Energy Development
Oil & Gas Symposium: Montana Cannot Become Another Wyoming
By Hal Herring, 1-22-08
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Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer kicked off Saturday’s symposium on oil and gas development with a talk that focused on the strength of Montana’s economy—a strength not entirely based on oil and gas revenues, and one that might provide the bastion to keep the energy industry from, well, basically, treating us all like we were Wyoming.
One point well taken from his talk: Montana cannot count on the federal government to look out for the health of its lands.
Schweitzer said the federal government is in the grip of a “multiple personality disorder.” It is leasing hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land to energy companies without considering the effects of development on the health of the land or wildlife, then contacting Western governors, saying there are problems, with, for example, the survival of the sage grouse.
If there was one message that the people in the audience could carry home from the Governor’s address, it was that the concerns of the Montana Wildlife Federation—from stream access to Cabela’s ranch sales to the loss of bull pine stands to a hotter and drier climate—are the Governor’s concerns, too. As far as the coming boom in energy development, Montana is willing to do its part in providing the nation with oil and gas, and happy to reap the rewards. But, industry is not going to have the uncontestable power, especially over state agencies like the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, that it has enjoyed elsewhere. What remains unclear is how the reins will be tightened, in light of what has happened on federal lands in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. How is Montana, where the energy industry is just beginning a new expansion, different?
The symposium, hosted in Great Falls by the Montana Wildlife Federation, was designed as an exploration of that question. As wildlife biologists, consultants, and policy makers told their stories of energy development in Colorado and Wyoming, a pattern emerged of citizens extremely worried about the current impacts to land, water, and wildlife, and what would be left behind when the boom was done (in 20 to 35 years) but unsure of how to demand change. It was a given that everyone in the audience was a consumer of the products being discussed, that all shared a responsibility for the development and that no one expected or wanted it to stop.
Walt Gasson, from the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, put it this way:
“We’re not against energy development, and we couldn’t be, anyway. We’d be hypocrites, we’d always be playing defense, and we’d always lose … We’re not talking about lying down in front of any bulldozers. If you did that, in Wyoming, you’d be two dimensional pretty fast.”
Gasson showed a photo of an experimental “mat” created by wooden pallets, so that drilling equipment could operate without the need to bulldoze away the soils into the conventional “pad,” that has proven difficult to reclaim, and is a conduit for noxious weeds, as well as an eyesore. “There are no enemies in this game,” he said. “Everybody is a potential partner. If we don’t deal with this challenge proactively, we are going to lose the home place.”
And the message for Montana is clear, even if the path forward is not. Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Commissioner Steve Doherty told the audience, more than once, “It is going to happen.” There are 32 million acres of potential oil and gas leases on federal land in Montana, with 4.3 million leased so far.
It is the enormity of the development elsewhere and the demands by industry (with the concurrence of the federal government) that the development should take precedent over any other concerns, that has galvanized members of the Montana Wildlife Federation and groups like them. Wyoming currently has 67,000 gas wells operating, with another 60,000 planned. Photo after photo was shown of the Wyoming gas fields, the drilling rigs and pads, the traffic, the truck-killed antelope, the winter range under the dozer’s blade, the sage grouse habitat and mating grounds, or leks, surrounded with dots that represented drilling operations. And it was freely admitted, over and over, that many of these photos were of one place- the Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline developments in the Green River of Wyoming.
Dave Galt, the Executive Director of the Montana Petroleum Association, reminded the audience that Montana has no comparable oil or gas resource, that development on such a scale is neither planned or expected, even in the Powder River, where coal bed methane development on the Wyoming side of the line has exploded and is ready to move north. Galt showed photos of beautifully reclaimed gas-well sites, of a matrix of producing gas wells that were barely visible on the landscape, a masterpiece of apparently low-impact development. He reiterated a now well-known position of the industry in Montana: that the expressed concerns of groups like the Montana Wildlife Federation, or those of the Montana FWP, were “fearmongering,” not based on the reality of the resource here.
In his two presentations of the day, Galt held strong to his argument that the industry operated already under too many restrictions to protect wildlife.
