Gas development in Wyoming faces conflict

Plans for a giant natural-gas development in Wyoming are fuelling a bitter confrontation between industry and environmentalists as the Bush administration renews its push for the United States to boost domestic energy production. The Wyoming conflict embodies the clash of values that makes energy production anything but a dry topic. In Western communities affected by proposed developments, it is a matter of the land on which people live, the water they drink, their control over property and their ability to earn a living.
In north-eastern Wyoming, some of the wildest land left in America -- vast grasslands punctuated by mesas and buttes -- is threatened by a proposal to drill 39,000 new coal bed methane wells over the next decade in the Powder River Basin. The area now has more than 12,000 working wells.
The full scope of the project, the largest and most ambitious natural-gas development effort being considered in the continental US, was outlined in a 900-plus-page environmental impact statement issued by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management with almost no public attention. The study gives a tentative go-ahead for the new wells, saying the economic benefits are clear and the environmental impact manageable.

Coal bed methane development involves finding natural-gas deposits that lie along coal seams underground. To uncork the natural gas, large amounts of underground water that hold it in place need to be released. Such wells typically are shallower and less expensive to drill than traditional gas wells.
Nationwide, 60 % of the growth in natural-gas production in 2000 came from coal bed methane wells, according to the American Petroleum Institute. The prospect of development in the Powder River Basin has been the subject of heated debate for several years in Wyoming, a state with some of the largest deposits of clean-burning, low-sulphur coal in the world.
Industry officials stress that the US needs to boost domestic energy production out of economic self-interest and from the standpoint of national security, especially after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Wyoming officials also acknowledge the nation's least-populated state needs the economic lift. "We're lucky God gave us minerals to develop," said Dru Bower, vice president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming.

As much as $ 7.5 bn could be injected into Wyoming's economy over three decades from natural-gas royalties alone, officials have estimated. A spokeswoman for Williams Cos., a Tulsa-based energy company with operations in the Powder River Basin, said the company estimated that the area contains enough natural gas to satisfy demand for the entire US for nearly two years. "Expanding production in this basin is a key component in meeting our national demand for clean energy," she said.
Others worry about the non-economic costs of the project. "This will change the landscape of north-eastern Wyoming forever," said Jill Morrison, an organizer with the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a citizens group based in Sheridan.

The Bureau of Land Management report documents the extent of the impact. Under the plan preferred by the bureau, as many as 212,000 acres could be affected, the study notes. The project would require building more than 5,300 miles of overhead power lines and 10,600 miles of unpaved roads. In addition, upward of 20,000 miles of pipeline would need to be laid, the study says.
Water laden with minerals and salts and discharged from underground repositories would total more than 4.2 mm acre-feet. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre 1 foot deep, or the amount of water a four-person family uses in a year. Some ranchers are worried that the water will overflow streambeds and affect their fields. Others are concerned that aquifers will be drained, emptying wells.
This "is going to turn north-eastern Wyoming into an industrial oil and gas field," Morrison said. "We live in a desert and they're planning to pump this water out without putting any value on it intheir calculations. Down the road, this water could be even more valuable than the gas they think we need."
That's an exaggeration, responded Don Likwartz, head of Wyoming's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. The Powder River Basin is a sprawling 8 mm acres; of that, only 212,000 would be affected. Areas where pipelines have been laid will recover in a year or two. Landowners will be compensated for whatever damage is done.

But Likwartz does not try to gloss over some of the conflicts that have arisen in the past several years as coal bed methane development has accelerated. Particularly difficult is the clash between private property owners, who hold 75 % of the surface land in the project area, and state and federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, which own 63 % of the mineral rights under the surface. Outside of the West, few people are aware of the split ownership.
According to US law, mineral-rights owners trump surface-rights holders, and can do pretty much whatever they need to do to develop their interests. That can infuriate ranchers whose grazing operations are affected, or who risk losing peace and quiet on their once little-travelled lands.
"You go from scarcely seeing anyone a few years back to seeing 50 vehicles a day driving through," said Robert Sorenson, whose family has run cattle 40 miles north of Gillette since 1882. "You go from hearing nothing to hearing this noisy equipment running all the time. "You're talking about completely, totally changing our way of life."
The government proposal will be open for comment for three months before a decision about drilling activity in the Powder River Basin is made. Drilling is expected to begin later this year.