MT BLM draws fireIndustry criticizes management plan, overlapping comment periods Mike Ellerd For Petroleum News Bakken
In March 2013 three eastern Montana Bureau of Land Management offices released separate draft resource management plans, RMPs, along with the associated draft environmental impact statements, DEISs, starting the clock on three separate 90-day comment periods. The comment period on the Miles City BLM RMP closed on June 5. Comment periods on the HiLine and Billings/Pompeys Pillar National Monument draft RMPs close on June 20 and June 28, respectively. And in neighboring South Dakota, a revised BLM RMP will be issued on June 14.
Not only is there concern as to what BLM is actually proposing in terms of land management changes, but industry groups are criticizing BLM for requiring comments to be submitted on three very large documents addressing public land use under the management of three neighboring BLM offices within a 25-day period.
The revised RPM for the Miles City Field Office, MCFO, would replace two existing RMPs that are currently used to plan and guide development of federal land administered by the MCFO, those being the Big Dry and Powder River RMPs. Those two RMPs were approved in 1996 and 1985, respectively, although both have since been amended to some extent. BLM says conditions have changed since those RMPs were approved, including “new laws, regulations, and policies that supersede previous decisions and changed ecological, socioeconomic, institutional, and regulatory conditions; and user demands and activities.”
The planning area covered under the draft Miles City RMP includes all of Carter, Custer, Daniels, Dawson, Fallon, Garfield, McCone, Powder River, Prairie, Richland, Roosevelt, Rosebud, Sheridan, Treasure and Wibaux counties and portions of Big Horn and Valley counties (see map).
RMP alternatives BLM identifies five alternatives in the Miles City draft RMP that address future management of the approximately 2.8 million federal surface acres and 11.0 million federal mineral acres administered by the MCFO.
The first alternative, Alternative A, is a no-action proposal where land management would continue under the two existing RMPs as they are currently amended. Alternative B provides for the lowest level of development and puts more emphasis on protecting physical, biological and cultural resources. Alternative C still protects physical, biological and heritage resources but emphasizes resource development. Alternative D provides for maximum economic and revenue opportunities from natural resource development but also meets legal, environmental, and cultural requirements.
Alternative E is BLM’s preferred alternative, and according to BLM that alternative “represents a mix and variety of actions that would resolve the issues and management concerns in consideration of all values and programs. Restrictions to protect resources would be implemented and monitoring and consultation with state agencies would be used to adjust restrictions for surface-disturbing activities.” Among the provisions of Alternative E is enhanced protection of sage grouse habitat.
A PSC commissioner’s view In a June 4 op-ed piece in the Sidney Herald, Montana Public Service Commissioner Travis Kavulla, whose district includes about half of the area covered by the draft Miles City RMP, said the draft RMP contains some “bright points,” but mostly it “dampens the prospects” for development of oil and gas resources on BLM-administered land.
Kavulla says that considerably more federal land could be excluded from oil and gas development under Alternative E. “For oil and gas leasing, the amount of land off-limits to surface occupancy, making drilling difficult or impossible, more that quadruples, from around 300,000 acres under the current management practice to more than 1.3 million acres under the preferred alternative.”
In regard to sage grouse habitat, Kavulla says the alternative would not allow any oil or gas development with two miles of mating nests. “Only 809,100 acres, or 15 percent of federally owned minerals, would be open to drilling activity under business-as-usual leasing practices.”
Industry comments On June 4, the Montana Petroleum Association, Public Lands Advocacy and the Western Energy Alliance issued a joint, 52-page letter to the Miles City BLM office that first takes BLM to task for issuing three large management plans in such a short period of time.
“We preface these comments with frank criticism regarding BLM’s lack of consideration for the public in this planning process. We ask how BLM believes interested parties have been afforded the ability to fully digest and provide coherent and substantive comments within a 90-day window on three major draft RMPs issued in Montana with a three week period. BLM’s justification that it is under a strict schedule is wholly inadequate,” the letter says. “We object to the limited public involvement opportunities provided in this process,” the letter continues. “It is unrealistic for BLM to expect the heavily affected oil and gas industry, not to mention the general public, to have the ability to conduct a complete review when they have been provided a very narrow window in which to review these three enormous documents. We are concerned BLM is making a rush to judgment without appropriate and accurate consideration of the impacts associated with the management considerations contained in the DEIS.”
The letter goes on to provide scores of detailed comments on the various issues addressed in the draft RMP/ DEIS, including sage grouse habitat. The letter contends BLM’s MCFO has not met the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, the act that guides development on federal lands, and that the agency placed too much emphasis on sage grouse issue. “In addition to failing to meet the requirements of NEPA, BLM has used Greater Sage‐grouse data to develop its plan alternatives that is both not applicable to the MCFO and at such a scale that makes it impossible to make accurate and reasonable land use decisions.”
Access to public comments Petroleum News Bakken contacted BLM to get access to all comments that were submitted on the draft RMP in order get other stakeholder perspectives, but a BLM spokesperson said that public comments would not be posted on line at the present time. Instead, any member of the public may contact the MCFO and make arrangements to view the comments in that office, except those where privacy has been requested by the individual or group providing the comment. BLM has not yet determined if it will issue the public comments along with the final RMP/EIS, which is expected to be released in 2014.
However, BLM did tell Petroleum News Bakken that “the planning team for the Miles City Field Office RMP has received comments from a diverse representation of our stakeholders in that area. As the comment periods close for each of our four Resource Management Plans/Environmental Impact Statements, comment analysis begins keeping in mind all substantive comments received after the 90-day draft comment period closes will be considered to the extent feasible.”
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