American Oil and Gas Reporter - May 2015 - 139

ConventionCoverage: Kansas Independent Oil & Gas Association
In 2014, Moran and Roberts worked
with Oklahoma's Republican Senators
James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, and Texas
Republicans John Cornyn and Ted Cruz
on S 2677, which would have blocked
the lesser prairie chicken listing for five
years. The bill failed to advance, but
Cross said he expected the senators to
reintroduce it.
In another congressional reaction to
listing the prairie chicken, Cross said
Senators Susan Collins, R-Me., and Jon
Tester, D-Mt., were working with Kansas
Republican Congressmen Kevin Yoder
and Tim Huelskamp to cut funding for
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service operations.
Rangewide Plans
KIOGA Vice Chairman Kenneth S.
White provided an update on the
rangewide conservation plan developed
across five states to minimize impacts
on lesser prairie chicken habitat. White,
a principal with White Exploration Inc.
in Wichita, Ks., said producers continued
to work with the Western Association of
Fish & Wildlife Agencies (WAFWA),
which oversaw the plan.
He said oil and gas companies originally
believed they had to write conservation
plans for each well site, but have been
told by WAFWA that its plan can be
amended to fit local conditions. One key
concern is the requirement that 30 acres
around the well be protected, he said.
Most Kansas wells disturb much less
than that amount, White stated, and there
is an effort under way to trim that requirement. To do that, he said KIOGA
needed more data from operators, including scientific studies. WAFWA foresees the amendment process taking several

not cite the scientific information for
those locations. Someone in the University
of Kansas' office that manages the lesser
prairie chicken website told White
WAFWA just told him where to place
the dots, White recalled.
"We have put all the wells in western
Kansas on a map superimposed by the
purple dots," White said. "You would be
shocked at how many of these dots are
across oil fields that have been producing
for a long time. So, can we find that data
to prove the industry is not affecting the
bird population?"

KIOGA Vice Chairman Kenneth S. White
gives an update on the rangewide conservation plan for the lesser prairie chicken. White, a principal with White Exploration Inc. in Wichita, Ks., says one key
concern among operators is the plan's
requirement that 30 acres around each
well site be included in mitigation plans.

years, White advised, with involvement
by the group's science and advisory committees as well as approval needed from
USFWS.
"From my personal experience, I know
there are birds there," White recounted.
"There are wells all around this area. But
we cannot seem to come up with the data
to show a continual charting of the bird
population."
White said WAFWA relied on a map
that marked lesser prairie chicken nesting
areas in purple. However, he reported,
WAFWA and its support groups could

State Taxes
In one report on the Kansas Legislature,
Cross said he participated in budget discussions early in the session with Governor
Sam Brownback, Secretary of Revenue
Nick Jordan, Senate Ways and Means
Committee Chairman Ty Masterson, RAndover, and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Ron Ryckman, R-Olathe.
He reported talking about the impacts of
low oil and natural gas prices, and concerns
raised by KIOGA members regarding
federal and state tax issues, among other
issues.
At the time of KIOGA's meeting,
Cross said there had been a host of hearings on proposals for revenues and spending, but that legislators were waiting for
the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group
to release its estimates (which it did on
April 20).
A conference committee of two Republicans from each chamber was scheduled to work on defining the budget parameters, he said, adding that legislators
would use those and the revenue estimate
to develop a single budget proposal. Ì

KIOGA Seeks Answers To Earthquakes
DODGE CITY, KS.-Seismic activity
is gathering a lot of media and public attention, but Edward Cross, president of
the Kansas Independent Oil & Gas Association, contends the increase in earthquake events is not unprecedented.
Opening KIOGA's midyear meeting,
April 15-17 at the Dodge House Hotel &
Convention Center, Cross reported Kansas
had experienced several swarms of earthquakes before the latest well-publicized
round. He added that because of instrument
quality and paucity of monitoring stations,
most of those low-intensity events in the
past went unrecorded and unnoticed.

"The seismic activity in Kansas and
Oklahoma over the past five years is not
unprecedented. What is unprecedented
is our ability to measure it," Cross said.
"Kansas has installed more seismic monitoring stations. KIOGA supports that.
There is no evidence showing causation,
but the association supports gathering
that information so that we can better
understand this activity."
News media have announced several
studies that provide a possible and/or
probable link between injecting waste
water from oil and gas operations and
seismic activity in Oklahoma and Texas,

Cross said. As Kansas unveils regulations
to mitigate possible causes of seismic
events in the state, he pointed out that
small earthquakes reported in Southwest
Oklahoma had diminished with no regulatory changes.
Cross pointed out that earthquake
events also had been reported in parts of
Virginia, South Carolina, Alaska, Mexico
and the Gulf of California that had no
production. He also mentioned that other
states also injected fluids into deep formations, but had not seen increases in
seismic events because of differences in
the geological systems.
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American Oil and Gas Reporter - May 2015

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