Hang Fire

Dustin Bleizeffer, editor-in-chief, WyoFile.com, energy reporter, blogger in Wyoming, and a struggling fisherman

[dustinbleizeffer]

Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch may be spared from encroaching oil development

There’s no real strategic plan for the Bakken oil play, no EIS guiding a comprehensive landscape scale management plan.

[dustinbleizeffer]

Critics: Chesapeake deal erodes spirit of sage grouse strategy

Mead says private minerals pre-empt state’s authority, while others say the deal should have been more transparent.

[dustinbleizeffer]

Check it out: Rail & Pipeline Update in Wyoming

DATE:    October 15, 2013 TIME:    10:00 a.m. PLACE:   Hilton Garden Inn, 1150 N. Poplar Street, Casper, WY SUBJECT: Rail and Pipeline Infrastructure Development Speakers will include TRISHA J. CURTIS, Director of Research, Upstream and Midstream at the Energy Policy Research Foundation, Inc. Trisha will review infrastructure requirements for transporting North American crude supplies to downstream processing centers as well as production, markets and bottlenecks. TAD TRUE, V.P. Bridger and Belle Fourche Pipelines, will present information on the status and development of Wyoming and Rocky Mountain Region crude oil infrastructure. BRIAN JEFFRIES will provide an updated analysis of the factors influencing the Wyoming natural gas price differential through the end of the decade and an update on the Wyoming Pipeline Corridor Initiative. Wyoming Pipeline Authority, 152 North Durbin Street Suite 250, Casper, Wyoming 82601

[dustinbleizeffer]

Wyoming reaches coal mining milestone as earth breaches 400 ppm

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead issued a press release last week celebrating the 10-billionth ton of coal mined in the state, which is supposed to happen sometime in the month of May. Another milestone expected in May: Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego say that carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth’s atmosphere will likely reach 400 parts per million (ppm) — a level last seen 2.5 million to 5 million years ago.

[dustinbleizeffer]

Orphaned oil and gas wells on the rise in Wyoming

Oil and gas companies are walking away from non-productive or marginally-commercial wells at an increasing rate here in Wyoming. There are some 1,200 “orphaned” wells in Wyoming that have not been properly plugged and reclaimed, creating potential risks to the environment and human health, according to Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission data. One case involving California-based USA Exploration & Production involves nearly 150 coal-bed methane gas wells for the state to clean up at an estimated cost of $1.4 million.

[dustinbleizeffer]

By Dustin Bleizeffer

Eight years after it was first announced, DKRW Advanced Fuel's $2 billion coal-to-gasoline plant slated for Wyoming remains unfunded, was recently declared out of compliance, and construction once again has been delayed.

"DKRW, the Houston-based company headed by ex-Enron executives, is offering few specifics about its own current financing other than to say it is pursuing private investment on the international market, and that it still has a viable project in Wyoming.

But it’s been a rough year, so far, for DKRW’s ambitions in Wyoming. The company also hit a snag in permitting due to the delay in construction."

Read the complete article at WyoFile.com

[dustinbleizeffer]

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality on Thursday made public its Ozone Strategy, a requirement of the federal “non-attainment” designation applied to the Sublette County area due to multiple wintertime ozone events that threatened human health.

According to DEQ, the spikes in ground-level ozone were triggered by the presence of air pollutants from the Pinedale Anticline and Jonah natural gas fields.

“Putting together this strategy allows us to be organized in our ability to move forward with reducing ozone precursor emissions, namely VOCs — volatile organic compounds — and NOx — nitrous oxides,” DEQ Air Quality Division administrator Steven Dietrich said in an audio clip sent to Wyoming media.

Dietrich added, “This plan is a way to go about it both from a regulatory standpoint and a voluntary standpoint to reduce those precursor emissions.”

DEQ officials say they will embrace recommendations from a citizens’ advisory task force as part of the state’s Ozone Strategy. They include a “leak detection and repair” program in the Pinedale Anticline and Jonah natural gas fields, and a new effort to quantify pollution emissions from produced-water treatment and storage facilities.

These pipelines are part of the heavy industrial natural gas field in the Pinedale Anticline. (Dustin Bleizeffer/WyoFile — click to enlarge)

Both of these measures are aimed potential emissions sources that many locals believe have been overlooked by DEQ and the natural gas operators in the area.

“I am pleased that the DEQ has maintained its pledge to continue forward on all of the task force’s recommendations,” Bruce Pendery with the Wyoming Outdoor Council, who served on the task force, said in a prepared statement. “These actions will help clean up the air in Pinedale and better protect local citizens. However, certain actions, including reducing pollution from drilling rigs and engines used in the oil and gas fields, are not included in the strategy and they should be going forward.”

[dustinbleizeffer]

Barring an objection from federal officials, EnCana Oil & Gas USA will be allowed to inject tainted “produced” water from its network of natural gas wells in the Moneta field into the Madison freshwater aquifer in central Wyoming.