“You go from the three months closure to protect winter range to the three months closure to protect sage grouse, and that is not going to work,” he said.
(One of the conflicts in Wyoming is based on the fact that, on the Pinedale Anticline, energy companies were granted 98 percent of the exemptions from regulations designed to protect wintering big game animals on federal lands, a precedent that may have been excellent for workers and profits, but that guarantees controversy as the industry expands its work in Montana.)
If the reclamation work in most places looked like the photos that Galt showed, if federal regulations to protect wildlife were honored more often, if somehow citizens were sure that problems like invasive cheat grass or inadequate reclamation bonds were taken into consideration, the process of energy development would indeed be less controversial. But, as was pointed out by many of the panelists, such is not the case now.
Steve Belinda, the energy policy manager for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and a former Bureau of Land Management biologist who quit his job in protest over the agency’s energy policies, said at the open mic session, “There seems to be a common consensus that the policies we are using to develop energy resources, particularly on our public lands, is broken. I look at Montana as having a unique opportunity to break out of the mold. My question is: what do we do?”
One speaker cautioned the audience not to rely on industry to make the rules.
Conrad “Duke” Williams, a lawyer and conservationist from Houma, Louisiana who visits Montana on annual fishing and hunting trips, and is on the Montana Wildlife Federation board, described the long relationship of the energy industry to his home state. He said people there had always felt powerless to address any of the effects, the dredging, loss of marshland, the thousands of miles of canals, the pollution, that was a part of the industry’s work, and is now part of its legacy, there.
“When I was a flier in the Navy, we had a saying: always stay ahead of the power curve, or you’ll crash. Well, we started out behind the power curve, and we never caught up, and it is not pretty. Don’t make the same mistakes we made down there … they’ll tell you this is no big deal, only a trillion cubic feet of gas, no need to worry. But they are here, leasing all this land, so it must be a big deal … This oil and gas issue is one of the most important issues this state has ever faced.”
Arguments showing the economic importance of wildlife to Montana (Schweitzer said it was $1 billion annually, behind healthcare, but on a par with oil, gas and coal) seemed to fall on deaf ears in this group of outdoorspeople. A member of the Montana Wildlife Federation, Darrel Olsen, spoke during a brief comment period.
“You are going to have to step away from that revenue argument. I don’t give a hoot how much wildlife brings in to Montana or how that compares to oil and gas revenues. This is much deeper than that. This is about culture.”
He concluded, “Industry is not going to look for new technologies [that would have less impact on the land] unless regulations force it.”
Other conclusions may have been scarce, and some of the photos—especially those of a matrix of wells and roads beneath Colorado’s unique and pristine Roan Plateau—could be viewed as grim, but the crowd remained friendly and respectful. A spokesman for a group of commissioners from Richland County, an area currently enjoying a record-setting boom in oil production from the Elm Coulee Field, stood up to say how much he had enjoyed the presentations from the wildlife biologists.
Dave Galt’s closing words were not dismissive of the concerns that had been presented during the day, though he insisted that more data was needed before any new restrictions on development were put into place.
“I heard a guy say that the Rocky Mountain Front was ‘too special’ to be developed for energy. Then I heard the same thing about the Beaverhead, and the North Fork of the Flathead. Maybe we need to sit down and decide what these places are.”
Chris Marchion, Montana Wildlife Federation’s President, recalled a life of growing up in Butte and Anaconda, with the Big Pit, and the pollution left behind by Anaconda’s long boom as a smelting town.
“We never imagined that any of this did not have to happen, that it could have been done differently,” he said. “But during the Montana Power coal boom, the citizens demanded that it be done differently, and it was. The last—number three and four coal plants—built at Colstrip are some of the best in the country. I don’t know anybody who looks back now, and thinks that building those plants was a mistake. People got involved. That’s what the guy from Louisiana was saying here, that what happened there was because nobody thought they could do anything to make it better. That’s where we are, now.”
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Comments
I must concur with Dave Galt's point. Who in the heckfire anointed environmentalists as the arbiter of what is "special" and what is not?
