Biodiversity Conservation Alliance * The Wilderness Society

NEWS ADVISORY

For Immediate Release
September 6, 2006

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Questar Hiawatha Project Could Impact
Kinney Rim Proposed Wilderness

LARAMIE - The BLM today announced a call for public comments identifying “issues of concern” on the Questar Hiawatha project, which proposes 4,207 wells in the southwestern Red Desert. The project area includes parts of the Kinney Rim citizens' proposed wilderness units, where the Kinney Rim rises in a towering wave a thousand feet above a vast expanse of sagebrush.

"If Questar will be willing to tweak its boundaries to avoid the Kinney Rim proposed wilderness, just as they have done for similar citizens' proposed wilderness units on the Colorado side of the line, this project will be much less controversial," said Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. "There's a real opportunity here for Questar to avoid sensitive landscapes and employ advanced technologies like well clustering and directional drilling to create an exemplary gas project instead of more problems for Red Desert lands and wildlife."

The Kinney Rim South proposed wilderness takes in over 125,000 acres of roadless and primitive country in the southern Red Desert. It is bordered by two small gas fields, the Kinney and the Trail fields, each of which presently has about 30 wells.

The BLM anticipates as many as 200 wells will be drilled each year after project approval.  “With a project of this size and the experience of the companies involved, there is a real opportunity for the BLM and the industry to set high standards for the way that development occurs,” said Nada Culver, senior counsel with The Wilderness Society’s BLM Action Center.  “We hope to see serious commitments to protecting the wilderness values of the Kinney Rim and the wildlife of the Red Desert; these are real issues of concern that the BLM should be analyzing and addressing.”
 
"When you add together this project with the Continental Divide - Creston Project and the Atlantic Rim coalbed methane project, we're talking about more than 15,000 wells to be approved in the Red Desert--more than three times the number of wells ever drilled there," concluded Molvar. "With the BLM authorizing wall-to-wall oil and gas projects in this fragile ecosystem, it's time to take a serious look at protecting some big blocks of public land from drilling, so there will be someplace where sensitive wildlife can survive."

Contact Information

Erik Molvar, Wildlife Biologist, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, (307) 742-7978
Nada Culver, The Wilderness Society, (303) 650-5818 x117