La Plata County approves new drilling rules

At a meeting yesterday, the La Plata County Board of County Commissioners approved new drilling regulations for energy operations there, the Durango Herald reports.

Deadline approaches for Grow the Army comments

Nov. 24 is the deadline for comments of the “Grow the Army” draft environmental impact statement (EIS), which evaluates the environmental implications of the two additional brigades that are being pursued for Fort Carson.

Opponents of plans to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site contend the EIS is an attempt to force the expansion because of increase use projected for the site.

BLM releases oil shale rules

The Bureau of Land Management published final regulations today to establish a commercial oil shale program that could result in the addition of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil from lands in the Western United States.

Oil shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock containing organic matter from which oil may be produced.

The regulations provide for a phased approach to oil shale development on public lands in the West, although commercial development is not expected for several years. BLM says the regulations will provide a basis for decisions, as “rules of the road” for the large investment that will be necessary for industry to develop technologies to extract the resource. Those investments could exceed $1 billion.

Before any oil shale leases are issued, additional site-specific National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis would be completed on the proposed development. Once a lease is issued, the lessee will also have to obtain all required permits from state and local authorities, under their respective permitting processes, before any operations can begin. Another round of NEPA analysis would be conducted before any site-specific plans of development are approved.

The rule also establishes a royalty rate based on a time-adjusted rate, beginning at 5 percent during the first 5 years of commercial production, and then rising 1 percent every year thereafter until the rate reaches 12.5 percent, the current rate for conventional oil and gas development. Forty-nine percent of the royalties are shared with the states within which the leases are found.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the United States holds more than half of the world’s oil shale resources. The largest known deposits of oil shale are located in a 16,000-square mile area in the Green River formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Federal lands comprise 72 percent of the total surface of oil shale acreage in the Green River formation.

The regulations are just one of several steps designed to harness these vast energy resources. The BLM has also issued research, development and demonstration leases for five oil shale projects in Colorado’s Piceance Basin and one in Utah.

In addition, C. Stephen Allred, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for land and minerals management, signed the record of decision today on a programmatic environmental impact statement (EIS) that would amend several resource management plans to open lands for application for potential oil shale leasing in the future. In the EIS, the BLM amended land-use plans in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming to set aside approximately 1.9 million acres of public lands for potential commercial oil shale development. Additional site-specific NEPA analysis would have to be completed before leasing or development occurs.

Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) called the regulations “premature and flawed” in a statement today, noting that BLM has not addressed how much water and electricity would be needed for commercial development of oil shale or where it would come from. “A royalty rate of 5 percent, of which Colorado would receive half, is a pittance,” Salazar added. “The administration is setting up Colorado to be sold short.”

CSU develops wildfire management ‘playbook’

Colorado State University researchers have developed a wildfire management “playbook” for federal agencies to use to strategically manage wildfires.

The system, known as Starfire, or Strategic Treatment Assessment Response Spectrum and Fire, is the first of its kind to generate fuel treatment priorities across an entire planning unit or national park and the first to address strategic smoke management where communities and local air quality can be adversely affected.

Wildland fires increasingly threaten life, property and natural resources and have been costly to fight. Federal agencies spend more than $3 billion annually to fight wildfires.

Doug Rideout and Yu Wei from Colorado State’s Fire Economics and Management Laboratory, in cooperation with the National Park Service, pioneered the system to address cumulative effects surrounding wildfires. They say their approach enables fire managers to handle new and emerging policies by balancing the ecosystem benefits of wildfire with the need to protect life, property and natural resources. In some situations, overly aggressive fire suppression has encouraged ecosystem degradation, beetle infestations and an accumulation of fuels that have possible catastrophic consequences.

Rideout and Wei use Starfire to analyze and outline contributing factors of wildfires such as fuels, plant species, smoke management, fire behavior, ignition spread probability, ecosystem benefits and losses, historic weather data, cultural trees, property and real estate development. Once all of the data is compiled and assessed, Rideout and Wei develop a series of maps designed to support collaborative decision-making and inter-agency cooperation.

The system was first developed and tested at the Tehipite wildfire in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California this summer. Starfire is also expected to be used at Yellowstone National Park and Bureau of Land Management properties throughout the West.

Colorado roadless rule heads to DC for review

A federal advisory committee will resume its deliberations of Colorado’s proposed roadless rule this week in Washington, D.C., more than two weeks past the deadline set by the White House for completed federal rulemakings.

Environmentalists and sportsmen are expected to testify against the rule, which they say would open up some of Colorado’s best backcountry to new oil and gas development as well as signficantly increase logging and road-building in areas formerly off limits to industrial development. Among those expected to testify are Colorado Trout Unlimited Director David Nickum, Joel Webster of the Theodore Conservation Partnership and Ken Neubecker of the Colorado Council of Trout Unlimited.