Dustin Bleizeffer

Company representatives successfully argued that this particular portion of the Madison formation is much too deep (15,000 feet) and too remote to be considered an economically viable source of drinking water now and far into the future.

But this won’t be the last word on the matter.

In recent years the landowner advocacy group Powder River Basin Resource Council (PRBRC) has advocated for more conservation of Wyoming’s groundwater — in particular taking aim at consumption and water quality degradation sometimes associated with energy development.

“We are increasingly concerned about future sources of drinking water in Wyoming and in the Wind River and Big Horn Basin,” PRBRC chairman John Fenton wrote in a letter to the commission. “We believe that a decision to allow a potential drinking water aquifer to be exempted and removed from the potential for future use would be shortsighted and counter to the intent of the Commission regulations.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) still could object to EnCana’s injection plans, and even commission members had doubts about some of EnCana’s modeling and analysis.

The only two certified geologists on the five-member commission — Tom Drean and newly appointed Mark Doelger — both voted against EnCana’s injection well plan, due to suspected inaccuracies in EnCana’s hydrology modeling to estimate the reach of water quality impact.

“I am in no way faulting the work that EnCana has done. I am in no way faulting them or questioning their desire to properly dispose of fluids. … What I do have questions about in my mind is when they represent an impact area of 4.5 miles. That is not accurate,” said Drean, who also serves as Wyoming’s State Geologist.

[dustinbleizeffer]

Our longtime colleague Kerry Drake has a new, weekly column at WyoFile.com, "The Drake's Take." Drake has covered the news in Wyoming for 37 years, at the Tribune Eagle and Casper Star-Tribune, and most recently served as opinion editor at the CST. We're excited and grateful to have Drake's experience, compassion and knowledge of Wyoming grace our pages at WyoFile.com.

[dustinbleizeffer]

by Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile.com

The 65,000-acre Fontenelle fire that burned west of Big Piney in western Wyoming last summer was what land managers call a mosaic burn pattern; burning hot in some areas while leaving patches of untouched landscape elsewhere within the burn area.

Aside from lost structures, and the dangerous and costly efforts to contain the fire, the mosaic Fontenelle fire was a good burn for its potential to rejuvenate forest and vegetative growth. But in order for that natural rejuvenation to happen, federal land managers must “rest” tens of thousands of acres of federal grazing leases, forcing ranchers in Sublette County to find alternative pastures for some 1,200 head of cattle.

The Fontenelle Fire burned across 64,000 acres of land and forest. (Jon Mikel/Flickr – click to view)

That’s no easy task during this time of drought and with the likelihood that wildfires will continue to rage across the West. Without any help, some ranching operations dependent on those federal lands might be squeezed to death — especially if continued drought and wildfire delay the vegetative recovery process beyond two years.

In response, Chad Hayward of the U.S. Forest Service’s Big Piney Ranger District helped organize an ad hoc group of agriculture, wildlife and land managers to see what various groups could bring to the table to help the local ranching community.

“It’s been very complicated. We can’t take federal dollars and spend them on private grazing leases for permittees,” Hayward said, referring to limitations within the U.S. Forest Service.

So Hayward said he’s working within U.S. Forest Service authority to fill grazing allotments in neighboring districts, and in some cases helping place Fontenelle area cattle on federal grazing allotments that have never been used. That should take care of the majority of the displaced cattle, he said.

[dustinbleizeffer]

EarthFix reports that two original partners in the proposed Project Mainstay coal export port in Coos Bay have backed out, leaving a single backer; Metro Ports of California.

DKRW can tell you how difficult it is to find $2 billion in funding for a proposed coal-to-gas plant in Wyoming, and North American Power Group can testify to the difficulty of finding financial backers for an independent "trash coal" power plant in Wyoming (if you believe that's NAPG's actual goal). Markets can easily explain the challenges for DKRW and NAPG, but exporting PRB coal to Asia was supposed to be a supply-and-demand no-brainer. We're left wondering; how much of the financial jitters over the Project Mainstay have to do with a slightly cooling Asian coal market, and how much has to do with concerns over regulatory approval?

[dustinbleizeffer]

Normally Pressured Lance Formation

TARGET: Deep natural gas

LOCATION: Adjacent to Jonah field in Sublette County

OPERATOR: EnCana Oil & Gas USA Inc.

PROJECT AREA: 141,000 acres

ESTIMATED WELLS: 3,500

ANALYSIS: Environmental Impact Statement

BLM Contact: Kellie Roadifer, Pinedale Field Office [phone].

LaBarge Platform Infill

TARGET: Natural gas

LOCATION: Straddling the Green River and the Sublette and Lincoln counties border

OPERATORS: EOG Resources Inc., Exxon Mobil, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. and Wexpro Co.

