NM County First in US to Ban ALL Oil and Gas Extraction

Mora Valley, New Mexico

From EcoWatch:

Monday the County Commission of Mora County, located in northeastern New Mexico, became the first county in the U.S. to pass an ordinance banning all oil and gas extraction.

Drafted with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance establishes a local Bill of Rights—including a right to clean air and water, a right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature—while prohibiting activities which would interfere with those rights, including oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.

Communities across the country are facing drilling and fracking. Fracking brings significant environmental impacts including the production of millions of gallons of toxic wastewater, which can affect drinking water and waterways. Studies have found that fracking is a major global warming contributor, and have linked the underground disposal of frack wastewater to earthquakes.

“Existing state and federal oil and gas laws force fracking and other extraction activities into communities, overriding concerns of residents,” explained Thomas Linzey, Esq., CELDF executive director. “Today’s vote in Mora County is a clear rejection of this structure of law which elevates corporate rights over community rights, which protects industry over people and the natural environment.”

“This vote is a clear expression of the rights guaranteed in the New Mexico Constitution which declares that all governing authority is derived from the people. With this vote, Mora is joining a growing people’s movement for community and nature’s rights,” said Linzey.

“The vote of Mora commission chair John Olivas and vice-chair Alfonso Griego to ban drilling and fracking is not only commendable, it is a statement of leadership that sets the bar for communities across the State of New Mexico,” said CELDF community organizer and Mora County resident, Kathleen Dudley. She explained that the ordinance calls for an amendment to the New Mexico Constitution that “elevates community rights above corporate property rights.”

Mora County joins Las Vegas, NM, which in 2012 passed an ordinance, with assistance from CELDF, which prohibits fracking and establishes rights for the community and the natural environment. CELDF assisted the City of Pittsburgh, PA, to draft the first local Bill of Rights which prohibits fracking in 2010. Communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, New York and New Mexico have enacted similar ordinances.

Mora County joins more than 150 communities across the country which have asserted their right to local self-governance through the adoption of local laws that seek to control corporate activities within their municipality.

Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for more related news on this topic.

San Juan oil drilling heats up in N.M.

An Encana Corp. rig explores for oil south of Farmington. The company has drilled about 30 wells in the area.

(SW.EF! editor’s note: read this mainstream media article with a critical lens, it contains some pro-fracking propaganda.)

Swift and Huntington explore in Colorado

By Chuck Slothower, The Durango Herald

Encana Corp. plans to pour $250 million to $450 million into drilling oil wells on New Mexico’s side of the San Juan Basin next year, the company says.

The Canadian company has aggressively pursued San Juan Basin oil, drilling about 30 wells to date. The drilling is concentrated near Huerfano, N.M., southeast of Farmington.

“Our strategy really is to shift our portfolio more towards oil, so we’re really focusing on areas where we can do that, and the San Juan’s one of those,” said Doug Hock, a Denver-based spokesman for the company.

Encana plans to operate two to four drilling rigs in the area in 2014, according to a company presentation. The wells cost $4 million to $5 million each and have shown initial production rates of 400 to 500 barrels per day.

The San Juan historically has been one of the nation’s most productive natural-gas basins, but with prices low for that commodity and high for oil, drillers are finding oil in some previously overlooked areas.

Improved techniques for horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” have made such drilling possible.

Oil, gas drilling delayed in Utah

From The Durango Herald (Associated Press)

SALT LAKE CITY – An independent state agency announced Friday it was putting on hold a lease for oil and gas drilling in a wild area of Utah in a concession to big-game hunters who rallied the opposition of Gov. Gary Herbert.

Sportsmen’s groups hailed the agreement between state-lands managers and Anadarko Petroleum. It delays until 2016 exploratory drilling in the 28-square-mile Bogart Canyon area of the Book Cliffs in Grand County.

The board of the Utah Trust Lands Administration voted Thursday to scale back the drilling lease for the Texas-based company. Anadarko can still sink wells on 150 square miles of more developed lands in the Book Cliffs region.

The deal gives Herbert and U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop more time to explore federal land-trade opportunities that could compensate Utah for pulling back drilling in this area, officials said Friday.

The chairman of the state-lands agency said it will “fully cooperate with Congressman Bishop’s broader consolidation effort.”

“We are anxious to see if the process can provide an exchange proposal equal to or better than the agency’s current land position in the Book Cliffs,” said agency chairman Steve Ostler, a former executive for real-estate developer The Boyer Co.

Herbert announced his opposition Aug. 27, acknowledging the trust-lands agency has a responsibility to make money for Utah schools, but “clearly, a lot of groups are upset” about the Book Cliffs lease. He suggested the agency look to a longer-term strategy of trading less developed state lands for federal preservation, while taking other mineral-rich federal lands.

