Groups sue over BLM plan for oil drilling

By Mead Gruver
Associated Press Writer

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Five environmental groups sued last week to challenge a long-range U.S. Bureau of Land Management plan that has begun guiding oil and gas development over a vast area in south-central Wyoming.

The groups say the BLM failed to protect undeveloped areas and didn’t sufficiently consider ozone pollution or climate change in approving a resource management plan for the BLM’s Rawlins Field Office in late 2008.

The plan covers 3.4 million acres, or 5,300 square miles.

The Wilderness Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Wyoming Outdoor Council and Wyoming Wilderness Association filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

A BLM spokeswoman in Cheyenne declined to comment, citing agency policy for not discussing litigation. An oil and gas industry representative called the suit an attempt to shut down oil and gas development in the area.

The environmental groups are concerned not only about the plan, but about how it already has been put into action through drilling the BLM has approved, said Bruce Pendery, an attorney for the Wyoming Outdoor Council.

“There’s nothing theoretical about this,” Pendery said. “We’re seeing environmental consequences we think are unacceptable.”

Already the BLM has issued more than 50 drilling permits under the plan, including five near the citizen-petitioned badlands wilderness of Adobe Town, the lawsuit says.

On Tuesday, the BLM plans to auction off five more energy leases in the Adobe Town area, according to the lawsuit.

“If allowed to proceed, oil and gas development will degrade the landscape with well pads, roads, pipelines and power lines,” the lawsuit says. “This degradation will spoil the wilderness quality of these landscapes.”

Kathleen Sgamma, director of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, called it a “pretty standard lawsuit.”

The BLM developed the plan over several years with participation from a variety of groups, Sgamma pointed out.

“The groups suing are never satisfied with the balanced approach that BLM tries to take. It’s another way to try to shut down oil and gas,” she said.

The resource management plan is a bad example of handing over public lands to the oil and gas industry, said Erik Molvar, executive director of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.

“We couldn’t just stand idly by and let some of North America’s most outstanding high desert ecosystems and most spectacular wilderness get carved up by bulldozers and drilling rigs,” he said.