Nature Conservancy Magazine: Winter 2008 - Proving Ground

Location, Location
Using Google Earth images and state wildlife data, the Conservancy created a map showing the Jonah field in red and key biological areas in and around the field. Blue areas mark winter range for mule deer; yellow lines are pronghorn routes. The Teton Range is visible in the distance.
Enlarge this map

Pacesetter
Conservancy scientist Joe Kiesecker devised a new model for mitigation based on sound science and aimed at getting ahead of the problem

Go Deeper

The Nature Conservancy in Wyoming
Wyoming’s desert basins sweep across one-third of the state and contain some of the largest expanses of sagebrush remaining in the western United States.

Press Release
The Nature Conservancy Recommends Goals for Recapturing Lost Wildlife Habitat

“We’re not saying put a fence around them and keep everybody out. We’re saying proceed with caution. If we identify those places up front, then we can slate some for avoidance.”

— Joe Kiesecker, Conservancy scientist

Shooting in the Dark

Wyoming isn’t the only state feeling the effects of rapid energy expansion. The entire Rocky Mountain West is in the midst of a boom that took off after 2001, when a White House-appointed energy task force called for expanded production on federal lands. This part of the West doesn’t have much oil to offer, but it’s got trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. (Natural-gas consumption is projected to increase by at least 20 percent in the next decade.) Over the past several years, record numbers of drilling permits have been issued in the region.

People in Wyoming have seen plenty of energy booms in their lives, but Jonah ushered in a new era. For environmental groups, Jonah has become the poster child for energy development gone awry. Just the name has become a catch-phrase for industrialization of the Western landscape.

From above, the sagebrush plains now look pockmarked; Jonah is said to resemble a rabbit warren. There, what started a decade ago as a proposal for 500 natural gas wells spaced 80 acres apart has ballooned into a plan for 3,100 wells, known as the Jonah Infill Project.

Jonah sits on a patch of sage owned by the public and overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Part of the BLM’s job is to auction leases for underground minerals to the highest bidders, who in turn gain a right to extract those minerals. The BLM, meanwhile, retains management oversight. While Jonah’s moneymaking potential had been known for decades, its reserves were hard to tap because the geologic conditions, known as a tight-sands formation, hold the gas in tiny unconnected pockets of nearly impermeable rock. New technology and high gas prices changed that, making it possible, and lucrative, to unlock Jonah’s reserves.

In 2006, the BLM approved the infill plan; the wells are spaced just 10 acres apart. Meanwhile, the Pinedale Anticline, to the north, has developed in lockstep with Jonah, albeit with an even bigger proposal for more than 4,000 additional gas wells. And a project some are calling “Son of Jonah” is now scattering wells into the unbroken sage south and west of the patch. That field will bring even more roads, and Jonah alone could yet see up to 465 miles, along with the traffic that accompanies drilling up to 250 wells in peak years. That puts even more of a squeeze on wildlife.

Driving by a drill rig in the Anticline, Kiesecker stops to photograph a dead pronghorn. Lying on its side, covered with flies, it was likely struck by a car or truck on the busy road. “You’ve increased the access to areas that had none before,” he says, noting that human activity is as problematic for wildlife as plowing up sage.

“There was no reason to destroy as much habitat as they did,” says Linda Baker, a community organizer for the Upper Green River Valley Coalition in Pinedale, which has objected to the pace and spacing of drilling in Jonah.

Pinedale, 30-some miles north of Jonah, doesn’t have a single traffic stoplight, yet during a few days last winter, the town experienced air quality on par with Los Angeles, in large part because of drilling activities in Jonah and the Anticline. To some people in Pinedale, the initial plan at Jonah was the equivalent of the camel sticking its nose under the tent. They never saw the rest of the body coming. “It was done in such a rush,” Baker adds. “It happened before anybody realized how much damage was actually occurring.”

The field operators at Jonah — Encana Oil & Gas and BP America Production Co. — acknowledged the impact on habitat and agreed to finance the $24.5 million mitigation fund. The mitigation money is earmarked for conservation projects outside the 30,000-acre infill. The companies agreed to support projects that protect and restore up to 90,000 acres—three times as much habitat as could be lost at Jonah. That deal was a boon for conservation, Conservancy scientists say, since habitat at Jonah was already badly degraded. Drilling there was better than drilling elsewhere.

The mitigation projects would be managed by an ad hoc-governmental entity, the Jonah Interagency Mitigation and Reclamation Office. But from the start, BP worried that the office’s staff lacked the tools to do the job. The company wasn’t satisfied that wildlife would truly be served, that the best sites would be identified to benefit displaced species. BP feared the process would amount to “blind mitigation.”

“You knew there were areas where species were,” says Dave Brown, regulatory affairs manager for BP, “but you didn’t know if [those areas] were optimum.”

The company wanted someone who did know. BP, Brown says, wanted someone who would bring scientific methods to the process to help the company avoid wasting money “shooting in the dark.”

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