Officials aggressively developed Utah’s portfolio of checkerboard lands inside federal domain in Utah with real-estate sales and oil-and-gas drilling leases. The agency manages 3.4 million acres of trust lands remaining from a statehood grant for the benefit of the schools. The trust is valued at $1.67 billion, up from $60 million in the past two decades.

Officials expressed some concern Friday that back-pedaling on oil and gas leasing could shortchange funding for Utah’s schools. For that reason, the state Board of Education has endorsed the original Anadarko lease as the best decision for public schools.

Other beneficiaries of the state trust include a hospital and school at University of Utah dedicated to mining, schools for the deaf and blind and the Utah State Hospital.

Oil and fracking chemicals spill into Colorado’s floodwaters

YOU CAN HELP! The terrible flooding in Colorado struck the heart of one of the busiest oil and gas fields in the country. Amid concerns that chemicals and #fracking fluids from these facilities are contaminating the water, we need your help documenting these problems! http://coflood.skytruth.org/ Just take a photo of the site and report it to SkyTruth, a nonprofit that uses remote sensing and mapping to expose environmental dangers. It’s easy to do and will greatly help them map areas of high concern! Here’s the link: http://coflood.skytruth.org/ You should also report the problem to Colorado’s Oil and Gas Commission: http://ow.ly/oZYwc Please SHARE especially if you have friends or family in Colorado that can help out! (photos courtesy of East Boulder County United)

By John Upton, Grist.org

Heavy rains returned to Colorado on Sunday and hampered rescue efforts after last week’s flash floods. The confirmed death toll has risen to seven, and hundreds are still unaccounted for. An estimated 1,500 homes are destroyed. Some 1,000 people in Larimer County, north of Boulder, were awaiting airlifts that never came on Sunday — they were called off because of the foul weather.

The floods have also triggered other problems that have gotten a lot less media attention: Fracking infrastructure has been inundated and its toxic contents have spilled out. Pipelines that transport fossil fuels are sagging and snapping under pressure. Tanks that store chemicals and polluted water are being overwhelmed and toppling over. Oil and gas wells are flooding.

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Colorado Floodwaters Cover Fracking And Oil Projects: ‘We Have No Idea What Those Wells Are Leaking’

By Rebecca Leber, ThinkProgress.org

Colorado flooding has not only overwhelmed roads and homes, but also the oil and gas infrastructure stationed in one of the most densely drilled areas in the U.S. Although oil companies have shut down much of their operations in Weld County due to flooding, nearby locals say an unknown amount of chemicals has leaked out and possibly contaminated waters, mixing fracking fluids and oil along with sewage, gasoline, and agriculture pesticides.

“You have 100, if not thousands, of wells underwater right now and we have no idea what those wells are leaking,” East Boulder County United spokesman Cliff Willmeng said Monday. “It’s very clear they are leaking into the floodwaters though.”

Photographs shared by East Boulder County United, a Colorado environmental group that opposes hydraulic fracturing, show many tanks have been ruptured and others floating in the flood. At least one pipeline has been confirmed broken and leaking.

Click here to read the full article…

U.S.34 outside Greeley ripped apart by the South Platte River. (Tim Rasmussen, The Denver Post)

5,250 gallons of oil spills into South Platte River

By Bruce Finley and Ryan Parker, The Denver Post

MILLIKEN — Industry crews have placed absorbent booms in the South Platte River south of Milliken where at least 5,250 gallons of crude oil has spilled from two tank batteries into the flood-swollen river.

The spill from a damaged tank was reported to the Colorado Department of Natural Resources Wednesday afternoon by Anadarko Petroleum, as is required by state law.

State officials have responded to the spill site, which is south of Milliken near where the St. Vrain River flows into the South Platte.

Nearly 1,900 oil and gas wells in flooded areas of Colorado are shut, and 600 industry personnel are inspecting and repairing sites, according to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. Crews are inspecting operations, conducting aerial and ground surveillance, identifying and determining locations of possible impairments, the association said Tuesday.

Anadarko, the second-largest operator in the operator in the Denver-Julesburg Basin, has shut about 10 percent of its operations — 250 tank batteries and 670 wells.

Click here to read the full article…

Colorado Floods Causing Fracking Spills?

Natural and Human-made Disasters Portend Future of Toxic Catastrophe

From Earth First! News

It appears that an unknown number of underwater frack wells are leaking into the flood waters tearing through Colorado. Although local activists have sent emails with photographs documenting toppled industrial tanks, there has been no response from media or authorities.

