American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2015 - 121

ConventionCoverage: Petroleum Association of Wyoming

Greater Sage Grouse Status
Looms Large In Wyoming
By Del Torkelson

CASPER, WY-Although there were
no sage grouse flying inside the Parkway
Plaza Hotel, the bird nevertheless cast a
sizable shadow over the proceedings at
the Petroleum Association of Wyoming's
2015 annual convention, Aug. 25-26 in
Casper.
With the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
preparing to issue its determination about
whether the greater sage grouse merited
protection under the Endangered Species
Act, efforts to prevent that outcome-as
well as how an ESA listing could affect
the state's oil and gas industry-constituted
a major topic for PAW.
That was especially the case during
the PAW Public Lands Committee meeting on the convention's first day.
Core Area Restrictions
Public Lands Chairman Dave Brown
of BP opened the meeting with a look at
the executive order (EO) Governor Matt

Mead issued in July about the state's
sage grouse conservation policy. The July
EO updates an earlier version, which implemented the state's strategy centered
on core sage grouse population areas, he
noted. "It has a lot of similar components
to the previous document," he reported,
"but there were some changes that required
our input to the Sage Grouse Implementation Team."
Chief among them, Brown said, are
provisions dealing with winter concentration areas and noise. The noise provisions, he said, are sure to require additional
investigation and evaluation as they relate
to core area projects. "Basically, you
cannot exceed 10 decibels above background in core areas," he described. "The
portion about winter concentration areas
is subject to additional evaluation and
review also."
As for establishing core areas, Brown
noted, the updated map by the Wyoming
Game & Fish Department (WGFD) has
added a net of about 300,000 acres inside

Although Wyoming Governor Matt Mead's sage grouse executive order adds about
300,000 acres of core area, it also removes that protected status from some areas, PAW
Public Lands Committee Chairman Dave Brown of BP explains while PAW Vice President
Esther Wagner listens during the committee's meeting on the first day of the group's
annual convention, held Aug. 25-26 in Casper, Wy. During her remarks, Wagner reported
that PAW had joined with other industry groups in three Data Quality Act challenges
against the science on which a number of federal agencies were basing their sage grouse
decisions.

core areas, which are priority habitat
areas as defined by the EO. "But some
areas were deleted," he observed. "You
need to look at that map to see where it
affects your operations."
David Applegate of Anadarko offered
an update on the mapping tool funded by
the industry and under development by
the University of Wyoming, which involves mapping disturbances within two
miles of all the state's sage grouse leks.
Applegate emphasized the maps' value
to producers as a way to track actual disturbance in proximity to leks and to ascertain ways to offset it.
"I think we are going to find a lot of
leks without much disturbance. This
allows us to characterize the extent and
nature of disturbance across the state,"
he reasoned. "It is a tool to identify mitigation opportunities. One thing we have
not done very well in the past is capture
and characterize all the projects industry
has done across the landscape to help
wildlife. This will allow us to actually
map areas in which there has been reclamation or other projects such as weed
control, juniper removal or fence modifications that benefit sage grouse."
During her presentation on the
Wyoming core area strategy mitigation
assessment tool, WGFD Habitat Protection
Supervisor Mary Flanderka urged producers not to think in terms of one-forone reclamation exchanges, because one
acre of disruption in a core area could
not be mitigated by one acre's worth of
habitat enhancements elsewhere. Rather,
she suggested, companies should consider
the example of the stiffer penalties associated with a speeding ticket for 45 miles
an hour in a 30 mph zone, versus 79 mph
in a 75 mph zone, or 5 mph over in a
work zone.
"You are going to pay more for going
45 in a 30," she compared. "In a school
or work zone, the fines are double. It depends on the context of where you are
speeding. The closer you are to the lek in
violating the EO thresholds, the steeper
the penalty."
The state's compensatory mitigation
tool treats areas within 0.6 miles of a lek
OCTOBER 2015 121

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