BLM Considers Deferring Oil, Gas Leases Near Chaco

The Bureau of Land Management is considering deferring oil and gas leases on three parcels of land and mineral rights on 2,122 acres of Navajo allotment land at the gateway to Chaco Canyon, but a miscommunication in that message led to environmental groups heralding a discussion as a decision.

If the agency does follow through on the delay, it will be the third time it has deferred these leases, which previously were pulled from sales because the area's resource management plan is being revised and in acknowledgment of the need to address conflicts with Navajo allotment lands. Environmental groups say discussions of this latest deferral, which were mistakenly construed as a decision on that course of action, likely springs from similar roots.

"It's the same fundamental issue, which is that the BLM has committed to performing the resource management plan amendment, because it recognizes that there are potential impacts to the landscape and to the local communities that they haven't considered at the landscape level," says Kyle Tisdel, attorney and climate and energy program director for the Western Environmental Law Center. "Our thinking on these parcels is the exact same with the drilling permit approvals. You should go through and complete that process before committing additional lands to oil and gas leasing, and before you're approving additional drilling to an area."

When The Durango Herald called the BLM to confirm the delay, spokeswoman Donna Hummel told the reporter, "We have not yet made a decision. ... I'm not sure where that came from."

Hummel has not responded to a similar inquiry from SFR. She told The Herald the agency can take until May 5 to made a decision on whether to postpone these leases, scheduled for an October sale.

The BLM's existing resource management plan fails to account for the scale of development new technology, including horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, allows for in the area. The agency's own documents describing the need to amend their resource management plan, the governing document for what, when and how much can be leased for oil and gas development, concede that in 2003, the Mancos Oil Shale formation, found near Counselor, Lybrook and Cuba, was considered marginally profitable and unlikely to see much interest from oil and gas companies. But new technology reversed that situation, and what was previously a sleepy little play has seen increasing interest. The Western Environmental Law Center, Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment and San Juan Citizens Alliance are suing to stop issuing permits for hydraulic fracturing on those lands until that new plan is completed. Tisdel recently argued their case for an injunction against development in that area while the plan is being revised in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Colorado and called this latest deferral the "only legally defensible decision" in a press release announcing the decision.

When these leases were deferred before, in 2014, the BLM cited the need to finish that resource management plan revision as the reason.

"The highest concentration of oil and gas wells is the northern portion of the basin; they're conventional wells, and they've been drilling for gas for a long time. What we're talking about is an entirely different category of wells that are included here," Tisdel told SFR before his March 8 court date. "It's a new technology, drilling a new formation in an entirely new area, so the agency has not ever considered what the development of all of these wells means to the landscape and to the people that live here."

The Western Environmental Law Center, Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment and San Juan Citizens Alliance contend that the BLM should suspend fracking on all public lands in northwestern New Mexico until the agency has built safeguards in for the area's cultural heritage and environment.

The Navajo community has borne the brunt of development in that area, raising concerns over the effect of heavy truck traffic on the dirt roads in their communities, ongoing flaring activity that can burn so brightly it illuminates the mesas at night, leaking methane that contributes to global warming and raises questions about air quality, and the industry's water consumption in an already arid landscape.

"Fracking is an insult to Navajos in Greater Chaco, because it not only compromises the cultural landscape, the land and air quality, but it also threatens our water resources. Water is a scarce resource for many Navajos across the reservation; many people do not have access to safe and clean drinking water," Carol Davis of Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment said in a press release. "Many Navajos, like myself, pay approximately $33.75 for 900 gallons of potable water for home use on a weekly basis. Meanwhile, the oil and gas companies misuse millions of gallons of our precious Navajo water in the fracking process—a process that results in the majority of fracking fluid waste being permanently contaminated."

Work on the resource management plan amendment is underway, but the latest date Tisdel says he's heard for completion is late 2018.

"But that date keeps getting pushed back by BLM, so it's a little bit of a fool's errand to try to predict when these documents are going to come out," he says. "But it's not imminent by any stretch."

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story reported the decision as being made, per the announcement from the environmental groups involved. 

Santa Fe Reporter