When the U.S. Senate solves the filibuster mess and gets back to other tasks, it should craft a saner energy bill than the one that emerged last month from the House. The House measure is an industry giveaway that threatens the West’s air, water and wildlife.
On Tuesday, the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee began work on its version of the energy bill. Oil companies complain that environmental rules hamper energy development, so it’s a sure bet they’ll pressure the Senate to follow the House’s lead. Democrat Ken Salazar, the only Coloradan on the Senate committee, should rally Westerners to restore balance to the legislation.
At more than 1,000 pages, the 2005 energy bill is 200 pages longer than last year’s and contains several environmental rollbacks. Most troubling is a vague but sweeping amendment that would end the public’s say about oil and gas drilling even on public lands and national forests.
Currently, the National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to conduct environmental studies and accept public comments. The House bill would exempt most oil and gas projects from this law.
The amendment says no environmental studies would be needed on expansions of existing oil and gas fields, yet some of the most controversial energy projects involve just such projects. For example, in southwestern Wyoming, the existing Jonah Field already has about 500 gas wells, but plans are afoot to add 3,100 more, raising concerns about air pollution and damage to wildlife habitat.
The House bill seeks to exempt from environmental review drill pads that disturb less than 5 acres of ground. But the majority of drill pads are less than 5 acres, so the provision would eliminate the need for environmental studies on most drilling projects.
The provision actually could discourage oil companies from doing right by the environment. Pads larger than 5 acres usually involve directional drilling, a technique used to reduce impact on the land. Drillers put more than one rig on a site, then bore at an angle to reach resources that may be miles from the drill pad. Oil companies should be encouraged to do more, not less, directional drilling, but the House measure creates a disincentive to do so.
The House bill also would bar the public from objecting to most seismic testing by use of explosives or ground-shaking oil exploration trucks. For example, some Utah residents recently opposed seismic testing near Hovenweep National Monument because they feared that rattling the ground could damage nearby prehistoric ruins.
The House bill would also exempt an oil field practice called “fracing” (rhymes with cracking) from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Fracing (injecting chemicals into the ground to push more oil to where it can be pumped) is a productive recovery technique. But oil companies shouldn’t get a free pass on a core environmental law that every other business in the country has to obey.
