The Eleanor Project

Cora Post Office

In the late fifties we camped at Whiskey Grove Flats along the Green River for most of the summer. Mom, Grammy and Granddad fished for browns and trout while my brothers and sisters and I played in one of the most spectacular spots in the West. Fish was the mainstay for most of our meals around the campfire, and weekly trips to Pinedale meant the much anticipated stop at Clark’s Drugstore for penny candy. About ten miles out of Pinedale we always stopped in the small village of Cora, a once popular stop for trappers and homesteaders. The post office, established in the 1890’s, is made of hand-hewn logs transported from the Upper Green River.

The Pinedale Anticline Project Area (PAPA) is one of the newest gas fields in the continental United States with estimated gas reserves at 40 trillion cubic feet. The project’s area comprises 200,000 acres in southwestern Wyoming and supports approximately 100,000 big-game animals that use the area during migration from summer to winter ranges. More than half of the mule deer that use the Mesa Winter Range, which is part of the anticline, formerly relied on the Pinedale Mesa, the winter range most severely affected by development to date. The Upper Green River area of Wyoming is one of last strongholds for sage grouse in the west. The Pinedale Anticline provides habitat supporting 14 leks, or breeding grounds. Experts have predicted sage grouse extirpation from the PAPA if development proceeds as planned without additional conservation measures. The New Fork River and Green River are world-class trout fisheries within the Pinedale Anticline Project Area. Photo gallery of Pinedale anticline drilling activity, much of which is on prime big game winter range.

In 2005, the BLM Pinedale field office was notified by Ultra Resources, Shell Exploration, Questar, BP America, Stone Energy, Yates Petroleum and others, proposing a new long-term development plan that included limited year-round drilling and completions of natural gas wells. Because the operator’s proposal requested exemption from BLM stipulations for wildlife, which restricts their drilling activities in seasonal migratory ranges, the BLM determined the proposal could cause significant adverse impacts to the environment.

The 2006 draft supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) outlining the proposed expansion by the operators and planned by the BLM was critized by the EPA with recommendations that the BLM not move forward.

The 2007 revised drilling plan considers the effects of 4,399 additional natural gas wells and surface disturbance increased by 12,000 acres on the Pinedale Anticline. Year-round drilling is proposed on 70,200 acres and would occur in crucial big-game habitats and near sensitive sage grouse habitats. Mule deer populations would be allowed to decline another 15 percent, and the sage grouse population would be allowed to decline 30 percent and monitoring and mitigation plans are not required until after the decision is made.

The EPA criticized BLM’s environmental impact statement and once again recommended that BLM should not move to finalize the plan. The EPA predicted the proposed project would result in a least 10 days of visibility impairment at the Bridger Wilderness Area and noted that groundwater monitoring data suggest current drilling and production activities on the anticline has contributed to contamination of an aquifer used for drinking water.

Dave Freudenthal, Governor of Wyoming, response to proponents’ consideration of additional mitigation based on monitoring data presented at annual review meetings, “it is absurd to not acknowledge upfront that there will be a need for mitigation to protect the wildlife herds. There is no doubt that any habitat mitigation will not provide immediate relief to the wildlife need, and may in fact take several years for the habitat improvement to be effective.”

Studies on the effect of oil & gas development on wildlife

Bureau of Land Management Webpage on the Pinedale RMP

Denise Skinner

Just in time for Summer, The National Parks Service announced three fee-free weekends at more than 100 National Parks. Fins, reefs, goblins, natural bridges and river narrows await you in a land like no other, the great Colorado Plateau. Epitomized by picturesque buttes and mesas, high mountains gashed by river canyons or dry with gullies and washes, the Colorado Plateau extends across southwestern United States, encompassing parts of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

The complex geological processes that created the rugged canyons, towering cliffs and winding rivers led to the greatest concentration of national parks in the United States. Among them are Grand Canyon, Zion, Canyonlands, Bryce, Arches and Capitol Reef.

Other topographic features include sunken deserts and shallow structural basins called synclines. The Uintah Basin, also spelled Uinta, in eastern Utah, is the most northerly section of the Colorado Plateau and home of the Northern Ute Tribe. The basin is east of the Wasatch Range and south of the Uinta Mountains. The Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River, flows southward out of the Uinta’s, crossing the basin, flowing into the deep gorge of Desolation Canyon. The confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers is located in Canyonlands National Park. The Green River watershed know as the Green River Basin, covers parts of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado beginning in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, flowing through some of the most spectacular canyons in the United States.

