Spanish Valley lease for oil, gas drilling removed from BLM sale

The Bureau of Land Management has taken off the table, for now, 600 acres near Moab being offered during an oil and gas lease sale next month.

Moab-based BLM Canyon Country district manager Shelley Smith said Wednesday Grand County ordinances won't allow for a type of directional, or angled, drilling needed to access the minerals under land in the Spanish Valley area.

That same 600 acres being offered in the Dec. 19 lease sale being held in Salt Lake City is home to many residences and part of a golf course.

"It's not reasonable to offer it until we look at it more," Smith said.

Homeowners in the area objected to even offering the land during the sale when they learned last week that part of the BLM's so-called Parcel 225 was actually 600 acres in Spanish Valley.

"It's really inappropriate to be talking about leasing — oil and gas — for drilling in a residential area," Grand County Planning Commission member Jean Binyon said last week. She is also a Spanish Valley resident.

Smith said that during a long land-use planning process that included Grand County no one spoke up in objection to Parcel 225 or indicated that there may be a zoning issue. She said that as industry nominated parcels for oil and gas development, the Spanish Valley became part of a nomination last February.

But a BLM land-use plan was still being finalized and the BLM waited until only recently to disclose that the parcel would be part of the December sale.

"We need to pause, sit down with the county again and look at what the implications are of the zoning in the area," Smith said.

The BLM would not allow for any surface occupation by oil and gas developers within the 600 acres, Smith said. The land within Spanish Valley is privately owned, but the federal government controls access to minerals underneath.

The technology exists and BLM rules allow for angular drilling to take place on land adjacent to the 600 acres. But a federally protected wilderness study area and a deal between the state and a resort development, along with county zoning ordinances, appears to have made angled drilling nearly impossible, at least for now.

About 1 out of 10 leases for oil and gas actually sees drilling and about the same amount actually produce, Smith added. One of many reasons companies nominate parcels to be auctioned in a lease sale is to lock up land as protection around a producing area nearby, Smith said.

"It's like finding a good fishing hole — if you catch a big fish, everybody else wants to come over and drop a line in your hole," she said.

In other words, just because a parcel is leased doesn't mean there will be drilling near someone's back door or, as some have suggested, within view of Utah's famed Delicate Arch in Arches National Park. She said people don't understand that the BLM has strict stipulations regarding visual resource management around the park that would prevent setting up a drilling rig near Delicate Arch.

"People don't know what protections are in place," Smith said. "We don't need to add a drill derrick to our license plate."

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com