Wilds advocates warn of Utah drilling

Wilderness advocates are warning that federal land agencies plan to vastly increase oil and gas drilling throughout the West. In Utah, they add, an additional 8,500 wells could be drilled in desert areas with wilderness potential.

A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management, the only agency targeted in Utah, did not dispute the number of wells that could be reasonably expected here, but said the projects would be undertaken with public comments and the use of best management practices.

Over the next two decades, says The Wilderness Society, public land in Utah, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming could see nearly triple the present number of producing wells on public land.

Currently, 63,000 wells are producing on public land in the five states, the group adds in a release. The number of wells would increase by 118,730.

The Wilderness Society, a national organization based in Washington, D.C., released the report Wednesday, citing a surge in oil and gas activity in the five states. The report, "Too Wild to Drill," is available on the Internet at www.wilderness.org/OurIssues/Energy.

The parts of the Beehive State that figure in the report are termed "Utah's Red Rock Wilderness." That means desert regions supported for wilderness protection in a bill originally proposed in Congress by the late Rep. Wayne Owens, D-Utah, and subsequently reintroduced by Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y.. The bill has not passed.

"The report highlights special places on our public lands that are under threat from oil and gas development," said Suzanne Jones, the group's director for its Four Corners States office in Denver. "In Utah we picked one set of lands, which are lands proposed for wilderness under America's Red Rock Wilderness Act."

Among special places targeted for possible oil and development are Labyrinth, Desolation and Nine Mile canyons, she said.

"Those are places that I think most Utahns value very greatly" for their recreation potential and other special features, Jones said in a telephone interview. "And BLM is disregarding those public values to push ahead with drilling."

She said the estimate of 118,000 new wells throughout the West is conservative.

The number was derived from examining proposals to drill and resource management plans the BLM is revising. Forest Service land also was considered in some of the states, though not in Utah.

Jones added, "With each one of those wells come roads, pipelines, pump stations — the whole spider web of development."