Driller touts deal with greens

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah agreement touted for fusing cooperation between a natural gas developer and environmentalists was held up Wednesday as the new way to embrace resource development in the shadow of an unfriendly presidential administration.

"Even before BP (the Gulf oil spill), this administration was not particularly eager to support or approve oil and gas development projects on public lands," said Duane Zavadil, a spokesman with Bill Barrett Corp. "Post-BP, we are clearly in a new era that will take active engagement on the part of the state."

Zavadil gave members of the Legislature's natural resources interim committee an update on the corporation's natural gas drilling project on the West Tavaputs Plateau, not far from Nine Mile Canyon.

Because of concerns over the operation's impact to rock art and other prized archaeological resources in the area, a "programmatic agreement" was inked early this year by the Bureau of Land Management, Bill Barrett Corp., affected counties and multiple environmental groups, including the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

"It was an agreement in principle (with these groups) that we could move forward with the project uncontested," Zavadil said.

Concessions were made on how natural gas will be developed given environmental concerns, as well as a number of remediation measures that will have to be taken, he added.

"There has to be a redoubling of efforts in recognizing that this is the new era that has been entered into with regards to public land access and energy development."

Noting that environmental activism is nothing new, he stressed to committee members that President Barack Obama's occupation of the White House over the last 18 months has resulted in a flurry of new policies that take a strong nod toward those "green" concerns.

"The last good thing this administration did with regards to energy development was to go to the Gulf," he said.

A few of the committee members said the agreement involving Bill Barrett Corp. in the Nine Mile Canyon area is an example of compromise fostering energy development while still invoking environmental protections that seek to satisfy even the most strident critics.