Bush Drilling Plan Brings Foes Together

The governor of New Mexico -- leading an unusual alliance of ranchers, environmentalists, hunters and property-rights activists -- has launched an election-year challenge to the Bush administration’s energy policies, vowing to block a plan to drill for gas on a vast expanse of desert grasslands here.

Gov. Bill Richardson’s opposition represents the strongest signal to date that the Rocky Mountain West, long dependent on energy production, is having second thoughts about the administration’s aggressive advocacy of oil and gas drilling.

“The federal government just got notice that, if they want to drill in Otero Mesa, this governor and this state are going to fight them,” Richardson said at a rally in Albuquerque last week.

Richardson, who was secretary of Energy during the Clinton administration, remains a player on the national political stage. He has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential nominee, and will be chairman of this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Richardson’s decision to champion the protection of Otero Mesa is a sign that the Bush energy policy could emerge as a campaign issue in the Mountain West as Democrats rail against Republican special interests.

The companies that stand to benefit most from drilling at Otero Mesa have close ties to members of the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney and top officials of the Department of the Interior. That has led opponents to argue that cronyism, rather than sound energy policy, is behind the Otero Mesa drilling plan.

The contested area, encompassing 1.2 million acres in southern Otero County, west of Carlsbad and northeast of El Paso, is a vast plain, punctuated with rugged rock formations, that has long been a magnet for hunters and naturalists. It is home to herds of pronghorn, migratory songbirds and endangered Aplomado falcons.

“I think people see this as a remnant of the old New Mexico they love -- a wildness and an openness,” said Greta Miller, a member of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. “People here love it and want it stay like it is.”

Ranchers own some of the land in the area, as does the state. But the federal government is by far the largest landowner; the Interior Department controls the area of greatest interest to oil and gas companies.

“This administration’s approach to energy is to drill, drill, drill,” Richardson said during a recent interview. “They pander to their core base: the energy and oil industry. We are an oil and gas state. But Otero Mesa deserves to be protected, and I intend to make that clear to the administration.”

The governor described Otero Mesa’s rare Chihuahuan Desert grasslands as “the West’s ANWR” -- a reference to Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the focus of heated disputes between oil interests and environmentalists.

Last week, Richardson signed an executive order making it state policy to protect Otero Mesa. The governor’s authority over the area is limited. But he said he would seek to prevent new energy leases on state land, strengthen rules regarding the disposal of mine waste, and take steps to limit the issuing of crucial water permits to drillers.

New Mexico is the nation’s second-largest producer of natural gas from onshore wells and the fifth-largest producer of oil. Taxes and royalties from the energy industry are by far the largest component of the state’s $12-billion permanent fund, which is used primarily to finance education.

Richardson said that he supported energy exploration elsewhere in the state but that federal land managers needed to be more discriminating in where they allowed wells. The Bush administration has countered that the drilling is necessary to meet growing national demand.

“In the last decade, there have been a number of natural-gas-fired power plants that have been put into development,” said Eric Ruff, an Interior Department spokesman. “If those plants are going to continue to operate, the gas has to come from somewhere. If it doesn’t come from responsible development on America’s public lands, it’s going to come from foreign sources. And Americans will pay more for that.”

Critics argue that the administration is unnecessarily targeting some of the last wild land in the West. Last year, the Interior Department angered conservationists by doing away with the process by which federal wilderness protection could be expanded to new areas, and by opening up many of those areas in Colorado, Montana and Utah to oil and gas drilling.

Moreover, concerns over the loss of wildlife habitat as well as contamination of forage and groundwater, have worried hunting and fishing groups and caused some ranchers, long accustomed to sharing grazing lands with oil wells, to lock their gates to energy company crews.

In 2002, Democrat Dave Freudenthal defeated an oil and gas businessman to become Wyoming’s governor, largely by promising the state’s ranchers that he would balance energy extraction with stronger environmental protection for imperiled grazing land. A Democrat campaigning for governor in Montana is promising to protect the Rocky Mountain Front from further drilling.