According to one activist, “There has been no mention of the gas wells on the Denver newscasts either last night or this evening although all stations have had extensive and extended flood coverage. You can see underwater wells in the background of some of the newscast videos, and yet the reporters say absolutely nothing.”

Torrential rains have led to days of flooding across the state, and 500 people remain unaccounted for. At least 4 people have died.

According to Brad Udall, director of the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment, the floods are likely resulting from a combination of drought-hardened soil, wildfires that remove vegetation, and unusally strong rains due to warmer air that more holds moisture in clouds. “As the climate warms further, the hydrologic cycle is going to get more intense,” he told National Geographic, “Between the fires last year and this year, the unprecedented and continuing drought in the Colorado River, and now this shocking event,” he continued, “climate change feels very real to me.”

As climate change gets worse, disasters will increase. Fukushima may be just the front end of what’s down the pipeline for Earth.

Drilling delayed in eastern Utah

From The Durango Herald (AP):

MOAB – At the urging of Gov. Gary Herbert and U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, exploratory drilling for oil and natural gas in a roadless section of eastern Utah known for its wildlife has been put on hold until 2016.

Sportsmen’s groups hailed an agreement announced Friday between state land managers and Anadarko Petroleum that delays exploration in the 18,000-acre Bogart Canyon area of the Book Cliffs in Grand County.

The Texas-based company still can drill in the rest of the 96,000 acres it leased last month from the Utah Trust Lands Administration, which manages trust lands remaining from a statehood grant for the benefit of schools.

The agreement was reached after representatives from Herbert and Bishop’s offices, the land-trust agency and Anadarko met in private Thursday.

The deal provides time needed to explore all options for protecting prime habitat for fish and wildlife in Utah, said Casey Snider, Utah coordinator for Trout Unlimited.

“We’ve gotten a little breathing room. Now we’ve got to get down to the real work,” he told The Deseret News.

Last week, the Utah Board of Education rejected a request by Herbert and Bishop to delay exploratory drilling around Bogart Canyon after state land managers said such a move could devalue the deal they were still negotiating with Anadarko.

The two Republicans, who champion energy development, said the trust-lands agency’s secret dealings with Anadarko excluded the interests and views of Utah residents.

But Herbert and Bishop, in statements, praised the agreement to delay drilling in the roadless area.

“Providing time to work out a broader lands initiative through a more inclusive and balanced approach is a win-win for all Utahns, especially Utah’s schoolchildren,” Bishop said.

Grand County Council member Lynn Jackson sought assurances a final decision won’t be debated in secret.

“I’m still concerned about the process, and I highly encourage us as a state to provide a more open and transparent process,” Jackson said.

The trust-lands agency’s board is scheduled to consider modification of the contract at a Sept. 26 meeting in St. George.

Utah opens Book Cliffs region to gas, oil drilling

From The Durango Herald (Associated Press)

SALT LAKE CITY – Despite opposition from Gov. Gary Herbert and U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, the Utah State Board of Education has endorsed a lease that would open wildlands in eastern Utah to oil and gas exploration.

Board members on Friday voted 15-0 to back a decision by the Utah Trust Lands Administration to lease up to 155 square miles, or 96,000 acres, of the Book Cliffs region to Anadarko Petroleum Corp. for five years.

The trust-lands agency plans to sign a deal next week with Anadarko to allow drilling on the state lands, including a scenic portion known for its wildlife along the Tavaputs Plateau in Grand County.

Herbert and Bishop have sought to keep that area around Bogart Canyon – cherished by hunters and environmentalists – out of the lease. They complained the agency’s secret dealings with Anadarko excluded the interests and views of Utah residents.

Bishop is spearheading negotiations designed to resolve Utah’s long-running battles over what public lands should be preserved and what public lands should be used for resource extraction. The effort involves hunters, environmentalists, rural county commissioners and the oil and gas industry.

“Inclusion of this small area in the … lease complicates our larger planning effort and could jeopardize the possibility of exchanging one of the effort’s crown jewels for developable land that is potentially even more beneficial for Utah’s schools,” Herbert and Bishop wrote in a letter to the education board.

“Leasing the southern portion of the Book Cliffs could very seriously jeopardize the broader lands consolidation effort, as well as an optimal return for Utah’s schoolchildren,” the two Republicans said.

But asking Anadarko to back off Bogart Canyon would devalue the overall lease and cost the school trust a potentially lucrative revenue stream amounting to more than $6 million per well, some education board members said.

State-lands agency director Kevin Carter said drilling would not impede hunting and other public uses around Bogart Canyon.

“We think we can work with our lessee partner and do this development in such a way that it retains the majority of its natural character and still allows us to extract from it those things that are important,” he said.

Herbert has limited influence over the independent trust-lands administration, which controls square-mile sections of land awarded to Utah at statehood.

