Gas reserves held hostage?

A lawsuit seeking to stop seismic testing near Utah's Nine Mile Canyon is holding hostage vast reserves of natural gas that could help ease a volatile market, according to representatives of Denver-based Bill Barrett Corp.

Officials from the energy exploration company say as much as 400 billion cubic feet of natural gas may lie beneath an 85-square-mile area in the southern Uinta Basin, located roughly 30 miles east of Price.

That's enough natural gas to heat all the homes in Utah for nearly five years.

But the property also is adjacent to thousands of prehistoric rock art formations that environmentalists worry could be irreparably damaged if testing and drilling is allowed.

In April, the Bureau of Land Management approved an environmental assessment that allowed the company to begin seismic testing.

On Monday, the BLM's approval order was challenged by a lawsuit filed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, Wilderness Society, Sierra Club and Utah Rock Art Research Association. The group is seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the testing from going forward.

Jim Felton, a spokesman for Bill Barrett Corp., said Tuesday that some of the same groups that are blocking the company's efforts to secure natural gas were pushing Congress a decade ago for policies encouraging natural gas usage.

"I think it is a little disingenuous for some of these environmental groups, as consumers, to fault the producer," Felton said. "One of the games here is delay, because if we get to October and we're still wrestling over this there would be another six months."

Stephen Bloch, an attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said the issue is not black and white.

"From January 2000 through March 2004 there were approximately 3,200 drill permits approved in Utah," Bloch said. "SUWA challenged five of those, and 1,000 of those permits have never been drilled."

The seismic testing that would occur on the Tavaputs Plateau, Bloch said, would include 60,000-pound trucks equipped with steel undercarriages that vibrate the ground. In addition, 5,000 source points drilled to 60 feet below the ground would allow for charges to be set off.

"So it's not a question of conservationists thwarting oil and gas development at every corner," Bloch said. "It's about trying to find that balance to protect a few special places in Utah and throughout the West."