Administration orders energy project reviews in Rockies

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has directed federal land managers to remove obstacles to oil and gas development in parts of five Rocky Mountain states.

New policy directives issued to Bureau of Land Management state directors give the officials tools to implement the administration's long-standing goal of opening the Rocky Mountain West to increased exploitation of oil and gas resources.

BLM field offices in Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico will have until the end of the year to evaluate whether restrictions on oil and gas development can be removed.

BLM director Kathleen Clarke said the policy directives will "will further our agency's efforts to ensure a reliable supply of affordable energy, as called for by the president."

"Our overall objective is to ensure the timely development of these critical energy resources in an environmentally sound manner," she said in a statement last week.

Environmentalists say the policies are another step in White House's efforts to favor energy development over protection of wild lands.

"This policy shifts the land management equation in favor of drilling and automatically assumes that oil and gas production is the top value of public lands," said Pete Morton, a resource economist with the Wilderness Society. "I think it's a position that is not consistent with BLM's mission and with the values that the American public holds for their land."

The BLM manages 261 million acres of federal land, mostly in 12 Western states.

In April 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force made it a federal goal to remove restrictions to energy development in the Rockies. A month later, President Bush ordered federal agencies to accelerate completion of energy projects, while maintaining safety, public health and environmental protection.

James Hughes, deputy director of the BLM, said the policy directives advocate use of new oil and gas data gathered by the U.S. Geological Survey.

"We're saying, 'We've got that report, folks. Let's use it in our land-use plans,"' said Hughes, who sent the directives to the state offices last week. "In some cases they may have more (restrictions) than they need. In some cases we may have some areas where we need to add some."

Jim Sims, executive director of the Western Business Roundtable who was on the staff of the Cheney energy panel, said the new BLM policies should give land managers flexibility they need to deal with energy needs in an environmentally sensitive way.

"They're looking to address the effectiveness of the current restrictions, and that's very important because a lot of these restrictions and lease stipulations are outdated," Sims said. "Some of them are very, very old, and in the intervening time, production technology has grown by leaps and bounds."

The USGS study released this year identified 3.9 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 139 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in five basins in the Rocky Mountain region. The report also said no significant restrictions were in force on drilling for 57 percent of the oil and 63 percent of the gas.

Changes in BLM policy are focused on areas in the five states with the highest concentrations of oil and gas: Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

"It's not that we're opposed to drilling in a responsible manner. But the BLM has not adequately explained why we need to expedite these processes," the Wilderness Society's Morton said.