For years, the Bush administration has pushed intense oil and natural gas drilling on the West’s federal lands, so it’s no surprise that political appointees have smoothed the way for energy companies.
The push, though, raises concerns that political pressure is overriding the government’s legal duty to protect the environment. In few places has the issue been more contentious than on the Roan Plateau, a dramatic uplift near Rifle that harbors huge natural gas resources – and pristine landscapes and wildlife habitat.
As reported in last Sunday’s story by John Aloysius Farrell and Mike Soraghan of The Denver Post’s Washington bureau, Tulsa-based Williams Cos. is one of the biggest players in the West’s energy boom. Last year, it drilled 1,629 wells, including 578 in Colorado. The company has asked government agencies to let it drill wells at an unprecedented density and use a technique that involves injecting chemicals underground, which critics fear could contaminate groundwater. Williams already has drilled numerous gas wells at the Roan’s base and sides and now wants the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to let it drill on the plateau’s highly visible top.
Williams donates heavily to political candidates and committees. During the 2002 campaigns, Williams was the 10th-largest political donor, says the Center for Responsive Politics. A Williams spokesman said the donations didn’t relate to natural gas drilling but to deregulation of West Coast energy markets.
The company has been indicted for allegedly making an illegal $25,000 contribution to a Texas political action committee linked to former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Otherwise, there have been no allegations of wrongdoing in Williams’ political activism.
While Williams says it’s environmentally responsible – the company says it uses techniques that reduce landscape disturbance – it has successfully gotten federal agencies to roll back certain environmental rules.
For example, in 2000 the BLM said the Roan’s summit had wilderness characteristics, a finding that should have required the BLM to protect the scenic area. But Williams pressed the BLM to allow drilling on the plateau’s top – and in 2004, the BLM released a preliminary plan to permit drilling above the Roan’s rim after most available gas at the base has been tapped. At the current rate of drilling, rigs could sprout atop the Roan in just a few years.
But as Nancy Lofholm of The Post’s Western Slope bureau reported March 9, Williams and other energy companies already are bulldozing roads to the Roan’s top. The companies say they’re accessing private land. But critics fear the work signals that the companies anticipate the BLM will grant their wishes – even though the BLM hasn’t officially announced a final decision.
Agency officials deny there’s been undue political pressure, but the situation merits an independent inquiry. At the least, the U.S. Interior Department’s inspector general should look into the matter. Given the stakes for Colorado, state officials should ask tough questions, too.
