Washington – Federal regulators are so busy processing permits for oil and gas development in the Rocky Mountain West that they aren’t able to police the drilling boom’s effect on the environment, congressional investigators say in a new report.
The Bureau of Land Management dealt with the surge in workload by putting development ahead of monitoring, the Government Accountability Office reported Thursday.
The Bush administration rejected the GAO criticism, saying it’s being mindful of the environment as it helps to meet consumer demand for energy.
“The administration is committed to managing the BLM lands for multiple use and sustained yield,” wrote Chad Calvert, a deputy assistant secretary at the Interior Department, in response to the report.
“This includes providing for orderly development in an environmentally responsive manner,” he wrote.
The report looked closely at eight BLM field offices across the West, including one in Glenwood Springs.
At those offices, permits more than quadrupled over a five-year period, from 1,108 in 1999 to 4,911 in 2004.
The GAO found numerous instances where environmental protection took a back seat to development, and staffers who said they were spending more time processing permits and less time making sure companies complied with rules protecting the land.
For example, the two offices with the largest increases in permit activity – Buffalo, Wyo., and Vernal, Utah – met their environmental inspection goals only once in the past six years, the GAO said.
And the Buffalo office, which oversees Powder River Basin coal-bed methane development, did about one-quarter of its environmental inspections in 2004. It was striving to meet an administration goal of 3,000 permits, and issued 2,435.
Four of the eight field offices had a backlog of “idle-well” reviews, ensuring that companies don’t abandon spent wells. And seven of the eight were behind on their inspection of companies’ work on restoring drilling sites.
The Glenwood office was one of those that did meet its environmental inspection goals.
But staffers told the GAO that because of orders from Washington, they’re looking at paring back a five-month restriction on oil and gas drilling in the Roan Plateau area intended to protect winter range habitat for deer and elk.
They’re looking at cutting the restriction to two months or dropping it.
Staff writer Mike Soraghan can be reached at 202-662-8730 or msoraghan@denverpost.com.
