American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2016 - 87

to allow it to plan across traditional administrative boundaries.
In conjunction with Planning 2.0, BLM
points out it is revising its land-use handbook for implementing the planning
process. The draft is expected to be available for review later in 2016, the bureau
says.
BLM indicates the new planning
process will not affect its work on developing the Carlsbad RMP, points out
IPANM President Mitch Krakauskas, land
manager with Strata Production Company
in Roswell, N.M.
Carlsbad RMP
BLM reports it has completed the
RMP's public scoping process, which
the bureau uses to analyze and update its
management of acreage in New Mexico's
Lea, Chaves and Eddy counties encompassing 2.2 million surface acres of public
lands and 4.1 million acres of mineral
estate, including 1.9 million acres of split
estate. It also notes the RMP outlines the

bureau's "long-term, 'landscape-level'
plans and goals."
Questions that the RMP will answer
include:
* How should the BLM facilitate energy development while allowing for multiple uses and appropriate protection of
public lands?
* How should the RMP facilitate
rights of way within the planning area
through designating exclusion and avoidance areas?
* How should BLM address new
technologies such as potash solution mining?
The bureau says following release of
the draft RMP and the accompanying
draft environmental impact statement, it
planned to have a 90-day public comment
period that was to begin in late June. Revisions to the plan are scheduled to be
written through the fall and a final version
is to be issued in the spring of 2017.
Krakauskas says the draft RMP's release date has slipped.

"This document affects a large part of
our industry in Southeast New Mexico.
That delay will greatly impact oil operators," he says. "IPANM plans to request
an extension of the 90-day comment period. It is very important for all operators
because from all indications, this RMP
is likely to spread its way across the
country and affect all operators on federal
lands."
According to Foster, when the draft
RMP emerges, she will call on IPANM
member companies to help draft comments.
"I hope I will be able to divvy up the
1,000 page RMP," Foster says. "I know
Mack Energy and Strata Production plan
on being very involved in responding to
it. IPANM is a pretty small association.
It does not have committees, it has volunteers. I hope to get the comments done
early enough so that I can send them to
member companies and have them add
substantive comments on behalf of themselves on their letterheads."
❒

Politics Threaten Future Mancos Play
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.-The Mancos-Menefee formations that underlie most
of northeastern New Mexico could contain
as much as 16.8 million barrels of oil and
11.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the
U.S. Geological Survey projects.
Determining the extent of that play
and the course of its future development
may rest on politics, not geology, assesses
Karin Foster, executive director of the
Independent Petroleum Association of
New Mexico. Early in 2016, a few months
before it filed for bankruptcy, SandRidge
Energy Inc. sought to drill a well in Sandoval County, N.M., to establish the
southern border of the Mancos play's
productivity, she says. The proposed
drilling sparked public protests, and led
county commissioners to consider an
anti-oil-and-gas ordinance.
In mid-May, shortly before the commissioners were scheduled to vote on issuing a special permit, SandRidge pulled
its application.
"My guess is that over the next couple
years, Mancos Basin development will continue to move south, which will come down
into the more populated part of Sandoval
County," she says. "Those county commissioners will have a problem. The northern
part of Sandoval County is in the Mancos
Basin, but to date operators have drilled
only on federal or state trust lands.
"It is interesting that they have drilled
more than 1,100 wells over the years,
but the issue is coming to a head now

that there is interest in drilling on private
lands in parts of the county that border
on Rio Rancho. With the interest in
moving south through the county, and I
am sure the county would like the associated revenues from development, but it
needs to establish a better process to
obtain permits.
IPANM's position is that the state regulators who are the experts on the issue
of oil and gas development should be the
only entity that has the authority to issue
or deny permitting requests, Foster says.
In this case, she notes SandRidge Energy
obtained a permit from the state to drill a
well what would have been exploratory
in nature, and county bureaucrats stepped
in with clearly political motivations to
kill the project.
While SandRidge's status eliminates
the issue for now, Foster predicts any
future legislative action in Sandoval County will follow San Miguel County, N.M.,
where commissioners have voted to split
the county into drilling and nondrilling
zones (AOGR, December 2014, pg. 24).
Foster points out while San Miguel
officials allow drilling in parts of the
county, its ordinance establishes large
setbacks. "If someone wanted to drill in
the nondrilling zone in San Miguel County,
he probably would have to go through a
lawsuit first," she predicts.
IPANM President Mitch Krakauskas
recalls the association has a history of
mitigating the impacts of local govern-

ments, pointing to its work against the
Mora County, N.M., ordinance that severely restricted oil and gas activities.
IPANM participated in the legal fight to
federal court that ruled the ordinance unconstitutional, he notes.
"Association members appreciate what
IPANM does in dealing with county governments," says Krakauskas. "IPANM
does a great job of standing up for its
membership. I hope the association will
not have to do that too many more times,
but I can see it having to do it again.
IPANM does a good job of keeping its
membership in tune with what it is doing,
what it is fighting against, and what it is
fighting for."
All too often, oil and gas company
executives blame bad county commissioners for their difficulties in resolving
local issues, Foster says.
"Well, in order to avoid having bad
county commissioners, you need to be
more involved with elections. Our industry
tends do not be involved in those lowerlevel elections, which is not good for
us," she points out.
Pre-Emption
Foster says she also is watching how
Colorado handles pre-emption. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in early May
that state law supercedes local prohibitions
on fracturing implemented by two Colorado cities. She expresses concern that
the environmental community will make
JULY 2016 87



American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2016

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