| |
|
Drilling the West
JULY 2005
|
|
Drilling the West
|
By John G. Mitchell
|
Photographs by Joel Sartore
|
|
For the time being, much of the Rocky Mountain Front would seem to be secure against any prospect of energy development. Rappold himself owns the mineral rights under his land, although if active leasing were to go forward on neighboring lands, federal condemnation proceedings could force him to provide something almost as unwelcome as drill pads—pipeline and vehicular access to the neighbors' wells. Nor could Rappold ignore memories of the recent battle of Blindhorse canyon, in the foothills southwest of his ranch. A Canadian energy company was poised to sink some wells in that canyon, despite editorials deploring the project in major newspapers across Montana. The BLM, seeking public comment, received nearly 50,000 letters and e-mails, 99 percent of them opposed to drilling. What surely helped trigger that rebuff was a growing awareness that outdoor recreation, even more than ranching, might hold the key to the region's economic future. Concerns for quality hunting and fishing, and for the vitality of local businesses that cater to the needs of outdoorsmen, are not easily dismissed in western Montana. Many ranchers supplement their incomes by serving as outfitters or guides, packing hunters into the backcountry.
On the eve of the presidential election last November, the BLM placed a stop order on its study of the Blindhorse proposal and announced it would approve no new energy activity along the Front until after a "landscape level" review is undertaken in 2007. That is the same year in which a Clinton-era moratorium on leasing in the Front's Lewis and Clark National Forest could be lifted by the Bush Administration.
The San Juan Basin
Among Anglo Americans in the Rocky Mountains, you won't find many with roots running deeper than Linn Blancett's. His cross six generations, all the way back to that first Blancett who came to the Rockies to open a trading post and founded a family line that, after a spell of ranching in Colorado, would drive its cattle south into this sere northwestern corner of New Mexico. A hundred years ago Blancetts were running more than 600 head in San Juan County. Now, on 32,000 acres of grazing land, most of which they lease from the BLM, Linn Blancett and his wife, Tweeti, are running no herd at all. They sold off all but a few of their cattle late in 2003, informing the BLM that they could no longer ranch effectively because of the agency's failure to enforce regulations governing the 450 wells that pepper their spread. The wells and their associated compressors, pipelines, and access roads, Linn Blancett contended, had caused unmitigated erosion, loss of forage, and pollution of both air and water.
"We understand today as in the past the need to drill," Blancett wrote in a letter last year to Steve Henke, who runs the BLM district office in Farmington. "What we don't understand or accept is the destruction of our ranches in the process."
Steve Henke, for his part, acknowledges that drilling for natural gas in the San Juan Basin is having some impacts; he just doesn't see them being as serious as Linn Blancett does. "I cannot agree with those who say that ranching is no longer viable here," Henke told me. "We're doing everything we can to keep them in business, because ranching is not what they do—it's who they are."
Despite Henke's assurances, several lawsuits are currently wending their way through the courts. One, filed against the BLM and Interior Secretary Gale Norton by three chapters of the Navajo Nation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Tweeti Blancett, among others, challenges a plan to authorize nearly 10,000 new oil and gas wells in the San Juan Basin over the next 20 years. Another legal action targets Burlington Resources and two other basin producers, alleging hazardous waste spills. Burlington, the basin's most active producer, holds down a big office in Farmington employing 280 people. The man in charge there is vice president Richard Fraley. In our conversation and in a prepared statement later posted to me, Fraley said he believes that the "vast majority" of Burlington's operations "fully comply with applicable federal, state, and local regulations at any given time." The company spends about 240 million dollars annually on goods, services, and salaries in the Farmington area. And Burlington is one of the largest payers of state income and royalty taxes in the state of New Mexico.
"The bottom line," said Fraley, "is that, unlike the Blancetts, the vast majority of ranchers are pretty happy with what we've been doing here."
Linn Blancett figures he knows the reason. "Farmington is a company town," he said. "I hardly know of a ranching family that doesn't have somebody working for or servicing an oil company. This is the employment base." By some accounts, the happier ranchers are those who can look forward to substantial mineral-rights royalties and other industry payments to offset their ranching losses.
Trappers Point
I had come to Pinedale, Wyoming, to check out that wildlife migration corridor across the Pinedale mesa, but had seen it only from the air. Now I wanted to have a look at that special place called Trappers Point, this time with my feet on the ground. I also needed to check out reports that at least one energy company was trying to minimize the impact of its drilling. So I called on Ronald E. Hogan, general manager of Questar Market Resources, a Utah firm that has been poking into the Pinedale anticline for 40 years. Questar operates 106 wells up on the mesa. It is aiming to have 350 more in place before 2012. "You know," he said, "there's 20 trillion cubic feet of gas in that anticline. That's enough to supply the entire United States for a year."
Hogan explained how Questar was trying to work out an agreement with the BLM that would allow the company to expand its drilling during the winter months. At the time, most drill rigs, heavy equipment, as well as the public at large were barred from the mesa November to May to avoid disturbing the wildlife. But Hogan argued that lifting some winter restrictions would let Questar employ a technology called directional drilling, by which a single drill rig can tap distant gas deposits. This would allow the company to reduce the number of projected new drill pads, cut the duration of its drilling operations on the mesa from 18 to 9 years, and improve the economic stability of the community by keeping its workforce dependent on local services year-round, instead of seasonally. (Several months after our tour of the mesa, the BLM approved Questar's proposal when it issued a "finding of No Significant Impact.")
Leaving Hogan's Pinedale office, I pulled off the highway where a small sign pointed the way to Trappers Point Historical Monument. At the top of a steep dirt track, posted inside a small enclosure, the stenciled legend on a marker set the scene. "Along the river banks below are the Rendezvous sites of 1833, 1835, 1836, 1837, 1839, 1840. . . . Trappers, traders and Indians from throughout the west here met the trade wagons from the east to barter, trade for furs, gamble, drink, frolic, pray and scheme." But the legend says nothing of how the beaver trade, the first great exploitation of the West, ended in the campfire smokes of that last rendezvous. By 1840 the beaver had been virtually extirpated from the mountains, trapped out at the rate of 100,000 a year. On the boulevards of New York and Paris, dandies would be doffing a new kind of hat. It was made of silk.
It's said that the Pinedale anticline could be producing until 2040, at which point the recoverable gas will probably be gone. What a timely but poignant end to it that would be. Standing there above the Green River, I imagined the Museum of the Mountain Man getting all decked out to observe the bicentennial of the last rendezvous. Perhaps the city fathers would be opening a new exhibit: the Museum of the Fossil Fuel Man. Who was that wise scholar who once said that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history?
Subscribe to National Geographic magazine.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
|
