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Group says BLM way behind in oil and gas inspections
By WENDILYN GRASSESCHI, News-Record Writer wgrasseschi@gillettenewsrecord.net
As much as 84 percent of oil and gas drilling permits in the Powder River Basin have not been properly inspected and permit rules are not being enforced, according to a Sheridan-based landowners group.Powder River Basin Resource Council officials stated Wednesday that it had obtained information through a federal Freedom of Information Act request that proves that the Buffalo field office of the Bureau of Land Management has not been able to enforce its own environmental protection rules or to inspect drilling sites in a large majority of the permits the agency issues. The BLM has focused on getting oil and gas drilling permits completed at the expense of regulating its own permits, the group said.
The Powder River Basin group also said the documents it obtained back up a 2005 federal General Accounting Office report and include internal documents from the BLM.
“The BLM’s own internal documents showed that 84 percent of the drilling permits were out of compliance with serious issues such as erosion and noxious weeds,” said Jill Morrison, a community organizer with the group. She said the group had sent a letter regarding its findings to the Washington, D.C., BLM office and to Wyoming’s U.S. Sens. Mike Enzi and John Barrasso.
“We have been working on this issue since 2001,” she said. “The first step is to document the problem, which we have done. The next is to say, “‘OK, the problem is not getting fixed.’ So we are asking the BLM to pay attention and do something about it.”
In a copy of the BLM’s internal report, the report states: “Based on these findings, there is a need for compliance work to be done. There has been such a push to get applications for permit to drill approved, that compliance has been put low on the priority list” even though “we try to accomplish environmental inspections on 100 percent of the coal-bed methane plans of development within one year.”
BLM associate field manager Paul Beels said Wednesday that he had not had enough time to review and comment on the issue.
Calls to Enzi and Barrasso were not immediately returned before press time.
Sara Kendall, the Washington, D.C., director of the Western Organization of Resource Councils, said Thursday that her organization was the first to do a comprehensive study on oil and gas permit compliance, in 2004. The GAO study followed that report, she said.
“There has been a growth in interest in this issue in the past few years,” she said. “There are two areas in particular that Congress is concerned about. One is the accounting side, concerns that the American people might not be getting an accurate account of how much oil and gas is being extracted. Another is the environmental compliance issue.”
She said there is a growing understanding by some members of Congress that the increased push to speed up permitting pushed by the energy industry must be balanced and that government has a role to play in that.
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