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Evergreen works on explaining coalbed methane to Alaskans
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
The state of Alaska has put a hold on issuing shallow gas leases while it develops guidelines for evaluating applications for coalbed methane projects.
That’s a good thing, says John Tanigawa of Evergreen Resources, which has oil and gas leases and coalbed methane pilot wells north of Anchorage in the Houston-Wasilla-Palmer area of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, and has applications for more acreage.
“I think the state was very wise to make the decision — we’re talking about holding off on approving the leases that are unleased right now, that are in the application stage,” Tanigawa told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance Oct. 15.
Why does he think this is a good thing?
There are people in the Matanuska-Susitna area “who really have a lot of questions about what coalbed methane is,” he said, “and I think this is a time that we can educate the community, to show them what it is and, more important, show them what it isn’t.” There are concerns every time Tanigawa said that every time Evergreen — a major coalbed methane producer in the Raton basin in Colorado — goes into a new area, “we always see opposition.” There are myths about coalbed methane, he said, and the company has to show people the reality.
People “see that it’s good development,” he said, “that people’s water wells are not affected,” and that compressors are not installed “next to people’s houses and they need to wear earmuffs to have dinner at night.”
Then there is the myth that “Evergreen will come in and drill in my backyard.
“Which is just absolutely ridiculous,” Tanigawa said, but “it goes very far in terms of getting people upset, because in Alaska, and any place, this is your castle, it’s your home. And Evergreen spends a lot of time and energy to make sure we honor that.”
The company gets surface use agreements from landowners, he said, works with them on access issues and also pays a one-time surface use fee.
And coalbed methane work means dollars and jobs to the community, as well as taxes. Evergreen’s Colorado operation is worth half a billion a year, Tanigawa said, and the company spent some $7 million for the Alaska exploration project from July 2002 to July 2003.
“The longer that this conversation is in the public, the more they hear about it, the more they support it. It’s happened to us in every place that we’ve worked so far,” he said.
Tanigawa said he frequently gives tours of the company’s operations, which provide people an opportunity to see what a well looks like.
“You have all these people that come out to our wells and see what they are, and say, ‘is this it? Is this what everybody’s mad about?’ And that’s the typical response.”
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