The federal Bureau of Land Management failed to follow the law and its own guidelines in issuing some of the 6,525 exclusions that enabled oil and gas drilling in the West without environmental impact studies, according to a government audit.
The decisions helped contribute to growing air-quality problems in Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, the Government Accountability Office study found.
About 10 percent of the exclusions came in Colorado, where federal land accounts for 15 percent of drilling.
“In the 2005 Energy Act, Congress tried to give industry a little leeway, but the BLM has leaned too far back to accommodate (it),” said Michael Chiropolos, a lawyer at Western Resource Advocates, an environmental law firm that’s challenged the exclusions.
The exclusions occurred in areas where drilling was looking to expand, environmental reviews had been done and drilling was taking place.
The GAO study “found several types of violations of the law,” including:
• Allowing too many wells under a single approval.
• Approving wells that were inconsistent with the criteria.
• Allowing drilling when the environmental evaluation was older than a five-year limit.
The GAO also said the BLM underreported the number of exclusions it gave by 1,150. There were a total of 6,897 exclusions nationwide, the bulk in Western states.
To fix the problem, the bureau called for tighter guidelines, standardized checklists and better oversight. The BLM concurred.
“We have reviewed the report and agree,” BLM spokesman Matt Spangler said.
Industry advocates, however, said the problem was overstated and largely one of bureaucratic record-keeping.
“GAO only looked at a small sample and something like beginning a new well after five years occurred in two cases,” said Kathleen Sgamma, director of governmental affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of the Mountain States.
More frustrating was how companies were frequently rejected for exclusions even though they qualified, Sgamma said.
Still, the federal Environmental Protection Agency told the GAO that ozone levels around wells in Farmington, N.M., Pinedale, Wyo., and Vernal, Utah, exceeded allowable levels “in part” because of pollution there.
“The Pinedale BLM approved more than a thousand wells through exclusions,” said Erik Molvar, director of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.
“They approved wells in the habitat of sensitive species like the pygmy rabbit and the sage grouse, and collectively all those wells have had an impact on air quality.”
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912 or mjaffe@denverpost.com
