NEWS RELEASE

Contact Information

January 13, 2008

Conservationists challenge extreme-density drilling in Jonah Field

LARAMIE – A Wyoming conservation group, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, filed a legal challenge today against the Bureau of Land Management’s approval of extreme-density drilling in the Jonah Field of western Wyoming. At the heart of the challenge is the contention that the intensity of drilling would create a wasteland of over 30,000 acres of land in the Upper Green River Valley, resulting in unnecessary and undue degradation of public lands and wildlife habitats, a violation of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.

“There is no excuse for the extreme density of drilling approved for the Jonah Field, with a completely unnecessary 64 to 128 wells per square mile,” said Erik Molvar, Wildlife Biologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “The well pads will virtually touch each other across 30,000 acres, wiping out key habitats for sensitive sagebrush songbirds, the rare pygmy rabbit, and the critically imperiled sage grouse.”

“The Wyoming Association of Churches (WAC) is dedicated to protecting the unique social and natural heritage of the state of Wyoming, and each of our nine member denominations has a long history of protecting God's creation; we refer to this calling as ‘stewardship,’” added the Reverend Warren Murphy, Director of the Wyoming Council of Churches. “The Bureau of Land Management, which is called to be a steward of these lands as well, has often replaced stewardship with the desire to drill more and more. The present drilling plan calls for too great a density of well development. It is time to slow down the process so that we can ask ourselves the question of how much we want to sacrifice.”

All wells in the Jonah Field were being drilled directionally in the year leading up to the BLM’s decision to approve the drilling of an additional 3,100 vertical wells. On the Pinedale Anticline Field on the northern border of Jonah, most wells are drilled directionally into the same geological formation targeted in the Jonah Field, with up to 32 wells on each well pad. The ability of gas corporations to drill all of the additional wells directionally, with many wells on each pad and a much smaller impact on wildlife, is a key point in the case.

“We’re asking the court to halt the construction of additional roads and wellpads, but to permit drilling of new wells on wellpads that have already been built using directional drilling,” said Molvar. “If EnCana would have kept drilling directionally from the locations they already had, they could have produced the entire gas deposit with very little additional impact on wildlife and the public lands. The BLM had no business permitting EnCana to wipe out such a large tract of sagebrush habitat when lower-impact alternatives could have been used to produce the gas with a much lower impact on the land and on wildlife.”

The “tight gas” deposits that prompted the ultra-dense drilling in the Jonah Field are found beneath the Interior West from Western Wyoming all the way to New Mexico. Several even larger infill projects, including the Red Desert’s Continental Divide – Creston Project (8,950 wells) and the Hiawatha Project (4,207 wells), have been proposed and could entail extreme-density drilling. The Jonah case could be precedent-setting and influence the type of drilling that is permitted in these and other projects throughout the West.

---

Contact information:

Erik Molvar, Wildlife Biologist, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, (307) 742-7978
Rev. Warren Murphy, Director, Wyoming Association of Churches, (307) 272-9362