oil and gas

Threats to Landscape and Lifestyle: The Not-So-Hidden Costs to Communities of Oil and Gas Development

May 23, 2011

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The Facts: Oil and Gas Drilling in America

Feb 9, 2011

The oil and gas industry claims that the only way to address our country’s numerous energy issues is to open more public lands and waters to oil and natural gas drilling. What they don’t tell you is that drilling in America is already occurring at an astonishing pace and in a bewildering number of places. The facts below show that “more drilling” won’t solve America’s energy problems.

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Senator Bingaman Urges Review of BLM's Use of Categorical Exclusions

Apr 1, 2010

The Bureau of Land Management uses "categorical exclusions" to approve oil and gas drilling when environmental impact analysis is not warranted. Under the Bush administration, categorical exclusions were often used when environmental impact analysis was necessary - in wilderness-quality lands, important habitat, and other areas with irreplaceable values on public lands. On March 31, 2010, the BLM settled a lawsuit to limit the use of categorical exclusions in the West to comply with the law, as repeatedly urged by Senator Bingaman.

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The Federal Oil and Gas Programs – No Need to Force More Leasing and Development

Sep 16, 2009

The oil and gas industry and their political allies persistently argue that “the answer” to America’s energy needs is “more drilling” and “more access” to federal lands and waters. However, recent data from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Minerals Management Service (MMS) indicate that, though tens of millions of acres of onshore and offshore federal lands are already leased to oil and gas companies, the vast majority of these lands are not producing oil or gas.

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The Return of 'Drill, Baby, Drill'

Editorial board, New York Times
May 7, 2011

Excerpts:

With the country again facing $4-a-gallon gasoline, the time would seem ripe for a grown-up conversation on energy. What we are getting instead is a mindless rerun of the drill-baby-drill operatics of the 2008 campaign, when gas was also at $4 a gallon. Then, as now, opportunistic politicians insisted that vastly expanded oil drilling would bring relief at the pump and reduced dependence on foreign oil. Then, as now, these arguments were bogus.

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Point Hope, environmental groups challenge Chukchi Sea drilling

Mary Pemberton (AP), Anchorage Daily News
Jan 21, 2010

Excerpts:

A North Slope village united Wednesday with some of the heaviest hitters in the environmental community to challenge a plan by Shell Oil to drill off Northwest Alaska this summer.

The legal challenge to Shell's approved drilling plan for the Chukchi Sea was filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Groups recently filed a similar challenge to Shell's plan for exploratory drilling for oil and gas in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's northeast coastline.

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Defending the Not-Quite-Wild

Sean Patrick Ferrell, New York Times
Oct 30, 2009

Excerpts:

What is really special about the Roan Plateau, these lands in particular, is the incredible energy density beneath it,” said Duane Zavadil, vice president of the Bill Barrett Corporation, a Denver energy company that holds drilling rights to the Roan.

The company’s plans are at the center of a battle over the future of the plateau, one that could influence the fate of thousands of acres in the high country known as the intermountain West.

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Yukon Flats refuge land exchange rejected

AP, Anchorage Daily News
Jul 3, 2009

Excerpts

In a preliminary decision Thursday, the service picked the "no action" alternative from a range of options in environmental studies.

…The FWS decision was welcomed by many in communities near the refuge who feared it would open a pristine area to oil and gas development.

"I'm very happy, on behalf of the tribe," said First Chief Michael Peters of the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich'in Tribe at Fort Yukon. "This means a lot to us. I commend Fish and Wildlife."
 

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Cleaning up Bush's mess on public land

James William Gibson, Los Angeles Times
Apr 2, 2009

Excerpts:

On Monday, President Obama signed the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act, placing more than 2 million acres of public land in nine states under Wilderness Act protection. The new legislation preserves remote glacial valleys in Wyoming, fragile deserts in California and dense forests in northern Michigan, making these and other tracts of pristine land permanently off-limits to road building, oil and gas drilling and commercial timber harvesting.

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Ken Salazar's New Deal

Editorial Board, The New York Times
Feb 6, 2009

Excerpts:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s first major decision — to cancel oil and gas leases on 77 parcels of public land in Utah — could not have sent a clearer signal that his department is under new management. It also was a strong indication that the Obama administration intends to take a more measured approach to energy exploration on the public lands and that its predecessor’s drill-now, drill-anywhere policies are a thing of the past.

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