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Wilderness proposal includes drilling ground
Associated Press Writer
DENVER – U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette’s new wilderness proposal includes about 40,000 acres on top of western Colorado’s Roan Plateau, much of which has been leased for gas and oil development.
The draft bill released last week would designate 34 separate Colorado sites totaling 890,000 acres as federal wilderness. They would be off-limits to many activities.
Last year, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved a management plan for the public land on the plateau that allows drilling in some places. The agency also approved gas and oil leases on nearly 55,000 acres on the plateau about 180 miles west of Denver.
The landmark has become a battleground between those who want to protect Colorado’s backcountry and wildlife habitat and proponents of increasing domestic energy production. The BLM estimates the plateau holds about 9 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, although some environmental groups’ estimates are lower.
Environmentalists are suing to block the drilling, saying the federal analysis of potential impacts was inadequate.
Denver-based Bill Barrett Corp., which has a 90 percent stake in about 40,000 acres of the leases on the Roan Plateau, has spoken to environmentalists and federal officials about a possible settlement of the lawsuit.
The company would “vigorously protect our property rights there,” Barrett spokesman Jim Felton told The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction.
Other proponents of developing the Roan, including some area elected officials, counter that there’s drilling on private land there now and that the BLM’s management plan is highly restrictive.
BLM spokesman Jim Sample said he can’t comment on proposed legislation.
DeGette spokesman Kristofer Eisenla said many of the proposed wilderness sites on the plateau are in valleys and on cliffs while many of the proposed drilling sites are off existing roads that follow the tops of ridges. Some of the proposed wilderness overlaps with places the BLM has made off-limits to development because they are considered environmentally sensitive.
“We think they probably can coexist,” Eisenla said, referring to the wilderness areas and drilling.
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