Pronghorn graze among sagebrush scoured free of snow by the wind. In the background, the open plains stretch unbroken for miles. But underneath the placid herd, natural gas is flowing to a well six miles away. This is "doing it right."

"Doing it right" is an approach often mentioned when WOC seeks ways to keep the explosive oil and natural gas development rush sweeping across Wyoming from ruining the state’s rural communities and the natural environment. The question is: what is "doing it right"?
On the one hand, "doing it right" is like "multiple use"— a philosophical approach for how to treat the land and the people using it. But there are a number of specifics that give "doing it right" substance. These specifics transform philosophy into a framework for responsible development on both public lands and private lands with underlying federally-owned oil and gas deposits (so-called "split estates").

According to the Northern Plains Resource Council, which popularized the phrase, there are at least six elements to "doing it right" in coalbed methane country, such as the Powder River Basin:
• effective monitoring of development and enforcement of existing laws;
• provision for surface-owner consent and surface-use agreements on split estate lands;
• the use of best-available technologies to ensure aquifer recharge along with clustered development to reduce the area impacted;
• the collection of thorough information on fish and wildlife resources followed by phased development to diffuse impacts;
• meaningful public involvement in the decision-making process; and
• complete reclamation of disturbed areas accompanied by bonding sufficient to ensure that taxpayers are not saddled with reclamation costs.
Each of these techniques allows responsible oil and gas development to occur while protecting valuable public assets such as open space and hunting opportunities.

Directional Drilling
One of the most important ways to do it right is to maximize the use of "directional drilling," a technique that allows multiple wells to be drilled from a single well pad. Directional drilling allows wells to be drilled outside sensitive areas and can reduce the amount of surface disturbance by clustering wells in one area.

According to a report by the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, current technology allows directional drilling to reach oil and gas deposits up to six and one-half miles from the drill pad, and is technologically and economically feasible under a broad range of conditions.
But directional drilling does not solve all impact issues. "Doing it right" recognizes that there are areas where other public values and assets simply outweigh the value of oil and gas. For example, oil and gas development in grizzly bear or lynx habitat in the Shoshone and Bridger-Teton national forests can rarely, if ever, be done without jeopardizing these rare and magnificent species.

WOC advocates doing it right
There is no question the impacts of oil and gas development on the land, and on people who use the land such as hunters or ranchers, could be greatly reduced while allowing oil and gas development to occur if "doing it right" techniques and approaches were widely used. WOC supports and advocates this approach. In our view, "doing it right" is fully consistent with and required by current law and policy, such as the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. We believe it is also what Wyoming residents want. But it is not what they are getting.

BLM stuck in dated development strategies
On public lands in Wyoming, the Bureau of Land Management almost invariably rejects or greatly underutilizes "doing it right" approaches to oil and gas development. BLM does not support phased development (an approach where further development is not allowed until existing disturbed areas are fully reclaimed) because it believes this would not allow the corporations that have been granted access to public oil and gas resources to develop those resources at the rate or in the manner they want.

BLM also allows companies to post the minimum permissible bonds to ensure compliance with lease terms, including reclamation obligations, even though these amounts are woefully inadequate given the huge numbers of wells being drilled and the large areas affected by oil and gas development. As for directional drilling, the BLM frequently rejects the technique without serious consideration if industry expresses any concern—supported or not—about its costs and technical feasibility. And when WOC and others submitted a citizens’ proposal for coalbed methane development in the Powder River Basin that had several provisions for "doing it right," including requiring protections for farmers and ranchers owning split estates, BLM summarily dismissed consideration of the alternative. At its root, BLM’s rejection of "doing it right" results from an unwillingness to think outside the box of traditional oil and gas development methods.

"Doing it right" is based on the premise that federal land managers can, and must, regulate oil and gas development for the benefit of all resources and all Americans, even if that means economic returns to oil and gas corporations are not quite as great in the short term. BLM, however, invariably makes almost all public lands available for oil and gas leasing and then facilitates development of a lease to the maximum extent possible if that is desired by the corporate lessee. In the process it often disregards or de-emphasizes countervailing public values.

Rejection of the "doing it right" approach is especially evident in the Bush Administration, which has issued numerous edicts that elevate oil and gas development to first priority on the public lands, effectively demoting all other resources to secondary status. Moreover, the administration has not only failed to adopt "doing it right" practices, it has affirmatively sought to weaken or eliminate the few "doing it right" principles BLM does regularly employ, such as stipulations protecting Wyoming’s big game populations on their crucial winter ranges.

Doing it right does not mean not doing it
In supporting appropriate development, WOC recognizes our own daily dependence on oil and gas as well as the significant economic benefits energy development provides Wyoming through severance fees, taxes and employment opportunities. But oil and gas development has tremendous impacts, too, the most significant, but difficult to quantify, being the slow, but steady, industrialization of the state and conversion of its wildlife-rich vast open spaces into something akin to a petro-chemical industrial complex largely devoid of these values.

Few Wyomingites desire this outcome for their state, yet that is where we are headed unless the federal and state governments, particularly the BLM, fully embrace and implement the concept and techniques of "doing it right."

References:
Northern Plains Resource Council. 2001. Doing it Right. Billings, MT. 15 pp.

Molvar, E.M. 2003. Drilling Smarter: Using Minimum-Footprint Directional Drilling to Reduce Oil and Gas Impacts on the Intermountain West. Laramie, WY: Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. 32 pp.

Wyoming Outdoor Council, 2001. Protecting Wyoming’s People, Land, Water and Air, A Citizen’s Proposal to Conserve Wyoming’s Heritage in the Powder River Basin.