Gas Bounty Amid Natural Treasures: A Volatile Mix

For 6,000 years, elk, deer and pronghorns have fled the numbing snows of the high country for the sagebrush plains of western Wyoming. Winter doesn’t negotiate here. If the animals don’t make it out of the mountains, they die.

The problem is, the path between those summer and winter ranges lies on the edge of one of the nation’s most productive natural gas fields. The new gas wells south of here aren’t producing the usual 1 million cubic feet a day; some of them are gushing 10 million cubic feet a day. Oilmen spend lifetimes dreaming about wells like these.

Now, factor this into the picture: Some of the best potential gas reserves lie just south of two of the nation’s most prized national parks--Yellowstone and Grand Teton, the granddaddies of wilderness in the continental United States. The undulating glacial valleys, wild rivers and forested peaks under study for gas development are key links in the nation’s largest intact temperate ecosystem.

What’ll it be? Elk or natural gas? Can you have both?

Dilemmas such as this are playing out all over the Rocky Mountains, one of the key regions where Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force is reviewing options for new oil and gas development--in many cases, in some of the most prized wilderness left in the West.

From the spectacular Rocky Mountain Front in northwestern Montana to southern Wyoming’s Red Desert and Colorado’s Vermillion Basin, the U.S. Interior Department will be taking a new look at millions of acres of now-closed federal land as a hedge against the nation’s worsening energy crisis.

Unlike the remote Arctic National Wildlife Refuge at the top of the world where the United States’ best-known energy war has been playing out, these are some of the nation’s best-known scenic resources, in the heart of the American West.

Rising natural gas prices and a boom in gas-fueled power plants have spurred new industry interest in lands once thought too remote or technologically difficult. The result is likely to be a major collision between wilderness preservation and energy development in coming months, from Montana to New Mexico.

“It gets down to, do you want cheap oil and gas, or do you want Yellowstone?” asked Meredith Taylor of the Wyoming Outdoor Council, which is fighting an industry proposal to lease 370,000 acres of Bridger-Teton National Forest, south of Yellowstone, for oil and gas.

Then again, industry officials say, if you don’t get the gas here, where are you going to get it? What wild land in the U.S. isn’t somebody’s treasured retreat?

“Somebody asked me, ‘How many wells do you want to drill?’ ” said Dennis Brabec, a gas contractor in Wyoming who has been one of the leading proponents of opening Bridger-Teton for drilling. “I told him, ‘I don’t determine how many wells I want to drill. The determination is made by the consumer. How much does the consumer want to pay for gas?’ ”

The National Petroleum Council estimates that 40% of the potential gas resources in the Rockies--or about 137 trillion cubic feet--are in federal land either closed to exploration or subject to restrictions.

Wilderness advocates say that figure is exaggerated. But across the country, sweeping new moves to set aside wilderness, including then-President Clinton’s move to designate 21 additional national monuments and 56 million acres of roadless areas, are, for better or worse, closing off access to valuable oil and gas reserves.

About 11.3 trillion cubic feet of gas lie under protected roadless areas, most of it in Wyoming, the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah, and the western Montana thrust belt.

In addition, the U.S. Geological Survey found a high probability of oil and gas resources under five of the 21 national monuments established since 1996.

“Wyoming’s energy potential could completely replace the entire OPEC production for the next 41 years,” Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer told a House committee last month. “We have it. America needs it. With this world-class base of raw resources at our very feet, how come America is in such a critical situation of short supply?”

Geringer wrote a letter urging Carole “Kniffy” Hamilton, supervisor of Bridger-Teton National Forest, to open drilling access.

More than 13,000 public comments have come in on the leasing proposal, the majority of them urging Hamilton to stick with her preliminary decision to keep the area closed. A final decision is due in mid-July.

The location of Bridger-Teton--between Yellowstone and a huge, already-producing gas field--makes it a study in the politics of oil and the environment.

The proposed drilling area lies just 35 miles outside the resort town of Jackson, which relies on the scenic beauty of the surrounding countryside for its economic livelihood.

Cheney himself, a former oilman, hails from Wilson, Wyo., just outside Jackson. Former Interior Secretary James G. Watt, who led the push for expanded oil development under President Reagan, practices law in Jackson.

Watt said the attempts of communities to protect local resources have stood in the way of energy independence. “Nobody ever wants it in their own backyard,” Watt said. “The Teton wilderness is a beautiful area. I’ve been horseback riding there. But there is no one area that is highly prized over another area. . . . Special interests are so powerful, they play up one against the other, and somebody’s got to stand up for the national interest.”

Indeed, although the Chamber of Commerce and the county board of commissioners have opposed drilling in Teton County because of the potential costs to tourism, some residents say they are willing to step up to the plate.

“I always feel like we can’t just say, ‘Our place is more pristine, and you can’t have a gas field here,’ and then 90 miles down the road there’s huge gas fields,” said Jackson resident Kate Mead. “Quite frankly, the world needs our gas.”

The four tracts proposed for leasing are prized for their pristine trout streams, grizzly bear habitat and crucial big game winter range.

