[Coalition_for_valle_vidal] Money talks big in the West

[Jim O'Donnell]

Valle Vidal Supporters,

Thank you all for your wonderful response to the January 10, 2006 op-ed  
by the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association's Bob Gallager.  Many of your  
letters were printed in the Albuquerque Tribune, effectively tearing  
down the misinformation put forth by the head of NMOGA.  I have copied  
one of the best responses below.

Thank you again!


http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/op_commentaries/article/ 
0,2565,ALBQ_19866_4411622,00.html

Commentary: Money talks big in the West

In N.M. and its neighbor states, leases are given to oil and gas  
companies so rapidly, even drilling can't keep up. And yet, these  
companies want more and we are no closer to energy independence.

By Nicole Rosmarino
January 24, 2006

The New Mexico Oil and Gas Association ("Mine the lands," Insight &  
Opinion, Jan. 10) proclaims that advocating protection of our best  
remaining natural places, and urging a shift to clean energy sooner  
rather than later, are hindering industry's ability to drill. An  
industry that is enjoying record profits, while the rest of us pay  
sky-high prices at the pumps and in our homes, has a lot of nerve  
suggesting it is concerned about the public interest.

Moreover, the association's claims don't ring true. Despite nearly  
unlimited access to the same lands the American public treasures for  
their natural values, the industry clamors for more.

In the United States, since 1982, more than 229 million acres of public  
land have been leased to oil and gas companies. That's larger than the  
combined size of New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona. In just the past  
three years, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the N.M. State Land  
Office have leased more than 1.2 million acres in New Mexico to oil and  
gas companies.

While federal environmental safeguards should mean these areas are  
offered for lease only after cautious reflection, in fact the BLM is  
violating these safeguards by failing to consider impacts to wildlife  
and public health before it turns our public lands over to  
industrialization by oil and gas companies.

In BLM's Jan. 18 quarterly lease sale, we identified significant  
environment concerns on nearly 80 percent of the acreage offered up for  
lease. Incredibly, there is no formal public oversight of environmental  
impacts from the State Land Office's oil and gas program.

The speed of leasing is matched by the government's swift  
rubber-stamping of drilling applications. For example, in 2004, the BLM  
approved approximately 5,800 new wells in five Western states, versus  
3,600 new wells in 2003. BLM announced last fall that it is hiring 35  
more staff people in New Mexico to process new well applications even  
more quickly. BLM will increasingly fast-track new wells by exempting  
them from public review, thereby failing to protect the public from  
harmful impacts to air quality, groundwater and wildlife.

The Washington Post reported in 2005 that there are many more wells  
that have already been approved by the government than the oil and gas  
companies have been able to drill. For instance, in New Mexico in 2004,  
while 1,321 wells were approved by the BLM, only a little over half of  
that number - 726 wells - were drilled.

In addition to the rubber stamp being given to new wells in already  
developed oil fields on our public lands, consider also the  
government's push to open up our best remaining natural areas to  
industrialization by oil and gas companies: the pristine Arctic  
National Wildlife Refuge; Otero Mesa, a jewel of the Chihuahuan Desert;  
northern New Mexico's "Valley of Life," the Valle Vidal; and the unique  
and diverse Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Roswell. There is  
no replacing these precious natural areas once they have been destroyed  
by oil and gas operations.

Most of us recognize the wisdom of safeguarding these wild areas, but  
the Bush administration is increasingly cutting the public out of  
environmental decision-making. A witness to this are attempts to  
dismantle our nation's effective and popular environmental safeguards,  
particularly the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered  
Species Act.

We don't deny that leases and royalties provide money for the state and  
local governments. However, massive costs are being paid in terms of  
wildlife extinction, lives disrupted with noisy compressors, landscapes  
fragmented by new wells, roads and pipelines, precious water supplies  
polluted, our air despoiled by nitrogen and carbon dioxide from  
compressors, and climate change linked to fossil fuel emissions. As a  
society, we cannot tolerate deferring these significant costs to our  
children and grandchildren.

So, 229 million acres of public lands later, are we any closer to  
achieving energy independence? Since 1982, U.S. dependence on foreign  
oil has more than doubled, and dependence on foreign natural gas has  
tripled. Can there be any doubt that we must step up energy  
conservation and transition to clean energy, instead of continually  
slaking industry's unquenchable thirst to develop the last meager  
pockets of petroleum on public lands?

Rather than being over-regulated, the industry is enjoying a golden  
age, where it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell where the oil  
and gas industry ends and the Bush administration begins. President  
Bush, Vice President Cheney, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and others  
in the administration all have or have had close ties with oil industry  
executives, and the Bush energy plan is a disastrous scheme to turn  
over as much of our public land as possible to this industry, despite  
the ecological hazards of drilling and the impossibility of restoring  
precious natural areas once they have been destroyed by oil and gas  
operations.

We must insist on a precautionary approach by government and especially  
public land managers, so that undue costs are not borne by fragile wild  
places and future generations of people and wildlife.

New Mexico's rich natural heritage deserves even more safeguards from a  
government that is bending to the profit-driven whims of the oil and  
gas industry.
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Jim O'Donnell
Outreach Coordinator, Coalition for the Valle Vidal
www.vallevidal.org
PO Box 238
Taos, NM 87571
505-758-3874

Are you a member of the Coalition for the Valle Vidal?  Would you like  
to support our efforts?  Join or contribute today at:  
http://www.vallevidal.org/involved.html