The agency manages a checkerboard of 3.4 million acres of trust lands remaining from a statehood grant for the benefit of the schools. It raises most of its revenue from oil and gas leasing.

BLM narrows proposed Chaco drilling sites to four

This photo shows Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, in northwestern New Mexico, about a 2½-hour drive south of Durango. Just four of 38 parcels requested for leasing by gas and oil companies in the area have been approved. The nearest lease site is about 10 miles from Chaco Canyon, the center of the ancestral Pueblo culture that flourished from the 800s to the 1100s.

Energy companies had nominated 38 parcels for leases

By Chuck Slothower, The Durango Herald

Opponents of drilling near Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New Mexico have received a reprieve from proposals to drill on U.S. Bureau of Land Management parcels bordering the park, which is home to ancestral Puebloan ruins.

The BLM this week released an environmental assessment that proposes to lease four of 38 parcels that were nominated by gas and oil companies.

None of the parcels recommended by the BLM’s preferred alternative to go forward is among the nominated parcels closest to the park. One nominated parcel was less than a quarter-mile from the park boundary.

The closest of the four parcels in the preferred alternative is about 10 miles from the park, and all four parcels are in an area that already is home to gas and oil activity.

Chaco Canyon is about a 2½-hour drive south of Durango.

A coalition of environmental groups wants the parcels nearest to Chaco Canyon permanently protected. Some of the parcels have been nominated repeatedly for leasing to gas and oil companies and deferred by the BLM.

Is Nothing Sacred? Fracking and Chaco Culture National Historic Park

Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Culture National Historic Park. | Photo: gregorywass/Flickr/Creative Commons License

By Char Miller, KCET

The falcon flew low and fast over Strawberry Rock, an outcropping high above the Rio Brazos Valley, just east of Chama, New Mexico.

We were sharing a picnic with good friends in a pine copse rooted in rough sandstone and marveling over the clear blue horizon, when the small raptor shot past; its backswept wings and breakneck speed were its only identifiable features.

As it stretched out and banked west, the falcon’s swift form was highlighted against the quartzite face of the Brazos Cliffs, glowing in the midday sun; it then hurtled down the dark green valley, following the silvery flow west toward the Rio Chama.

That shutter-click of a moment seemed suspended in time. Like our vacation, a lifting up and out, a release.

Yet at some point the falcon had to wing home, and so did we, though our pace was a bit more sedate. A day later we were rolling along U.S. 64 across northwestern New Mexico, straight through the state’s oil-and-gas patch in the San Juan River watershed.

The region contains the nation’s second largest gas reserves, a play that has gone through a series of booms and busts since the 1920s, but it has been experiencing a decline of late. The small towns along our route bear the marks of this economic withering — idled rigs, banged up pickups, pitted roadbeds, and dusty stores with little on the shelves. Even the relatively bustling Farmington, which received a substantial infusion of American Reinvestment and Recovery Act dollars to repave an extensive portion of U.S. 64, has not been able to generate enough new work to break out of its doldrums.

That’s why so many are looking for salvation in two words: Mancos Shale. The formation, which extends from New Mexico into portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, is buried about a mile beneath the surface. Estimated to contain upwards of six billion barrels of oil, approximately one-third of which lies within New Mexico, the untapped resource is being touted as a godsend for the recession-hit area.

Click here to read the full article…

Swift begins construction of La Plata County’s first shale-oil well

County waiting before considering new regulation

By Emery Cowan, The Durango Herald

Swift Energy began construction on western La Plata County’s first shale-oil well last week after clearing the final hurdle of county land-use approval.

The Houston-based oil and gas company is working on road improvements and well-pad construction with plans to have a rig in place by mid-August, said Bob Redweik, Swift’s corporate manager for health, safety and environment.

Swift’s drilling plans have captured the county’s attention. Many speculate that if successful this wildcat well could herald a boom in shale development that, so far, has passed over this corner of Colorado.

New shale drilling techniques and technologies have changed the landscape of energy production across the country, allowing producers to reach untapped reserves of oil and natural gas. At the same time, these methods have raised concerns about potentially new and unknown impacts to water, air and land.

Concerns about shale drilling, especially potential impacts to groundwater from hydraulic fracturing, has drawn crowds of residents to county commissioner and community meetings. Many argued for the county to enact a moratorium on shale drilling to better study the practice before allowing it in the county.

Commissioner Gwen Lachelt has repeatedly pressed her fellow commissioners to consider changing the county’s gas and oil regulations to address shale development specifically.

As of now though, commissioners have decided to take a wait-and-see approach until the county has assessed the production and impacts of Swift’s well.

“All eyes will be on Swift,” Lachelt said.