The Bureau of Land Management's acting state director has halted a commercial group's proposal to drill nearly 1,000 gas wells and build roads in the Book Cliffs Resource Area.
Douglas M. Koza issued the stay, effectively stopping the project until he can review the BLM's previous approval and make his recommendation.The BLM approved the plan from five oil companies called the Resource Development Group, which asked to drill 969 wells and build about 400 miles of roads through Book Cliffs, a remote, wildlife-rich mix of federal, state and private lands located south of Vernal, about 125 miles east of Salt Lake.
BLM spokesman Glenn Foreman said Koza issued the stay on Friday because several parties had expressed concerns about the project.
Several state agencies, Uintah County, RDG and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance had appealed the BLM's Jan. 29 decision.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance said the BLM was remiss in accepting RDG's environmental assessment and deciding the project does not merit a full environmental impact statement, particularly since some of the land is potential wilderness.
RDG protested the BLM's decision to cut the number of allowable wells to about 760. The group says the bureau overestimated the extent of critical winter habitat for mule deer that would be affected by the development, and included too large a buffer zone around wells and roads.
"There are some real problems with the analysis that was done, in my opinion," said Bill Ryan of Rocky Mountain Consulting, which represents the two major stakeholders in RDG -- Rosewood Resources and White River Resource Management Inc. Minor partners are Security Energy Co., the Kidd Family Partnership and St. Anselm Exploration Co.
The BLM's state director must still decide whether to approve or overturn the decision, though SUWA considers the issuing of a stay a victory.
"The state director's decision to issue a stay of the RDG proposal and all drilling applications is commendable and represents an understanding of the irreparable harm that would result from drilling wells and constructing roads in this sensitive region of the Book Cliffs," SUWA spokesman Herb McHarg said Monday.
The project encompasses 79,800 acres about 60 miles southwest of Vernal, but the assessment only covers the 69,560 BLM-administered acres. About 9,000 acres are state-owned and the rest private.
The sticking point for SUWA is that RDG's project would overlap two pristine areas the group wants set aside as wilderness.
One is the White River unit, 13,500 acres of federal land that the BLM recently included on a wilderness inventory. The other is the Lower Bitter Creek, 15,000 acres that have not been officially inventoried but which SUWA says meet the requirements.
"If in fact the proposal were to go through and wells drilled, it would completely take away the wilderness aspects of the Lower Bitter Creek," McHarg said. In turn, that would affect ongoing discussion about possible federal designation for those lands.