Forest Service says drilling in HDs is a year away By Dale Rodebaugh, Herald Staff Writer
The Colorado portion of the San Juan Basin is much smaller than the remainder, which lies in New Mexico. … Already, some 20,000 gas wells dot the southern San Juan Basin landscape. The 10,000 new wells would be drilled over 20 years.
“We’re not at the what if” level,” [San Juan National Forest Supervisor Mark] Stiles said. “Our task is to analyze drilling on definite proposals.”
Stiles was talking about 56 of 70 wells proposed for a roadless area in the HD Mountains, which lie in La Plata and Archuleta counties. Coal-bed methane developers have made applications to drill in specific spots there.
alibi . february 12 – 18, 2004
As part of a recent round of updated policy-making, Bureau of Land Management officials, under authority of the Interior Department, decided to permit roughly 10,000 new oil and natural gas wells in the San Juan Basin. The permits would be good for the next several decades.
Some folks in northern New Mexico were not happy about this, and as a result, an odd coalition of ranchers, Navajo representatives and environmental groups filed a lawsuit against BLM in Washington, D.C., last week seeking to minimize the number of permits while drawing attention to environmental concerns.
The San Juan Citizens Alliance organizes for the land and people of the San Juan Basin. Our major priorities includle protecting wildlife and wildlands, advocating greater corporate and governmental responsibility in development of oil and gas resources, protecting and restoring rivers, and promoting basic civil rights and civil liberties for all residents.
The Four Corners Region of the southwestern United States (CO-NM-AZ-UT) is amazing. The San Juan area of southwestern Colorado is breath-taking. It was raped a century ago by miners who didn’t give a damn; shall we watch history repeat itself? mjh