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June 5, 2008

Conservation Group Scores Wyoming’s Best, Worst Oil and Gas Companies

LARAMIE – Conservationists today released a scorecard of the best and worst oil and gas drilling and production companies in Wyoming, based on their environmental performance.

Companies rated in the “Best” category are those that are doing the most to move the industry toward minimizing the impacts of drilling on Wyoming’s lands and wildlife.

“Since the Bureau of Land Management is leaving oil and gas management to industry officials, the oil and gas companies who get the plaudits in this scorecard deserve credit for implementing environmentally superior advancements even though they’re not being required by the government agencies,” said Erik Molvar, Wildlife Biologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “Even if they’re not always perfect environmental stewards, these are the companies that are proving that environmentally sound practices can work even as other companies are saying it can’t be done.”

Companies rated in the “Worst” category were scored on the amount of overall damage they are doing to Wyoming’s lands and wildlife at the statewide scale. As a result, small companies engaging in bad practices were overshadowed by larger players doing damage on a much bigger scale.

“The companies that made the ‘Worst’ list conducting their operations with little, if any, regard to important resources like wildlife and water quality,” said Molvar. “The actions of these companies and others like them are giving the industry as a whole a bad reputation.”

The group pointed out that the scorecard is for Wyoming operations only; companies rated highly in Wyoming might rate poorly in other states, and vice versa.

“Overall, the oil and gas industry still has a long way to go to live up to the potential of new technologies that could allow drilling and conservation to coexist in the same space,” concluded Molvar. “Technological advances in drilling makes this an attainable goal, but the Bureau of Land Management is doing little to require the use of these best management practices.”

The report follows.

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The Best of the Bunch

Ranked starting with Best. This ranking accounts only for performance of the companies in Wyoming, and does not consider performance in other states or countries.

1. BP (British Petroleum) — BP is a major player in the Continental Divide – Wamsutter Field, where they have drilled up to 8 wells from a single pad, setting a standard for full-field development without excessively dense wellpads. Although involved in the Jonah Field, all of BP’s wells have been drilled directionally so far. BP also is a leader in “green completions,” in which drilling is wrapped up without the wasteful venting of large quantities of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

2. Royal Dutch Shell – A major player on the Pinedale Anticline, Shell is drilling up to 32 wells directionally from a single pad. Shell also is implementing remote-controlled data gathering and pipelines to transport liquid byproducts out of the field, both of which reduce (but don’t eliminate) the amount of truck traffic in an area that is crucial winter range for mule deer and important nesting habitat for sage grouse. While these key habitats are certainly suffering from the impacts, conditions would be a lot worse with old-style vertical drilling.

3. Bill Barrett Corporation – Barrett settled an appeal with BCA on its 233-well Big Porcupine coalbed methane project in the Thunder Basin National Grassland, committing to shift facilities away from prairie dog colonies and to seasonally close access roads in sensitive sage grouse and raptor nesting habitat. Under the agreement, wells would be visited only in emergency circumstances during the nesting season, and even then repair teams would travel by bicycle. Barrett settlements also yielded money directed by BCA to black-footed ferret reintroduction and research on prairie stream fishes in the Thunder Basin National Grassland and sage grouse habitat quality in the Bighorn Basin.

The Worst of the Bad Actors

This list is ranked beginning with the worst. These are the companies that, due to their abysmal track record in Wyoming, have the greatest potential for improvement.

1. EnCana –EnCana’s activities have become a poster-child for irresponsible development. In the Upper Green River Valley’s Jonah Field, EnCana initially drilled 16 wells per square mile, at the time the worst project of the last several decades. Then this Canadian gas giant sought – and got – permission to drill an additional 3,100 wells in the field at densities from 64 to 128 well sites per square mile. When completed, the well pads will extend almost unbroken by native vegetation across 33,000 acres of public land, and they’re now expanding from this initial area. EnCana officials dishonestly claimed that directional drilling wasn’t possible in the Jonah Field, even though more than 140 directional wells have been drilled in this field. EnCana also holds leases inside the Adobe Town proposed wilderness and is pursuing drilling there. To top it all off, EnCana’s oil and gas wells have caused groundwater contamination problems in the Pavillion area of the Wind River Basin.

2. Anadarko Petroleum – Based in Texas, Anadarko is the prime mover behind the Atlantic Rim coalbed methane project, a field that is set to destroy a quarter million acres including one of the three most important sage grouse breeding complexes in Wyoming. Anadarko pushed hard (and got) permission to increase its environmental impact from 4 wells per square mile to 8 after the BLM initially proposed a less damaging project. Anadarko is also involved in ultra-dense drilling in its Monell Unit in the central Red Desert. To add insult to injury, Anadarko has been the primary opponent to protecting wilderness-quality lands in Adobe Town.

3. Yates Petroleum – Always a loudmouthed opponent of environmental conservation, Yates is a player in coalbed methane projects in the Red Desert and Powder River Basin. Yates leased a state inholding in the middle of the Fortification Creek Wilderness Study Area, perhaps specifically to undermine the integrity of the potential wilderness, and is now targeting the Red Desert’s Red Lake Dunes proposed wilderness for drilling. They were fined by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife for the electrocution of four golden eagles due to unsafe power lines. They were successfully sued by private landowners along Spotted Horse Creek for not living up to a contract to prevent dumping of coalbed methane wastewater on downstream landowners. A wise saying goes, “Just because you disagree, doesn’t mean you have to be disagreeable.” Yates takes the opposite approach.

Dishonorable Mention:

Windsor Energy, LLC – Drilling on the fringes of the Line Creek/Deep Lake Roadless Area in the northwestern Bighorn Basin, Windsor caused a gas well blowout that contaminated shallow and deep aquifers, requiring residents to be evacuated from their homes and contaminating a private drinking water well with benzene at 10 times safe drinking water standards. Windsor is also responsible for groundwater contamination at a second drilling site in the Line Creek drainage. They have engaged in some monitoring of the resulting groundwater pollution, but have ignored best management practices such as developing groundwater flow maps and geologic cross sectioning of the entire project area. Windsor was also responsible for a reservoir blowout that discharged 8 acre-feet of polluted wastewater into the Clear Creek watershed near Buffalo, resulting in a violation from the state Department of Environmental Quality.