Alarm sounded on wells

22,000 planned in next 20 years, says wilderness group

Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 18, 2007 at midnight

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Another 22,000 gas and oil wells are planned for Colorado's federal lands - a figure that means western parts of the state could see a fivefold increase in drilling over the next 20 years.

The new well projections were released Monday by the Wilderness Society, an advocacy group that wants to see more land and wildlife protected from drilling, which can expose once-remote lands to new roads, truck traffic and heavy industrial activity.

"The impact from this kind of development would be truly staggering," said Nada Culver, senior counsel with the Wilderness Society's Denver office.

She said all Coloradans should consider the effects of the gas drilling boom. "This is our state water, state wildlife, state air" at stake, Culver said.

With about 4,500 gas wells already on federal land in western Colorado, and at least 22,000 more on the way, residents who've seen their lives and landscapes altered by the economic and environmental disruptions of the gas boom will see "an even more radical transformation," Culver said.

But Marc Smith, executive director of the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, said, if anything, "growing uncertainty and delays on federal lands" are making energy companies more hesistant about undertaking projects there.

"I think the number (of projected wells) they're referring to is a best-case scenario, and certainly, if the Wilderness Society has anything to do with it, the number will be much less," Smith said.

The Wilderness Society figures address only federal public lands. More than 33,000 wells are active across Colorado, with the majority on private lands.

The Wilderness Society said its analysis is conservative and that the numbers of future wells is likely to be even higher. The group's analysis, Culver noted, left out projections from at least two Bureau of Land Management field offices, where no numbers have been made available.

Nor, she said, did it take into account recent comments from ExxonMobil that the company plans to increase natural gas production in northwest Colorado's Piceance Basin by nearly 20 times its current level.

The Wilderness Society released the Colorado numbers as part of a broader report on gas and oil development across the Rocky Mountain West, which projects 126,000 new wells across Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico and Utah.

The well projections were neither refuted, nor confirmed, by federal land managers who said they are still studying the group's analysis.

Matt Spangler, a BLM spokesman in Washington, D.C., said the 126,000 figure "looked like it might be on the high estimate range for (development) scenarios." But Spangler didn't have an independent BLM figure.

Another agency spokeswoman cautioned that numbers in BLM planning documents don't necessarily translate to actual wells in the ground.

"I can say that 126,000 wells have not been approved, and the wells are not approved until we get an application to drill," said Jaime Gardner of the BLM's state office in Lakewood.

One activist, Grand Junction home builder Duke Cox, called the explosion of gas wells across Colorado and the West the result of a "perfect storm of deregulation" fueled by the Bush administration opening up more public lands for energy development.

But Smith maintains the impact of thousands of additional wells is misleading because technological advances often allow companies to drill multiple wells from one site, limiting surface disturbance. "So 126,000 new wells doesn't necessarily mean 126,000 new locations," he said.

Drilling in Colorado

The state clocks in with 33,087 active gas and oil wells, with the biggest chunk in Weld County. Here's a breakdown by county:

• Weld 12,276

• Garfield 4,133

• Yuma 2,911

• La Plata 2,883

• Rio Blanco 2,606

• Las Animas 2,462

• 36 others 5,816

hartmant@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5048

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