Right here, who exactly anointed Milton for instance to decide what is and isn't reasonable as far as regulations go? Who really deserves to set the "price" at which things are "economic?" And which determiners are truly economic and which are plain old cooked up voodoo.
Minerals are where they are, God or Gaia parked them there.
I must further point out the constant pleas by NIMBY's and BANANA's who deny themselves by saying "We don't oppose all (activity), we just oppose it (special place)."
It's like the wind farm up in the Bitter Creek hills by Glasgow, or out in Long Island Sound. For all the yaff about "sustainable" this and that, when it comes to putting the impacts of one's consumptive habits someplace where one might be reminded of same -- the outcome and outcry is always the same: Shameful.
The Wyoming Legislature is a wholely owned subsidiary of Big Energy and Big Ag and is thus a resource colony will not capture nearly the revenues that Alaska has captured for its citizens.
Oil, gas, coal, beef, kids and money are our major exports, with little enough to show for it.
Outstanding column!!!!!!!!
Dave Galt's clarification is important, and welcome. I did not have room in the story to go back and describe the background of the "have at it" remarks, so just quoted Mr. Galt on what I judged to be the crux of his comments, that certain parts of the state would be extremely controversial for energy development, others less so, others, perhaps less so, still. It was clear, while listening to Mr. Galt, that he was not proposing that energy interests and concerned citizens have a sit-down to map out the areas of greatest worry. I apologize if I gave that impression.
What Mr. Galt did say, here in the comments, about the fact that nowhere in Montana would qualify as a place where industry could just "have at it" (in Beuchler's words), is extremely important. One of the main impressions that I took away from the symposium was how different Montana really is, how people - and many of them are nobody's stereotype of a traditional enviro- are fighting about values and concrete natural resource issues that have been settled, (and some of them lost) in other states, for decades, and in other parts of the world, for centuries.
My thanks to Mr. Galt for writing in.
Hal
Equal rationing would seem to be the only answer if we are going to limit it. I don't want to see price used to keep only the rich and non profits on the road.
We msut never ignore that wildlife/enviroment improvements financed by the mining/drilling industry in Wyoming.
I'm a Wyoming native, and I can assure you that several million acres of prime habitat have been sacrificed to industry. Atlantic Rim, in the Draft EIS said that 250,000 acres of prime mule deer, elk and pronghorn winter range will be chewed up. Sage Grouse leks were in the direct path of POD's and the BLM directly stated that the area would be useless for any activity other than oil and gas development for over 50 years. The Powder River Basin has documented proof related to sage grouse disappearance and CBM development. The Pinedale Anticline has seen a 46% reduction in Mule Deer since the development there has occurred. The BLM put their new Pinedale headquarters smack dab in the longest migration route of any ungulate in the lower 48 states.
Wyoming has been sacrificed for energy development. It's not hard to see that.
Chances are, she's so gung-ho development, that spotting a few deer or antelope in the Jonah would convince her that everything's just hunky-dory.
Have you guys been to any of the long term fields around the state? They leave a very small footprint. Sure some of the early pumpers have the old time pumps going as they have for what 60-80 years? The new ones are not nearly that obvious.
There are a lot more than a few deer and antelope in the oil fields and you know it.
I don't understand the preference for mideast oil, and we can be sure that you as well as everyone else is going to keep using it.
Industry's technological advancements have made it possible to produce oil and natural gas with little - and no permanent - harm to the environment. While drilling activity is intense, it is short-term, temporary development. End quote
If this is true, why is the application of these advancements not the norm, especially in the development of public lands? Where can we go to see these technological advancements in action? And if they exist, doesn't that make it much more difficult to defend the more high impact development that we can see across the West?
Simply saying that technology has made energy development less destructive to the environment is no longer sufficient, given the scale of that development. Sooner or later, these new technologies have to actually be utilized, and not just in some isolated demo project somewhere.