In New Mexico, Richardson intervened after Interior’s Bureau of Land Management announced a plan to open up nearly 90% of the 650,000 acres of Otero Mesa under its control to unfettered energy development.

For Richardson, the Democratic governor of a swing state, the issue offers a chance to strengthen bipartisan appeal.

“It’s not only an opportunity for an entree to some traditional Republican camps, it’s also an opportunity to garner favor among more liberal camps who are skeptical of some of his economic policies,” said Brian Sanderoff, president of Albuquerque-based Research & Polling Inc.

Many locals are so angry about the drilling plan that they have joined forces with traditional adversaries. For example, the campaign to save Otero Mesa includes bitter antagonists such as the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, a conservation organization, and members of the Paragon Foundation, a private-property-rights advocacy group made up of conservative businessmen and ranchers.

“I am a lifelong Republican. I was a fundraiser for President Bush, and I never thought I’d be saying what I am today,” said Tweeti Blancett, a sixth-generation rancher from San Juan County in northwest New Mexico, where the landscape holds 35,000 wells. An additional 10,000 are planned.

“Our ranch has been devastated by drillers, our water is poisoned and so are our cows,” Blancett said. “These oil companies are getting away with murder, ruining the land, and no one is stopping them.”

Hundreds of miles from Blancett’s ranch, Otero Mesa has caught the attention of numerous outsiders, including current or former Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich.

All have announced their opposition to drilling in Otero Mesa, and have singled out the energy industry as emblematic of the special interests who they say hold sway within the White House.

The largest leaseholders at Otero Mesa are Yates Petroleum Co. and Harvey E. Yates Co., owned by members of a family with deep roots in southeastern New Mexico and friends in high places.

George Yates, chief executive of Harvey E. Yates, is the former chairman of the Denver-based Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative organization that frequently challenges environmental laws. The group’s lead attorney during Yates’ tenure was Gale Norton, now secretary of the Interior.

Yates was host at recent political fundraising events at which the vice president was a featured guest. Yates’ company was embroiled in controversy in 1982 after a crew cut a fence and bulldozed a road through a federal wilderness area in southern New Mexico to reach a well site. One of the few public defenses of the company’s actions came from Cheney, then a Wyoming congressman.

Until 2001, Yates Petroleum was represented by lobbyist J. Steven Griles, who that year became Norton’s top deputy at the Department of the Interior.

When he was nominated to that post, Griles sold his client list to National Environmental Strategies. That firm is paying Griles $284,000 a year for four years as part of the buyout. Yates Petroleum is a current client of National Environmental Strategies.

In an interview with The Times, Yates, a former chairman of the Independent Petroleum Assn. of America, called allegations of political payback at Otero Mesa a “smear tactic” on the part of environmental groups.

“I am active politically,” he said. “I give money to candidates who represent the philosophy that in my opinion is best for my state. I think everyone should do that.

“I’m a patriot,” he said. “I have never attempted to use a donation in a political campaign to buy influence or position. That’s not why I’m active. I’m sure if I gave a lot of money to the Democratic Party in New Mexico, this allegation would not be happening.”

Estimates of the amount of natural gas beneath Otero Mesa vary. The Bureau of Land Management rates the field’s potential as low to moderate.

“I think there’s a huge question mark about whether there’s ever going to be an economically viable resource that anyone will want to produce,” said Linda Rundell, the bureau’s state director. “It’s really pretty small potatoes.”

Nevertheless, the bureau’s vision for Otero Mesa has shifted since the planning process began in 1998. An early draft placed twice as much land off limits to drilling as the final plan, which was released last month. More than 85% of the public comments on the plan supported protection of the area.

“It’s not a vote,” Rundell said. “We look at societal implications -- we are required to do that -- but it is not a vote.”