What Lies Beneath
One of the largest wildlife refuges in Colorado is threatened because oil companies still own the subterranean minerals.
By Rachael DeWitt
June 3, 2008
The Nature Conservancy purchased the 97,000-acre Baca Ranch and two 14,000-foot peaks in southern Colorado. (AP Photo/Nature Conservancy, HO)During the long era of the Bush administration, environmental legislation has been repeatedly steamrolled and the Alaska Wildlife Refuge has been pegged as an entrepreneurial oil drilling opportunity. But during that same period, Colorado has established one of the largest refuges in the federal refuge system.
In 2003, The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit organiztion, purchased approximately 92,500 acres of private land in the San Luis Valley and established the Baca National Wildlife Refuge. The $33 million project was designed to “restore, enhance, and maintain wetland, upland, riparian, and other habitats for wildlife, plants, and fish species that are native to the San Luis Valley.” The refuge, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), contains the largest and most diverse assemblage of wetlands in all of Colorado. The refuge is next door to the town of Crestone and Colorado College’s Baca campus.
But the Baca Refuge’s ability to provide protection for wildlife is being threatened by an antiquated nineteenth century mining law that is still on the books. The legislation separates land into “surface” and “subsurface” parcels, and oftentimes those who own the surface land do not own the rights to the minerals underneath. In the case of the Baca Refuge, the surface is federal land, while the minerals are owned by oil companies. When the refuge was formed, there was an attempt to buy out the mineral rights largely held by Lexam Energy Exploration, 25 percent of which is owned by oil giant Conoco. But the Nature Conservancy didn’t buy out Lexam, and, at the time, believed the energy company might leave the refuge alone. Today the area is under serious threat of exploratory drilling, which calls into question the meaning of the land’s Wildlife Refuge status.
The National Wildlife Refuge system does not usually acquire land where the mineral rights are severed, according to Michael Blenden, manager of the Baca Refuge for the USFWS. “This was a large conservation effort having the primary goal of protecting ground water in the San Luis Valley from out of basin exportation,” Blenden said. “Protracting the acquisition negotiations over the mineral rights question was likely to result in the whole deal falling through"—and that would have represented a greater threat to the Valley, Blenden argued.
The split ownership of the land is now creating a serious conflict of interest. Canadian-owned Lexam has plans for two exploratory wells, extending 14,000 feet into the ground. The goal of the project is to find out what is underneath the San Luis Valley, in the hopes that there is a large amount of untapped oil waiting to be extracted.
This is a new kind of operation for Lexam, a wildcat oil company. Lexam’s own consulting geologists report that the company has never taken on a project like this, where the drilling would be extremely deep. Deeper drilling poses higher risks, as it requires breaking through multiple layers of aquifer and toxic chemicals to fracture the earth.
Lexam received a state issued permit from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission that would allow drilling in the refuge. Although the company already has a permit, it is not allowed to drill until the USFWS approves the plan. In January, the USFWS released an initial environmental assessment. Jay Slack, regional director of the USFWS, is responsible for deciding whether a full Environmental Impacts Report (EIS) will be required before drilling may be approved. Numerous environmental and community organizations, both local and regional, have voiced their objection to the drilling and are pushing for the EIS that would determine the extent of the destruction 14,000-foot wells could cause. The organizations claim that such drilling would create serious hydro-geological damage and potentially irrevocable disruption to the plants and wildlife in the refuge.
The USFWS, as a part of the department of interior, is caught between environmental welfare and the federal government’s push for speedy domestic oil extraction. “This is a constitutional issue that transcends administrations and is exactly why there are a significant number of national wildlife refuges and national parks that have oil and gas activity. This has been occurring for decades,” Blenden said.
The proposed drilling will require stadium lights and noisy diesel engines that will seriously disturb wildlife and the appeal of Colorado College’s Baca campus. This has caused Colorado College professors and students to get involved in the debate. The college’s law firm submitted formal comments to the Fish and Wildlife Service during the initial scoping period last September, discouraging drilling and encouraging a full EIS.
Oil is already drilled all over Colorado, but Baca is different. A wildlife refuge shouldn’t double as an oil drilling site. If Lexam continues speculating, then the land is effectively unprotected and its "refuge" status is meaningless. It is impossible to separate land from the rock beneath it.
Rachel DeWitt is a senior at Colorado College. An earlier version of this article appeared in the Cipher, part of the Campus Publications Network.
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Comments
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Of course denying drilling rights would be a violation of the taking clause.
The law is rather clear: If you are the holder of the mineral rights, you lawfully have the right to extract them. The only legal recourse would be to buy out those rights.
I should add however that drilling for oil is actually rather environmentally benign. Far more of an impact comes from the transport and refining of oil, the drilling of oil on land is really low risk from an environmental prospective compared to the downstream operations.
Fun fact: There are oil wells in the Florida Everglades that as far I know had no environmental impact—-bet you never even knew they were there!