Those same varied and complex geologic processes also endowed eastern Utah with economic energy resources, including coal, oil, oil shale and natural gas. Shale gas has been a growing source of attention due to the use of advanced technologies in hydraulic fracturing. Utah holds approximately 2.5 percent of the country’s proven natural gas reserves and according to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), an insignificant impact on the price of oil and gas nationally.

In 1976, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) directed the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) to inventory and designate roadless areas of the US as suitable for Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs). Utah’s BLM designated only 2.5 million out of 23 million acres of roadless land in Utah as WSAs. After appeals, the acreage was increased to 3.2 million acres.

America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act is reintroduced every two years, with each new Congress, and seeks to permanently protect more than 9 million acres of wilderness quality land in Utah.

The Department of Interior (DOI) cancelled leasing of 77 parcels for exploration and development. Ken Salazar, US Interior Secretary, said, “only when the light of public scrutiny was shed on the situation did they reconsider,” and “many of the 77 parcels auctioned off are close to national park units and even closer to other sensitive, world-class landscapes, including Desolation Canyon.”

The American Petroleum Institute voiced concerns that the report will be used to justify not acting to develop energy resources on public lands in the Intermountain regions. Utah’s state overview of some of our favorite Public Lands!

Range Resources, a major natural gas developer in the Appalachian region, suspects vandals loosened bolts securing pipeline coupling causing hydraulic fracturing wastewater to leak into a  farmers drainage ditch.  A Range spokesman said the pipe had passed a pressure test and physical inspection.  Pennsylvania state environmental regulators are investigating.  

The wastewater subsequently found a path to a tributary of Cross Creek Lake in Washington County.  Salamanders, crayfish and insects were killed in the May 26 spill.

Where was their security?  A fracturing job typically has thirty plus operators, not including company men, water and sand haulers, rolling in all hours of the day or night, a wire-line crew, such as Halliburton, and sundry support personal adding to the number of eyes on site.

Range Resources had a simple choice, step up to plate and accept responsibility. They choose front-line finger pointing at mysterious vandals and a wait-and-see stance instead.

“We have a 60-year track record on our side,” said Chris Tucker, spokesman for Energy in Depth, a Washington, D.C. based industry lobby group, in response to the recent push by legislators to repeal the Energy Policy Act of 2005, (see  ‘Halliburton Loophole’ post)

Tucker went on to say, “Why in 60 years that fracing has been used, why now?  Why is everyone pissed off now?” 

My answer to Tucker is accountability!

Denise Skinner

The oil and gas industry is the only industry in America that is allowed to inject known hazardous material, unchecked, directly into or adjacent to drinking water water supplies. In 2000, in response to a 1997 court decision ordering the EPA to regulate hydraulic fracturing under the ‘Safe Drinking Water Act’, the EPA initiated a study to assess the potential for fracturing to contaminate underground drinking water supplies. In 2001, a special task force convened by Vice President Cheney (former CEO of Halliburton), recommended that Congress exempt hydraulic fracturing from the ‘Safe Drinking Water Act’. In 2004 the EPA found that hydraulic fracturing posed “little or no threat” to drinking water, hence the loophole.

The Marcellus Shale, a natural gas formation, which extends through 70% of Pennsylvania, is hinted to hold 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 50 TCF of which is estimated to be recoverable. We have enough natural gas reserves in the United States to last for more than 100 years. Developing these resources could provide energy security to the U.S. by focusing on natural gas as a transportation fuels. Of the petroleum we import, about 70% is used as gasoline or diesel.

Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology are used to extract natural gas from vertical fractures in a shale formation. Thousand of pounds of proppant (sand or ceramic beads), and millions of gallons of water are blasted at the shale to get a fracture. The hydraulic fracturing fluid can contain formaldehyde, benzene, toulene, naphthalene and other chemicals known to be carcinogenic. After the frac, flowback water is then pumped out into a slurry pit and in most cases, contaminated. Some companies dispose of wastewater in underground injection wells. I worked as a mudlogger on an injection well in Campbell County, Wyoming. The injection well was to be used for coal-bed methane wastewater disposal.

There is no guarantee that the intended fracture has not traveled. Some injected fluids have been known to travel as far as 3,000 feet from the well. If wastewater is disposed of in streams, the temperature and sheer volumn will affect sensitive aquatic ecosystems.

Denise Skinner

Face-Off Over ‘Fracking’: Water Battle Brews On Hill, May 27, 2009. “Environmentalist and the natural gas industry are getting ready for a battle in Congress…” by Jeff Brady/NPR

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