In a letter to Gov. Bill Ritter (D) dated Nov. 13, Trout Unlimited, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership asked the governor to strengthen the state’s proposed roadless rule before it gains federal approval. The groups said the rule would allow unnecessary and intrusive industrial development in areas that provide critical fish and game habitat, as well as substantial opportunities for fishing and hunting.

Colorado boasts more than 4 million acres of inventoried roadless lands, which provide habitat for deer, elk and other big game animals, as well as stream, lake and river habitat for Rio Grande, greenback and Colorado River cutthroat trout.

Energy companies predict slowdown in Piceance Basin

Citing the decline in the price of natural gas, the nation’s economic troubles and new state regulations on drilling, natural-gas producers in the Piceance Basin expect work there will slow down, with as much as a 40 percent reduction in the number of drilling rigs operating in the basin, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports.

BLM seeks comments on grazing permit renewals

The Bureau of Land Management’s Glenwood Springs field office is seeking public comment on 31 grazing permits that are up for renewal in 2009.

The permits cover grazing allotments in Eagle, Garfield and Pitkin counties. A map of the grazing permits involved is available on-line. Comments
need to be received by Dec. 8.

The Glenwood Springs field office currently administers 147 grazing permits covering 191 grazing allotments. Sixty-two grazing allotments within the 566,000-acre field office are not authorized for grazing.

In addition, the field office will be assessing the health of public lands in the watershed south of I-70 between Rifle and Glenwood Springs in 2009.

Test burn slated for beetle-killed trees

Fire managers from Rocky Mountain National Park are collaborating with Colorado State University researchers to learn more about the impacts of the mountain pine beetle epidemic on fire behavior.

The researchers have launched a pilot project to investigate three important issues: the flammability of lodgepole pine crowns, the mechanisms of pine seed dispersal following beetle attack and survival of beetle larvae following burning. The purpose of the project is to remove the dead foliage from several stands of beetle-killed trees in
the park through the use of prescribed fire and learn more about fire behavior in beetle killed trees.

Needles on trees killed by beetles remain on the tree for two to three years before falling to the forest floor. There are unknowns regarding how the current outbreak will impact future fire behavior in beetle-killed
stands. However, it is thought that the risk of a crown fire may be greater in stands composed primarily of standing dead trees with red needles than in stands of green trees.

The prescribed burn will be ignited after a snow or sufficient wetting rain in Horseshoe Valley, south of Fall River and north of Deer Ridge Junction.

The project has several objectives, including breaking up the continuous canopy of standing dead trees between the park and adjacent communities to minimize the risk of a high intensity fire burning out of the park, advancing scientific knowledge of fire behavior in beetle-killed lodgepole pine, and determining if burning crowns of recently attacked trees has any impact on lodgepole pine regeneration or on the survival rates of overwintering beetle larvae.

BLM accepting comments on recreation permits

The Bureau of Land Management’s Grand Junction field office is accepting public comment on 19 “special recreation” permit applications through Nov. 30.

BLM requires such permits for commercial activities, as well as for competitive and organized group events on BLM public lands. Nine of these applications are new proposals.

TRCP protests lease sale

The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is protesting federal leases that it says would permit oil and gas drilling in crucial big-game winter range and migration corridors and Colorado cutthroat trout habitat. The sportsmen’s protest of the Bureau of Land Management’s Nov. 13 lease sale comprises more than 16,000 acres where the group says energy development could have dramatic and long-term effects on game populations.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife has identified winter range and migration routes as “vital” to the survival and sustainability of big game, and the Western Governors Association recently released a report specifying the importance of wildlife corridors in maintaining “significant, reliable wildlife populations.” Scientific studies have concluded that energy projects established near big-game migration corridors can result in population declines in species such as mule deer.

“Just last winter, the Colorado BLM was forced to enact emergency closures of public lands to protect animals on winter ranges,” TRCP field representative Dwayne Meadows said in a statement. “If these leases are sold, the BLM will lack discretion to responsibly manage development and, therefore, have little ability to close the areas to human traffic, if conditions should require it.”

The TRCP protest encompasses parts of the Navajo River drainage that provide important habitat for Colorado River cutthroat trout, which the BLM and DOW have labeled as a “species of concern” or “sensitive species.” Leasing the areas in question would violate a conservation agreement between the two agencies and rely on management plans that in some cases are more than 20 years old, TRCP says. Since the plans originally were written, significant new information about the effects of energy development on game has been published that TRCP says BLM must consider.

The sportsmen’s group asks that the leases address President Bush’s 2007 executive order on hunting, which aims to “facilitate the expansion and enhancement of hunting opportunities and the management of game species and their habitat.” The order is directed at entities such as the Interior Department that administer public lands, recreation and wildlife management. Hunting and angling activities contribute substantially to Colorado’s economy, annually generating more than $1 billion for the state.