Some producers fear restrictions on land access By Cornelia de Bruin The Daily Times (Farmington, New Mexico) Article Launched: 03/12/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT FARMINGTON — A percentage of San Juan County's oil and gas producers believe that recent and impending changes to how they're allowed to work are part of a well-coordinated effort to close the West's public lands to energy interests. "I'd say about 25 percent of the producers who are more active believe this is what's going on," said Thomas E. Mullins, principal/engineering manager of Synergy Operating, LLC. "The rest of them are too busy keeping their heads above water to know about it." Called NoDOG, no dirty oil and gas, Mullins believes the effort is linked to proposed statewide drilling regulations, and new surface owners rights bills enacted in New Mexico and Colorado. Attending a global warming conference last week was the catalyst that helped Mullins understand how widespread NoDOG is around the country. Mullins attended The Heartland Institute's 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by The Heartland Think Tank of Chicago, a group that describes itself as Libertarian-oriented. When Mullins heard event speakers refer to the NoDOG group, a light bulb began to flicker over his head. He'd heard about the group before, and read articles about NoDOG published by the American Oil & Gas Reporter. Local producers initially thought it was an organization, not a movement, he said. Writing in the industry magazine, Ron Arnold referred to NoDOG as "an organized multi-year campaign to remove oil and gas production from federal lands in the West." Arnold referred to NoDOG's strategy to pressure states to ban unlined (drilling) pits in November 2007. Added Mullins, "It appears to be a strategy or a philosophy with regard to impacting the oil and gas, and energy industry. When you look at some of the information in the NoDOG article, there is strategy related to the pit rule in New Mexico." The so-called pit rules are proposed changes in the regulations that govern the state's oil and natural gas drillers on how they dispose of drilling by-products. The more stringent regulations were the subject of 19 days of hearings before New Mexico Oil Conservation Commissioners during October and November. Producers expect the three-member OCC to issue its recommendation on the pit rules today in Santa Fe. If the pit rules are enacted, they expect their drilling costs to increase by $150,000 to $200,000 per affected well site. "Changes like these are going on all over the Western United States," Mullins said. He referred to a memo distributed to all members of Colorado's House of Representatives about one year ago as they were about to vote on HB 1252, the Surface Owner Protection Act. President Bush in December 2006 signed into law HR 3817, a similar bill that protects New Mexico's Valle Vidal. Earthworks' Oil and Gas Accountability Project, or OGAP, praised the Colorado measure as a "precedent-setting legislation that is one of the most powerful state laws in the nation in terms of protecting landowners' rights and the environment." Industry sources credited the Durango OGAP office with distributing the memo to Colorado representatives, but Durango OGAP Director Gwen Lachelt disavowed the charge at the time, and continues to refute it. "It is a forged document that was put together by the oil and gas industry," she said. "The oil and gas industry folk circulated it last year at the capitol in Denver." Lachelt, in turn, gives distribution credits to an unnamed oil and gas lobbyist. She had no knowledge of the memo until an Associated Press reporter called her for comment about it. "The document is represented as an OGAP document," Lachelt said. "It is not my document." Lachelt said it's no coincidence that the NoDOG name would resurface days before New Mexico's anticipated pit rules recommendation. CDFE Note: If the NoDOG Memo is not Lachelt's document, how come its detailed, point-by-point legislative goals for the anti-oil and gas NoDOG campaign (distributed in 2006) came true (in 2007)? No industry lobbyist could have known that in advance, but Lachelt and her cronies could have. Explain that, Ms. Lachelt. And if OGAP is innocent of conducting a No Dirty Oil and Gas (NoDOG) campaign, how come OGAP's parent organization Earthworks owns the websites www.nodirtyoilandgas.com and www.nodirtyoilandgas.org? Explain that, Ms. Lachelt. Shame on the destroyers of America's energy resources! |
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