From Deseret News archives:
Bush's oil, gas policy criticized
Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C., environmental group, unveiled a yearlong investigation titled "Who Owns the West?" on its Web site, www.ewg.org.
The report takes issue with the Bush administration's often-repeated stance that it is pushing for more oil and gas production as a way to reduce the country's reliance on foreign oil.
The group alleges:
• The federal government has offered 229 million acres of public and private land in 12 Western states for oil and gas drilling.
• The oil and gas industry has produced enough energy from this land to satisfy only 53 days of U.S. oil consumption and 221 days of natural gas consumption.
• Since 1982, our dependence on foreign oil has doubled and our dependence on foreign natural gas has tripled.
• The Bush administration has removed barriers to drilling on a net 45 million acres in 12 Western states and has lifted environmental protections and emphasized drilling on lands already open to oil and gas development.
• Between 2000 and 2004, the oil and gas industry poured more than $75 million into political campaigns, with 79 percent going to Republicans.
"It's the great urban legend of energy policy: If only we could open more public land to oil and gas development, we could wean ourselves from dependence on foreign energy," the group says in its report. "In fact, we've already followed this strategy and it hasn't worked."
The group based the bulk of its analysis on two federal databases — Land and Mineral Records 2000 housed in a Bureau of Land Management data center in Denver and an accounting of well-by-well oil and gas production maintained by the Minerals Management Service in a database called the Oil and Gas Operations Report.
"EWG researchers used mapping and data tools to synthesize the 7.6 million data records on oil and gas industry activity into a detailed analysis of the scope of lands the government has offered since 1982 to the oil and gas industry, by land tract and by company."
It highlights the Book Cliffs as one of the hotspots, where the BLM is considering a gas industry plan that could place up to 423 natural gas wells on 80,000 acres in east-central Utah.
The report says that 294 companies and individuals hold 399 active leases on 323,509 acres of land. Yet it says oil in the greater Book Cliffs area could satisfy demand in the United States for a mere 11 days.
Don Banks, spokesman for the BLM's Utah office, said the demand in the Book Cliffs is not oil but natural gas.
"Our natural gas production is from a combination of private and federal lands," Banks said. "It's not about oil. It's about natural gas."
And gas in the greater Book Cliffs area could supply the United States for 257 days, according to the environmental group. EWG recommends the Bush administration develop a policy that prioritizes investment in technologies that replace oil and gas drilling with cleaner, longer-lasting renewable energy.
E-mail: donna@desnews.com