PROJECT AREA: 218,000 acres

ESTIMATED WELLS: 838 wells from 463 pads

BLM contact: Lauren McKeever, Pinedale Field Office [phone].

Project website

Moneta Divide Field

TARGET: Deep natural gas

LOCATION: Eastern Fremont County

OPERATORS: EnCana Oil & Gas USA Inc., Burlington Resources Oil & Gas Co. LP and Noble Energy Inc.

PROJECT AREA: 265,000 acres

ESTIMATED WELLS: 4,250

BLM contact: Chris Krassin, Lander Field Office [phone].

Project website

Beaver Creek

TARGET: Coal-bed methane

LOCATION: Nine miles south of Riverton

OPERATOR: Devon Energy Production Co.

PROJECT AREA: 16,518 acres

ESTIMATED WELLS: 208 coal-bed methane on 40-acre spacing, and 20 conventional natural gas.

BLM contact: Curtis Bryan, Lander Field Office [phone].

Project website

Moxa Arch Infill

TARGET: Natural gas

LOCATION: West of Green River, bisected by Interstate 80

OPERATORS: EOG Resources Inc., with some other interests

PROJECT AREA: 476,300 acres

ESTIMATED WELLS: 1,861 new wells, of which 1,226 would be drilled in the “core” area (in addition to prior authorization for 1,400 wells)

ANALYSIS: Full environmental impact statement

STATUS: Beginning work on supplemental draft

BLM contact: Michele Easley, Kemmerer Field Office [phone].

Project website

Hiawatha Project

TARGET: Natural gas

LOCATION: South of Rock Springs, straddling the Wyoming-Colorado border

OPERATORS: QEP Resources and Wexpro Co.

PROJECT AREA: 157,335 acres

ESTIMATED WELLS: 4,208

BLM contact: James Speck, Rock Springs Field Office [phone].

Project website

Continental Divide-Creston (infill) Project

TARGET: Natural gas

LOCATION: Wamsutter area, straddling Interstate 80

OPERATOR: BP America Production Co., and Devon Energy Corp.

PROJECT AREA: 1.1 million acres

ESTIMATED WELLS: 8,950

BLM Contact: Eldon Allison, Rawlins Field Office [phone].

Project website

[motherjones]

The Scariest Climate Change Graph Just Got Scarier

[dustinbleizeffer]

It's getting hot in here.

[dustinbleizeffer]

By Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile.com

After more than five years of scrambling to figure out the recipe of pollutants from oil and gas activity combined with topography and meteorological conditions that cause dangerous spikes in ground-level ozone in the Upper Green River Basin, regulators are still short of answers.

There hasn’t been a single 8-hour ozone spike measured in the region since the winter of 2011 when there were 13 such events. One ozone spike that winter was measured at 124 ppb — higher than Los Angeles’ worst ozone day during that year. In 2011, ozone events forced the state to issue nearly a dozen warnings to local residents to stay indoors for health reasons — a startling outcome of full-scale natural gas development that the community hadn’t bargained for, nor did regulatory agencies anticipate.

The absence in ozone spikes during the past two years may be attributed to lesser snow-cover in the basin area. It may also have much to do with lower NOx and VOC emissions from the gas fields (attributed to emission-cutting efforts by industry and slowed production activity), or a combination of both emissions and the right atmospheric conditions.

Regardless, researchers and air quality regulators in Wyoming may still not know enough about the ozone phenomenon to guarantee a pathway out of the non-attainment status.

That may sound like a small bureaucratic matter to the layperson who lives outside of Sublette County. But it’s not.

[dustinbleizeffer]

I recently joined University of Wyoming atmospheric sciences professor Dr. Robert Field for a 100 miles-plus "circuit" through the Pinedale Anticline natural gas field. He is conducting a spatial air quality assessment to help determine the pollutant thresholds and atmospheric conditions needed to form ground level ozone spikes here. (Dustin Bleizeffer/WyoFile — click to enlarge)

[dustinbleizeffer]

On Thursday, Gov. Matt Mead, former Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal and former Wyoming U.S. Alan Simpson will attend the University of Wyoming Foundation’s winter board meeting at the Ritz Carlton in Dallas, Texas. Aside from board business, the foundation will use the occasion to promote its effort to remake the UW College of Engineering into a “Tier 1” research institution, which has a fundraising goal of $115 million.

[dustinbleizeffer]

There’s a general sense that Wyoming long ago cleaned up its most hazardous abandoned mine sites. Yet there are many 200-foot highwalls cut in areas of the Gas Hills where a large number of people go to recreate. There are dozens of open mine shafts still be discovered around the state, and massive voids honeycombed beneath Rock Springs, threatening homes and the city’s infrastructure. “There’s about $9 million worth of work (yet to be done) in and all around the Rock Springs area,” said Alan Edwards, administrator of the AML program in Wyoming.