Environmental Groups Sue BLM To Halt Nevada Energy Projects

(October 2, 2017) The Associated Press reports that environmentalists have recently sued the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to stop it from allowing oil and gas drilling on a vast stretch of federal land in Nevada.

The Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity allege BLM illegally failed to consider the potential consequences of hydraulic fracturing, which the groups assert could harm sage grouse habitat and contaminate fragile desert water sources, in addition to emitting climate-altering greenhouse gases.

The suit has been filed in federal court in Reno, and seeks an order to force the bureau to rescind leases it sold in June on three parcels covering nine square miles. The groups are asking the court to forbid permits on an additional 103 parcels total- ing 296 square miles until BLM complies with the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws they say require a thorough examination of the potential effects of hydraulic fracturing.

Noted is that the Trump administration is reversing some prohibitions on energy development enacted by the Obama administration. Trump has taken steps to open more federal lands, including proposals to shrink the size of national monuments in the West designated by former President Obama. Environmentalists accuse Trump of ousting environmental rules and for pushing an oil and gas agenda.

The Nevada lawsuit accuses hydraulic fracturing, a decades-old well stimulation technique, of releasing carcinogens and other hazardous pollutants into the air and water while emitting massive amounts of methane. BLM spokesman Steve Clutter said his agency does not comment on pending litigation, but that federal law directs BLM to conduct quarterly drilling lease sales for minerals beneath about 880,000 square miles of land it manages. He added that domestic production of oil and gas on those lands account for about 10% of the nation’s gas supply and 5% of its oil.

Richard Perry, administrator of the Nevada Division of Minerals Commission, told the Associated Press that only about 20 hydraulic fracturing permits have ever been issued in Nevada and only seven wells have been drilled. In addition, BLM comments that while hydraulic fracturing operations were a possibility should commercially viable and recoverable oil and gas be discovered, that remained speculative since no formal plans have been submitted to pursue the well stimulation technique. It was on that basis that the agency denied a protest by environmentalists of the lease sales in June.

(SOURCE: The Weekly Propane Newsletter, October 2, 2017)