I also am noticing what seems to be a more general willingness by industry and federal land managers to acknowledge that energy development - which, let's face it, is not using the technologies to which Ms. Wilson refers- is extremely high impact, but, as Ms. Wilson says "it's only a temporary use" of the lands. This is true, especially if we take the long view, or the geologic view. On a scale of millions of years, the 20- 35 year life of a gas well is a blip. But what about the possible loss of wildlife species and healthy grazing lands? That is not really temporary, is it? American citizens spent alot of public money to restore wildlife and rangelands in the wake of the Dust Bowl years, and it feels as though the energy industry and public land managers are, kind of, saying that we'll be welcome to try to do that all over again, if we want, after they've taken this energy resource out and moved on.
Both of those problems- the existence of alleged sensitive technologies that are not being applied on any kind of scale, and the regarding of development as temporary use, no need to factor in the impacts in its actual cost, seem to me to weaknesses in the arguments of industry and current land managment policy. Those weaknesses appear to guarantee the kind of conflict we are seeing today.
Your argument is a straw man, as you tell people what they think, then assail them for the words you put in their mouth. Hal did a great job reporting this event, and something that didn't make it in there, is that we agree with Dave Galt on a number of points. One of those is that the baseline data needs to be established for game and nongame species before development occurs so we know what we're dealing with, and can address the situation before a precipitous decline occurs, like it has with sage grouse in the Powder River Basin, and Mule Deer in the Pinedale Anticline.
I grew up in the oil and construction industry in Wyoming. I've been to the old fields, I've been to the new fields, and I've been to fields that haven't been developed yet. However, that's Wyoming, and Montana is at a place where we can have development, but learn from the mistakes of others, and develop the resource in a manner that respects all uses of the land, and not just the bottom line of a few companies.
Thanks Hal for a fair and balanced report (no Fox slam intended) and Montana Wildlife Federation for putting the light on this subject. I hope that the sportspeople and others of Montana this will raise to the cause protect Montana for what is, which is not Wyoming or Colorado.
Make up your minds, wind farms have to go where there is wind, oil rigs have to go where there is oil in the ground, coal mines have to go where there is coal in the ground.
Environmentalists seem to have a total disconnect from reality.
By the way, you mentioned the sage grouse, do any of you think there is any possibility that predators could be playing a part in the sage grouse numbers? I am reading a book called "Reasons for the Decline of Wildlife in the Big Horns" by Cal King. One discussion of coyotes mentions a pair of coyotes taking out 9 sage grouse nests within a mile of their den. On one of the leks I counted in Carbon county there was a den on the edge of the lek! Your idea seems to be protect the coyotes and stop the drilling to save the grouse, is that right? What effect to you think all of the crows and other predatory birds are having on the nests?
You're clutching at straws and sound completely out of sorts. You seem to have a problem discerning the difference between what MWF is saying, and what environmental groups are saying.
As for predators and sage grouse, predators only become an issue when the habitat has been compromised. The Sage Grouse was born to be eaten. That's their function in life. When you have chick survival rate as low as what we're seeing in the Powder River, there's going to be significant declines in numbers. Blaming predators is a poor excuse for not addressing the real issue here.
Now with gold nearing 900 dollars an ounce I expect there is going to be a new metals rush in addition to oil and gas. It will be hard for states to forego the tax revenue from both. What do western states do to bring in the dough in lieu of the extractive tax monies? Montana's economy is tied to the O&G;industry.
Drygrass, just how do you plan to power those electric cars? I believe it is the environmentalists that are successfully preventing new coal powered electic plants, and no matter how many tantrums you throw demanding more electricity with no pollution, it has to be produced or it doesn't exist. You want what you want at no cost to you and no discomfort to you at the same time you want to be able to exert the power of the courts over those who would provide for you.
By the way there are lots of very fuel efficient cars, but they are small, they have to be. It is the law of physics that you cannot move a large mass with small power. I drive one of those tiny fuel efficient cars....do you?
You are responsible for your own consumption, no one else, not big oil, not the government, not President Bush....YOU, like it or not. If every well in the state of Wyoming is shut down, will that decrease your consumption one iota? Probably, but you won't be happy about it.
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HELENA — The Montana Rural Education Association on Wednesday took an unusual step in an effort to find additional funds for struggling school districts.
