax revenues, and threatening the state?s wildlife and recreational opportunities.
Energy
Steve Hollis, chief executive officer of Double Eagle Petroleum, gave an overview of his company?s energy development work on the Atlantic Rim, southwest of Rawlins, on the Cow Creek field. His company has also worked in the Powder River Basin.
Key to his plans for drilling more wells in the Atlantic Rim country are completion of a new pipeline and treating coal-bed methane water to drastically lower its salt content, before discharging the water in Muddy Creek.
?Southwest Wyoming has been seriously hampered by its limited capacity to ship gas to markets, he said, noting that a new pipeline should come be completed by January. Hollis noted that energy companies have been doing seemingly contradictory things as they wait for new pipeline capacity, which will increase the market price for natural gas out of Wyoming.
Chiefly, he said, some companies have been shutting off producing wells while aggressively drilling new wells.
That doesn?t make a whole lot of sense, said an audience member.
A rueful Hollis acknowledged that, but pointed out that his and other energy companies will have a great deal of gas to sell when the new pipeline opens for business.
Drilling for coal-bed methane involves pumping the water from underground coal seams, thereby releasing the gas that's held in those seams. As a result, millions of gallons of water drilled from underground wells gets pumped onto the surface.
Once the gas is drilled, Hollis said Double Eagle could either re-inject CBM water back into the ground, or treat the water to the point that it could be beneficially used by agriculture and wildlife. He?s opted for beneficial use of water, but because he?s drilling in an area of marine shales with high salinity, the impurities would need to be removed.
Labor
Kim Floyd, executive secretary of the Wyoming AFL-CIO union, said his 19,000 members are passionate hunters, fishermen and outdoor recreationists. ?That?s why we live and work in Wyoming,? he said, and not because of the money ? workers can make more in surrounding states.
Floyd represents his membership during legislative sessions. He noted that a bill about worker?s compensation might spark 50 phone calls from members, ?but messing with elk hunting can generate 5,000 phone calls.?
Yet union membership didn?t react to the intense energy development on the Pinedale Anticline, even though the mule deer herd population has lost as much as 46 percent of its numbers prior to natural gas drilling in the area.
That ambivalence about energy development changed overnight, when 44,000 acres of the Wyoming Range were initially leased to energy companies, said Floyd. That act galvanized his union membership like nothing before.
In the following uproar, union members talked with outfitters and conservationists and emerged with a basic message: Wyoming needs energy development, but there are some places that should be left alone.
?Union members want energy jobs,? said Floyd, ?but we want to do it right.? Doing it right means sitting down and talking with energy companies and conservationists, striving for a more measured, rational approach to energy development, he said, rather than the gold-rush boom mentality of do-it-all-now.
?I?m not sure how many more booms Wyoming has left,? said Floyd. Eventually, Wyoming?s oil and gas will be played out and gone. Floyd and his union members would like to be sure that there?ll still be open spaces, wildlife habitat and wildlife when the oil and gas is gone.
Floyd said the late Sen. Craig Thomas agreed that Wyoming?s special places should be protected, and that energy leases should be bought back by the federal government. Unfortunately, Sen. Thomas died before his bill became reality, but it has been adopted by his replacement, Sen. John Barrasso ? with one key difference. The Barrasso bill seeks to persuade willing sellers of Wyoming Range energy leases, and is silent on where the money would come from to purchase those leases, said Floyd.
?There?s nothing to prevent an energy company from drilling anyway,? he said.
Hollis noted that energy companies have money wrapped up in more than leases from the Bureau of Land Management or Forest Service ? there?s exploration money as well. |