— Chris C. - Jun 3, 06:15 PM - #There is an important concurrent story at play which was missed: the overarching issue of American oil dependency. I find it is equally repugnant to drill on a wildlife refuge, but guess what? That wildlife refuge is on American soil. It is not in Sudan, Nigeria, or elsewhere where American oil interests are fueling civil war and far greater social and environmental impact, never mind an atrocious environment impact on transporting it back to the US so you can fuel your massive SUV’s. So before as a “progressive” you think about stopping something in your backyard, realize that your backyard extends beyond what you might view from your porch when having a bbq.
— NE - Jun 4, 07:50 AM - #A prediction concerning Lexam-ConocoPhillips’ attempt to drill two (or is it three?) “exploratory” wells 14,000 feet deep into the San Luis aquifer under the Baca National Wildlife Refuge. It won’t happen. You could say that the SLV, Valley of the Dunes, is God’s line in the sand and is as sacred as Mt. Sinai/Zion. If you’re intersted in an explanation, please read my “Appeal to Al Gore and the American People in Defense of the Baca Refuge” at 11thhouraction.com (this is the website for Leonardo DiCaprio’s new documentary). Also, you might want to read my essay, “Four Corners: Jerusalem of the Americas, Lexam Explorations and 2012.” It’s posted at Thomas Paine’s Corner (you can find it through Google).
— Louis K. Jarvis - Jun 4, 02:20 PM - #From (Colorado Springs) Gazette.com, 1-28-08: Last October, N.Y. TIMES MAGAZINE published Joe Gertner’s rather terrifying analysis of the worsening water crisis in the western U.S. He stated the obvious: “a lesser Colorado River would almost certainly lead to a considerable amount of economic havoc, as the future water supplies for the West’s industries, agriculture and growing municipalities are threatened. As one prominent Western water official described the future to me, if some of the Southwest’s largest reservoirs empty out, the region would experience an apocalypse, ‘an Armageddon.’” Now go back and read, “Is the Fight for San Luis Valley Water Finally Over?” This article appeared in the March 2002 issue of LA JICARITA NEWS of northern New Mexico. Wrote Kay Matthews, “In several previous articles LA JICARITA also discussed whether purchase of the (Baca) ranch by the federal government will indeed secure the water rights from transfer.. Ownership of the ranch is complicated. A corporation called Cabeza de Vaca bought the ranch from AWDI. Apparently it is AWDI and another investor, Peter Hornick, who are involved in the current litigation. AWDI claims it retained its rights to a percentage of royalties from the sale of water on the ranch.. Ed Quillen, publisher of the Salida-based COLORADO CENTRAL magazine, believes that there will continue to be pressure to use the water to meet federal needs, such as the growing population needs of downstream urban areas.” In the March 2000 issue of Quillen’s publication we read, “In its February edition, the CRESTONE EAGLE quotes Crestone resident Louis Jarvis, who said he has done extensive research in Texas on Enron. He fears that Enron will try to buy the Baca.” One year later Enron’s CEO “Kenny Boy” Lay was a key member of Vice President Cheney’s energy task force. I suggest Kenny Boy and his top secret cabal put together a strategy to partner Lexam Explorations of Toronto with ConocoPhillips of Houston to engineer the coming apocalyptic water-grab in the San Luis Valley. Just consider that twenty years ago AWDI hydrologists calculated the value of the SLV aquifers’ more than two billion acre-feet at $14 trillion. Now consider that ConocoPhillips is a water company (google ConocoPhillips+water). Last but not least, consider that the legal beagle for ConocoPhillips happens to be James Baker IIIrd, former Treasury Secretary and Secretary of State. ConocoPhillips built and runs the presidential library of George Bush, Sr. No wonder, then, that Mike Blenden, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manager of the Baca National Wildlife Refuge, claims his agency has no grounds to prevent drilling on U.S. government property. Really? Whatever happened to eminent domain, also known as compulsory purchase? It’s defined as the inherent right of the State to seize a citizen’s private property, expropriate property, or rights in property, without the owner’s consent. What Lexam Explorations of Canada intends to carry out in the Baca NATIONAL Wildlife Refuge is nothing less than act of aggression against U.S. national sovereignty. Why, then, is it being aided and abetted by the U.S. Department of the Interior and Fish and Wildlife Service? The answer is now being reported ever more frequently in the American press: “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been one of the most politically compromised scientific divisions in the Bush administration.” I think that’s spelled c-o-r-r-u-p-t-i-o-n. And the goal? That’s spelled North American Union, the end of U.S. national sovereignty. Conspiracy theory? Ask Ron Paul. Lexam’s drilling project in the Baca Refuge is a test case. Calling Lou Dobbs at CNN, here’s your reason to join Rep. Paul in the presidential race. Welcome to the 2008 elections, and may a true patriot win. Lexam spells the end of “homeland security.”
— Louis K. Jarvis - Jun 4, 04:20 PM - #