BLM Proposal for Managing Powder River Basin CBM Development Reflects Industry Preference

by Tom Darin

In mid-January, the Wyoming Bureau of Land Management released its long-awaited draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for a massive 50,000-well coalbed methane project in the Powder River Basin, the largest study of its kind in the history of the United States.

Unfortunately, after 18 months of reviewing public comments and analyzing the environmental consequences of discharging millions of gallons of water produced by CBM drilling onto the surface, the BLM has turned a deaf ear to the serious concerns expressed by ranchers, biologists and conservation groups. The DEIS's preferred alternative

Cottonwood grove flooded with year-round CBM waste water.

is to "manage" the problem by allowing industry to continue to dump untreated, often highly saline water onto ranches and farms in the basin, where it causes erosion, damages irrigated crops and harms prairie streams.

In addition, the BLM has ignored the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires that the agency consider a full range of options for managing CBM development in an environmentally responsible manner. The DEIS has only two real alternatives (besides the "no action" option), both of which permit the highest number of wells proposed by industry and allow most of the produced water to be dumped, untreated, onto the ground Ð maintaining the status quo.

Further, while the Bush Administration's proposed national energy policy emphasizes new technologies to minimize the environmental impacts of oil and gas production, the DEIS fails to seriously consider available CBM discharge water re-injection and treatment technologies.

The DEIS virtually ignores a citizens' conservation alternative developed by WOC, Biodiversity Associates, the Oil and Gas Accountability Project and the Powder River Basin Resource Council. Entitled Protecting Wyoming's People, Land, Water and Air: A Citizens' Proposal to Conserve Wyoming's Heritage in the Powder River Basin, the citizens' alternative was submitted to the BLM's Buffalo field office in October. Later that month, we met with BLM officials charged with developing the DEIS to discuss our key proposals: landowner protections; an ecological approach to development impacts; better monitoring, inspection and enforcement; and the use of alternative technologies and "best management" practices to minimize impacts on the basin's landowners and environment. The DEIS reflects no serious consideration of our citizens' proposal.

CBM Projects Spreading Statewide

CBM projects are sprouting up all over the state, and growing in magnitude. For example, a CBM exploratory project west of Big Piney, near the Bridger-Teton National Forest, started with a mere five wells approved in March. The operator is already saying that the project now appears headed to full-field development of 125 wells.

This project sits on the western flank of the Green River Basin and

Discharges like this may look clean, but the salt in CBM water can be very harmful to irrigated crops and soils.

its 314 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of CBM reserves. By comparison, the Powder River Basin contains 39 TCF.

The critical question is how many TCF in the greater Green River Basin are economically recoverable. One hint is provided by the Atlantic Rim project on the eastern edge of the Green River Basin, south of Rawlins: the project proposal has mushroomed from 100 wells to 4,000 wells. Southwest Wyoming may be headed toward the once unthinkable: CBM drilling that will dwarf the level of development in the Powder River Basin, which industry heralds as the biggest gas play in the U.S.