“This is the southern ANWR [Arctic refuge] right here. It’s as spectacular as ANWR ever thought about being, only it’s in the Rocky Mountains,” Taylor said.

In making a tentative decision not to lease, the U.S. Forest Service cited some of the cumulative effects associated with gas development: air and water pollution, and the need to protect “a sense of place” in the wilderness.

Remote Area Evokes a ‘Sense of Place’

Gloria Flora, former supervisor of Montana’s Lewis and Clark National Forest, coined that standard when she closed off portions of Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front to oil and gas leasing in 1997. Part of her justification--that the remote frontier evokes a special “sense of place” in people who go there--is still being fought out in the courts.

“She invented [the concept] out of whole cloth. Nobody had ever even heard the word,” said William Perry Pendley of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which is seeking to overturn the ban.

However, Flora said most people know it when they see it.

“When we look at the Rocky Mountain Front, we’re talking about a 100-mile stretch where you have the Plains literally just smashing into the Rocky Mountains, and absolutely spectacular scenery,” Flora said.

“Something like this adds meaning to people’s lives. People tend to say beauty, meaning, solitude--those things are esoteric, and they’re not really something you can take to the bank. But when you look at the importance of nature to our society, look at the number of paintings, the music, the poetry that has been inspired by the awe of nature . . . we all know how significant those attributes can be. And it’s past time to speak of it. Because most of the landscapes we knew as children have been developed now.”

Brabec knows about a sense of place. He has a ranch not far from the Bridger-Teton; he fishes in many of the streams that conservationists want to protect. He believes, however, that nature and oil are not mutually exclusive.

In a trip around a major operation near Big Piney, south of the Bridger-Teton study area, Brabec pointed to herds of antelope wandering through the production fields.

“There was a comment made about whether Dick Cheney would like to have a gas well right next to his favorite fishing stream. The fact is, up here, we do,” Brabec said.

With new technology, he added, most gas wells are hard to see on the landscape once they have been drilled and are producing. Once the wells have been removed, the land is reclaimed to its former condition.

Much of America’s past energy conflicts have been fought over huge tracts along the coasts and on the North Slope of Alaska. Bridger-Teton, at 370,000 acres, illustrates the way modern energy policy in the U.S. is being decided a piece at a time.

Most of the nation’s gas reserves, industry officials say, are hidden away in the hills and deserts. The companies that exploit them will for the most part be small independent operators whose success will depend on their ability to explore cheaply and expand quickly.

They are hoping the Bush administration will take a new look at Clinton-era restrictions that either closed off access or delayed approvals for so long that small companies could not afford to pursue them.

“The Clinton administration did a lot to encourage demand for natural gas by requiring implementation of very strict air quality standards, but it did very little to encourage development of a supply,” said Marc Smith, executive director of the Independent Petroleum Assn. of Mountain States.

In New Mexico, gas producers tell of spending millions to drill risky exploration wells, only to have the Bureau of Land Management deny access to nearby areas once gas is found. “The BLM says, ‘You go out and spend a fortune, and we’ll be like Lucy holding the football,’ ” said George Yates, a third-generation oilman who clashed with the agency in New Mexico’s Oro Grande Basin.

In Utah, former independent gas operator Logan MacMillan said he went bankrupt after federal authorities closed off lands around his leases in the Uinta Basin--effectively cutting him off from three-fourths of the potential gas.

In Wyoming, former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt cut short a plan to expand oil and gas operations in the Jack Morrow Hills area of the famed Red Desert, instead ordering planners back to the table to pursue a “conservation” alternative.

“This is in an area where there are producing gas wells, and it contains rocks that are known to produce gas elsewhere. This is the best example I have of a policy that does not allow for the development of all the resources in the area,” said Gene George, an oil industry consultant from Casper, Wyo.

Red Desert Home to Huge Game Herd

Conservationists have mounted a strong push to keep new drilling out of the Red Desert, home to the largest migratory game herd in the Lower 48 and a spectacular display of sand dunes.

It is precisely the kind of area that is at stake if the Bush administration decides that wilderness resources must take a back seat to energy, said Johanna Wald of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Basically, it industrializes an area that used to be rural and remote. It replaces open space, wildlife habitat, clean air, natural quiet, clean skies, with roads, well pads, pumps, compressors, 24-hour-a-day noise, cars and trucks speeding around, air pollution, water pollution.”

In Bridger-Teton, half the national forest--mainly the southern end, miles from Yellowstone--is already under lease for oil and gas development. Hamilton said she’s inclined to think that is enough.

“Public lands used to be mainly used for mining, grazing, timber production. But over the years, because of the change in social values, people have also begun to feel these lands are very valuable for wilderness and recreational values,” she said. “All of these things come together, in mind, as multiple use.”

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Oil and Gas in the Rockies

The U.S. Interior Department will be looking at potential oil and natural gas development throughout the Rocky Mountains. Many of the areas proposed for leasing, shown on map, are on protected land, including parks, forests and monuments.