The Bureau of Land Management's state office has sided with two environmental groups, ruling that the agency's Vernal District did not properly prepare an environmental assessment on developing a natural gas field.
Max Adams, Uintah County commissioner, said sending back the assessment for further work probably means potential developers can't get started on the project by the end of the year - so they will lose a special tax incentive. If that happens, they may never drill into the field, he said."We're not happy," Adams said Tuesday.
Adams added that he feels more unhappy with the BLM than with the environmentalists of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
Production companies wanted to drill 52 natural gas wells in the Desert Springs field of Uintah and Duchesne counties, about 40 miles southwest of Vernal. According to Ray Tate of the BLM Vernal District, initial production would range from 1 million to 4 million cubic feet of gas per day per well.
The field is 27,678 acres, and has proven gas reserves in the Wasatch Geologic Formation, according to the BLM. Much of the eastern part of the unit is in an area supported by the Utah Wilderness Coalition for wilderness protection, although it is not in a BLM wilderness study area.
The agency's state minerals office agreed with SUWA and the Sierra Club's Utah Chapter, which said the environmental assessment was inadequate. The minerals office sent it back to the Vernal District, with instructions to correct the assessment in these areas:
- Inadequate consideration of the proposal of the Green River for wild and scenic river status. "The extent of the analysis of the impacts to the wild and scenic status of the river is limited, providing no quantification or determination of significance," says a Dec. 15 memo from the minerals office.
- Some of the project's foreseeable impacts weren't studied adequately by the assessment.
- "Cumulative impacts have not been adequately addressed."
Dave Little, the BLM's Vernal District manager, said this is one of four assessments for gas developments on which the district worked this year. The interest in natural gas in the region was spurred by an incentive program Congress passed that gives a tax break for wells drilled into "tight sands formations" by the end of this year.
But with the delay caused by the appeal, it is doubtful whether any drilling will be carried out there before the end of the year.
"We will not be approving any drilling plans until the EA (environmental assessment) is completed," Little said. But when that will be, he doesn't know because the minerals office didn't give specific directions for rewriting the assessment.
"If we have failed to consider everything, it's proper for the state director to say, `Wait a minute, we have a little more to do before you make decisions,' " Little said.
"The unfortunate part of it is the companies do get caught in the middle, as far as timing."
Coastal ANR, project proponents based in Denver, did not respond to a request for comments on the decision.
Steve Koteff, staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said the group agrees the assessment should be rewritten. But it had more to criticize in the assessment than the points with which the minerals office agreed.