David Puyear, MREA executive director, submitted an application to the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation requesting that the state open the Otter Creek coal tracts for leasing.
"MREA would respectfully propose that in consideration of the tremendous financial pressures and challenges facing our public schools, the time has come to utilize revenues from Montana's natural resources such as coal, oil, gas, timber and wind to avoid the pending crisis," Puyear wrote in a two-page letter accompanying the one-page application.
The state Land Board, which is comprised of the governor, attorney general, secretary of state, state auditor and superintendent of public instruction, is mandated by the Montana Constitution to manage the state school trust lands — including the Otter Creek coal tracts — for their maximum return in the short term and long term.
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Both 'NO' and 'YES' have their respective consequences. As I said before, it is iimportant is to get a double-handed grip on "HOW" while respecting the fragility of our inheritance, sharpening the focus on our legacy, and negotiating the rocks and shoals of the immense challenges. 'NO' eventually gets swamped by necessity.
MWF has never said we want to stop development. We just don't want it to become the dominant use of Federal lands, like it has in other states. Personally, I look forward to working with energy companies to help develop meaningful mitigation and reclamation standards, as well as proper siting.
P.S. Your math is fuzzy. Look at all the impacts to habitat and water before making an assertion of 2/1000th of a percent.
I think that people see what they want to see. Some people see destruction, stink, traffic, problems upon problems, etc. I see progress, prosperity (jobs and revenues), and affordable energy. I see an oil and gas industry that has really cleaned up its act in the thirty years that I have been working in it. I see compassionate, dedicated westerners working every day to figure out ways to do our job better: to produce oil and gas in a cleaner, more efficient manner in order to meet rapidly escalating worldwide demand, and help keep the prices affordable.
I've also come to the conclusion that environmental groups have no incentive to really work to improve the environment because if they are doing their jobs, the revenue stream will dry up, and they will be out of work. As one Wyoming "environmentalist" said when asked whether his group would also protest and sue against renewable energy development like solar or wind farms, "We're equal opportunity energy bashers." Think about it.
Unfettered development is not what happens here, and forcing the public agencies and the public to prepare for a firestorm that isn't happening wastes both public and private resources.
Regarding Montana's portion of the Bakken, perhaps the drillers were just missing a good thing. http://seekingalpha.com/article/60933-the-bakken-trend-lost-dutchmen-mine-of-the-oil-patch
It will be interesting when the USGS report comes out this spring.
From the suggested letter:
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...the USFS should detail how the public lands in the Hoback Basin will be managed for a balance of uses, including hunting and fishing, as required by the multiple-use mandate in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and Executive Order (EO) 13443: Facilitation of Hunting Heritage and Wildlife Conservation...
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And being a child of the Oil and gas industry has shown me that temporary increases in revenue still lead to boom and bust cycles that are inherent in the industry. As for the industry cleaning up their act over the last 30 years, you better tell the whole story. Without people outside of the industry pushing for those advances, we'd still have a method of extraction that costs the least amount of money so that the bottom line is always high. If Industry was as concerned with habitat as you claim, then why does industry constantly refuse to implement new technologies without either public pressure, or government regulations (Specifically relating this to CBM development in the powder river)?
As for keeping prices affordable, my heating bill last month was $250. That's not affordable. Gasoline still costs $3.00 a gallon. That's not affordable. When are citizens going to see affordable energy from all this drilling that's going on?
As for Heat n Light, give it a rest. MWF is ready to talk about better ways to develop the resource. We're here at the table, waiting for industry to quite demonizing people who have a different idea for public lands than pump jacks and compressor stations. People are growing tired of "My way or the highway" and it's time for us to come together as Americans and work this issue through. CO Gas producers are saying they'll pull out and go elsewhere, NM producers are saying the same thing. What does that bluff do to bring about affordable energy, and what does shutting down production because Industry doesn't like the fact that they're being asked to be responsible have to do with energy security?
It is not merely increasing stocks of crude, but building refining capacity to match fuel supply demand. Otherwise, it's like sitting on a mountain of coal with no place to process it.
Jane, in Pawnee Rock , KS (Oil and Gas fields)