Pinedale, Wyo. – Flying above the most prolific natural- gas field in the lower 48 states last summer, conservationist Linda Baker looked at the spider web of drill sites spread out like an ugly but lucrative quilt.
Nearby, another gas-rich field was just starting to be drilled, but this time, Baker hoped, it would have fewer drill pads to disturb dwindling wildlife. In an unusual move, conservationists and industry had forged a compromise to allow drilling while protecting the environment.
Questar Exploration & Production Co. local general manager Ron Hogan described it this way: “We win. The government wins. The country wins. The wildlife wins.”
Not anymore.
The rare compromise vanished in the seven months since Hurricane Katrina swept ashore some 2,255 miles away and crippled America’s major gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Bush administration then asked the energy companies around the West, especially in Pinedale, to boost natural-gas production. Questar made a proposal that was quickly accepted.
Suddenly, there was more drilling in the winter, a time when rigs are usually shut down out of concern for the falling number of mule deer that winter here.
“At some point, someone in D.C. began the discussion of ‘We need to get more energy online because we’re in for a tough winter and the nation’s in trouble,’ ” said Mary Flanderka, planning coordinator for the state of Wyoming. “What it did was it hurt the compromise.”
The Bureau of Land Management showed that “they are not as interested in compromise,” said Peter Aengst of The Wilderness Society, who had helped forge the initial alliance.
Steven Hall, a spokesman for the BLM, said Pinedale was “one of the few places in the country where increasing natural-gas production was feasible.”
But the area also is key winter range for mule deer, pronghorn antelope and sage grouse, biologists say.
“It’s been a historical winter range that provides a wintering area for 5,000 to 6,000 deer, and they don’t appear to have any other options or alternatives to them, so it’s important to keep this (area) intact if we want to maintain pre-development numbers,” said Hall Sawyer, a biologist hired by Questar to study mule deer.
His study found that in four years, the mule deer population had fallen 46 percent and 1,029 acres of deer habitat had been disturbed.
