CARBONDALE — Time appears to be running out for a Houston-based oil and gas company that has the most aggressive drilling plan in the Thompson Divide area west of Carbondale.
Twenty gas leases held by SG Interests on public lands in the Thompson Divide area will expire next year between May 31 and Aug. 31, according to research by the Thompson Divide Coalition, a Carbondale-based coalition opposed to drilling there.
SGI wants to avoid losing the leases so it has applied to the Bureau of Land Management to lump 18 of the leases together in a unit covering 32,000 acres. Creation of the proposed Lake Ridge Unit would allow SGI to hold the leases for a substantially longer time, as long as it drills wells and produces gas within the unit.
But in a counter move, the Thompson Divide Coalition got U.S. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet to write a letter to the BLM asking the agency to delay its decision on the “unitization” of the leases. The BLM has no estimate of when a decision will be made, said agency spokesman David Boyd.
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