American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2016 - 93

ConventionSection: Petroleum Association of Wyoming

Washington Continues Flood Of Rules
CASPER, WY.-Washington shows no
signs of stemming its flood of directives
and regulations, says Esther Wagner, vice
president of the Petroleum Association
of Wyoming, as federal regulators discuss
new animal migration restrictions and
species habitat measures. She warns the
cumulative impacts threaten Wyoming's
oil and gas activities.
Wagner says the Bureau of Land Management wants to update its resource
management planning process, which it
refers to as Planning 2.0, while issuing
new sage grouse instruction memoranda.
BLM, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and
the U.S. Forest Service also are seeking
to publish revised trail mitigation policies.
In addition to those specific regulatory
provisions, Wagner notes, late in 2015,
the White House issued a presidential
memo that established a conservation
policy of no net losses of federal resources
and, where possible, a net conservation
gain.
"That is why the USFWS is revising
its policy, and why BLM and the Forest
Service will do the same," Wagner says.
"These mitigation policy changes really
will affect multiple-use resources and
change the economics of developing federal lands."
Migration Corridors
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department says it continues to study whether
it should expand the state's migration
corridors for large mammals. The agency
indicates it is looking at how well sites
impact the migration patterns of several
species, including elk, pronghorn and
mule deer.
Wagner points out that Wyoming has
identified only one formal migration corridor, and expanding the system requires
following a specific protocol. "If the
Game and Fish Department comes up
with a migration corridor, it has to notify
all the stakeholders in the area, including
leaseholders, and ask them for management recommendations. Then, stakeholders
would have an opportunity to comment.
But the department has left its 2010 recommendations in place for now," she
says.
Any changes to the corridors will not
affect existing well sites, Wagner notes.
During earlier discussions, the Game and
Fish Department was pushing for no sur-

face occupancy and buffer zones within
migration corridors, but Wagner says scientific findings do not support the need
for those.
Instead, she says the department's current recommendations call for no surface
occupancy along bottlenecks in corridors
that span less than a half-mile. The recommendations allow as many as four
well pads per square mile on all other
parts of the corridors, Wagner adds.
"That does not mean the department
is going to always recommend that," she
points out. "Those are the standard recommendations in place. The Game and
Fish Department does not have regulatory
authority, so it cannot tell an operator he
can or cannot do this. The department
merely makes recommendations to BLM
and the state."
Any migration corridor changes are
likely to be seen first in the Rock Springs
Resource Management Plan, on which
BLM is working now, Wagner says.
Sage Grouse
PAW President Bruce Hinchey says
the association again is involved in legal
action on the greater sage grouse, terming
it "an issue that never quits." In March,
Wyoming Governor Matt Mead directed
the state's attorney general to intervene
in a lawsuit filed by several anti-development groups in the U.S. District Court
for the District of Idaho. The groups-
Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth
Guardians, Western Watersheds Project,
and Prairie Hills Audubon Society-are
challenging the core-area protection strategy for the greater sage grouse in BLM
and Forest Service land management
plans, media reports indicate.
In May, PAW and the Wyoming Stock
Growers Association filed petitions asking
to intervene in the case.
According to USFWS, the Wyoming
sage grouse conservation plan has demonstrated its value during eight years in
place. The agency adds that adopting the
Wyoming plan on federal lands provides
additional assurances the birds' core areas
will be protected on all lands, regardless
of ownership.
The core-area protection strategy Mead
issued identifies important habitat areas
for the greater sage grouse and imposes
protective requirements to minimize impacts. Under that plan, where impacts

cannot be avoided, mitigation in the form
of additional acreage must be established.
BLM initially planned to issue instruction memoranda in December to
provide guidance for implementing the
sage grouse land-use plans that were released in September 2015, Wagner reports.
According to BLM, the instruction memoranda were written to conserve key sagebrush habitat in 11 Western states, including Wyoming, that made up the birds'
historical range. The agency says the
plans seek to minimize new or additional
surface disturbances, improve habitat condition, and reduce the threat of rangeland
fires.
Hinchey predicts the federal documents
will impose conditions so onerous it will
be difficult to drill in sage grouse areas,
mainly because of requirements that operators mitigate surface disturbances by
purchasing lands outside the core areas.
"BLM has not decided how much, but it
will not be a one-acre-for-one-acre ratio.
It will be many more times that, and the
cost will be very high. We still are waiting
to see what that is going to be," he says.
PAW Chairman Randy Harris says
that in addition to specific actions, there
are concerns BLM is moving toward conducting project planning at the landscape
level, under which its regulatory efforts
would transcend state boundaries.
"That has to be looked at very carefully
because the question deals with jurisdictional primacy," he poses. "There are a
variety of things that could be issues in
one state but not another, and that could
cause people to view things in a different
way. We need to be very, very careful. ❒

Coming In September
In the relentless drive to lower
costs per foot of completed interval,
operators across the country are extending lateral lengths and pumping
larger volumes of proppant. Part III
of the Horizontal & Innovative
Drilling series profiles the case study
of how one operator is using advanced bits and motors to drill longlateral horizontal shale wells in a
single bottom-hole assembly run,
and explores new diagnostic tools to
evaluate completion effectiveness.
AUGUST 2016 93

American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2016

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