Drilling rights to be offered on 440,000 acres of public land
Yesterday, I read the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance’s response to the recent BLM announcement of an unprecedented oil and gas drilling rights auction. About 440,000 acres of Utah land will be up for bid. SUWA accused the Bush administration of rushing to open more public lands to oil and gas drilling in order to strengthen domestic energy supplies. I almost fell out of my chair.
With environmental issues becoming more and more polarized, there comes the time when even a hardened liberal nature lover (who happens to hunt, fish and eat organic tofu) begins to entertain dark thoughts about “them environmentalists.”
Let me explain.
1) Two weeks ago Senator Bob Bennett and Representative Tim Matheson announced a wilderness deal where more than 200,000 acres of new wilderness was designated in southwest Utah. With all the backslapping going around on both sides of the isle, few environmental advocates seemed to recognize it for the preemptive strike it was. By “trading favors,” Utah legislators are preempting opposition to oil and gas development on Utah public lands by offering wilderness designation to those picturesque lands already unsuitable for the petroleum industry or too sensitive to ever allow drilling.
Like so many of our non-profit environmental groups, SUWA is fighting tooth and nail for their conventional idea of wilderness, when the public lands the rest of us enjoy for hunting, fishing and camping are spiraling down the drain in favor of the real threat: The U.S. energy crisis – unfortunately not a liberal or conservative issue.
2) According to Richard Heinberg’s new book “Power Down,” on world oil and gas discovery, production and consumption have followed a predictable pattern. By 1930, new U.S. oil field discoveries had already peaked. By 1970 oil production from U.S. sources peaked, requiring ever increasing amounts of foreign petroleum to stay ahead of exploding demand. By 1960, global discovery peaked (gas peaked in 1980) with the world production peak estimated to occur in the next 10 years.
In 2003, Exxon-Mobil’s own head of exploration notified the company’s shareholders that the world’s oil and gas production from existing fields was declining despite increased levels of drilling at those same fields. He calculated that overall world production will need to increase 80 percent by 2015 just to keep pace with projected demands. I wouldn’t want his job.
As early as the 1970s, U.S. energy policy makers recognized an impending oil crisis and our increasing dependence in Middle East oil (we all know were that has got us) and began emphasizing more development of U.S. natural gas reserves. It appeared like we had lots of it in the Rocky Mountain West, it was clean burning and made in the good old U.S. of A. Both liberal and conservative administrations began re-tooling American infrastructure to run off natural gas.
In the last few years, more than 90 percent of all major electric generation plants built or planned for construction are gas-fired. As natural gas is approaching one-third of the U.S. energy use, more than half of all residential homes are now heated by natural gas. So what’s the problem and what does this have to do with Utah?
Well, it turns out that someone made some mistakes and we didn’t have the gas we expected and we used a lot more, a lot faster than expected.
Now U.S. gas production, like oil production, is declining – despite increased drilling. If we tap as much gas as possible, America is still looking at a projected 50 trillion cubic foot deficit by 2015 (half of current annual consumption).
Naturally, the United States is scrambling to keep up with demand by unlocking as many restrictions to public land drilling as possible. (The San Juan Basin in the Four Corners area is estimated to hold 50 trillion cf of natural gas.)
So yes SUWA: The Bush administration is rushing to open more public lands to oil and gas drilling in order to strengthen domestic energy supplies – good for you!
With petroleum demand and prices soaring and Wall Street investors dumping money into the highly profitable energy industry, the Bush administration is just doing what any good capitalist would do: stoke the economic fire by loosening environmental restrictions to oil and gas development on public land.
Most of the oil and natural gas in the Rocky Mountain West is locked up in more difficult geological formations such as tar sands, sandstone, coalbed methane and gas shale. Extraction in these circumstances is more difficult, more expensive and much more environmentally destructive – polluting water tables with poisonous gases and minerals, poisoning livestock, displacing native wildlife and destroying surface vegetation.
The BLM markets these drilling operations as temporary impacts on the landscape. But Utah history shows that as oil and gas extraction begins to decline at existing fields, oil companies respond by intensifying drilling efforts with less and less concern over local environmental damage.
Forget about wilderness. Oil and gas is the new environmental battleground. Utah environmental advocates need to realize that a very real energy crisis is driving land use, not philosophical disagreements about wilderness.
Instead of opposing the needs of rural Utah communities, Utah non-profit groups like SUWA need to address energy conservation and advocate for the long term sustainability of rural Utah communities threatened by the short-term vision of our energy policy. After all, urban outdoor enthusiasts have plenty of wild places to have their quiet nature experience.
But if we ALL pull our heads out of the sand we can have a real Utah nature experience; watching the Rocky Mountain high desert stabbed to death all in the name of our own consumptive greed.
Comments and questions can be sent jmgoodell@cc.usu.edu.