Landowners, former federal land managers, and environmentalists from across the West told federal Bureau of Land Management officials Tuesday that instead of expediting oil and gas permits – they should focus on inspections and reclamation.
The comments were made at a public forum in Denver on an agency oil and gas pilot program aimed at improving federal oil and gas permit coordination.
A provision of the 2005 Energy Policy Act directed the Interior Department to set up seven pilot project offices in five states, including Colorado. About 125 new BLM positions were created to staff the offices.
“Some people have used the term one-stop shopping,” said Alan Kesterke, the energy policy liaison for the BLM Wyoming office. “The goal was to make it easier to deal with the federal government as a whole on oil and gas issues.”
But members of several Western environmental groups said the pilot offices haven’t done much other than cater to the oil and gas industry.
Jill Morrison, an organizer with the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Sheridan, Wyo., called the pilot offices “an abysmal failure.”
“It’s a paperwork exercise, it’s a rubber-stamp exercise,” Morrison said.
Several former state and federal government employees said they believed BLM employees in the pilot and field offices were being hamstrung by political employees in Washington.
“It is critical that the BLM staff be permitted to enforce its own regulations to assure monitoring, inspection and enforcement at energy development sites,” said Dennis Buechler, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist in Colorado.
BLM officials, however, maintained that pilot offices were not solely dedicated to speeding up the permit application process.
Instead, each office employs several specialists whose work help ensures the agency is protecting natural resources, said Colorado BLM spokesman Vaughn Whatley.
“The specialists will streamline the permitting approval process, increase inspections, improve our ability to provide monitoring, ensure regulatory compliance,” Whatley said.
“Without this coordination and additional staff, our capabilities would be stretched beyond the breaking point,” he said.
Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-954-1240 or kmcguire@denverpost.com.
