E-mail Story
Print Friendly Front Page 
opinion guest_columns
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Apply BP Lessons to Land Drilling
By Sanders Moore
Advocate, Environment New Mexico
A little over six months ago, the country and much of the world were glued to their televisions watching the worst oil spill in our history unfold before their eyes. As we focused on the dangers and impacts of offshore drilling, we neglected to consider those from sources that directly affect New Mexico — land-based oil and gas drilling, which accounts for 65 percent of oil and 88 percent of natural gas production in the United States.
Although the BP oil spill is no longer on the national news every night, we owe it to ourselves, and our country, not to forget how bad it was. The explosion that caused the spill killed 11 men and released approximately 200 million gallons of oil, 11 times more than the Exxon-Valdez spill, into the Gulf of Mexico. More than 600 miles of Gulf coast were impacted by the spill. Thousands of birds died, a thousand rare sea turtles either died or were severely impacted by the oil and hundreds of square miles of sensitive marsh were covered in oil. Tens of thousands of fishermen and tourism workers were put out of work when huge areas of the Gulf had to be closed to all fishing and because beaches were covered with oil.
Accidents and spills related to land-based drilling occur on a regular basis, but do not catch the media's attention. This summer, the National Wildlife Federation reported that in the past 10 years there have been 58 pipeline accidents in New Mexico alone, causing 15 fatalities and 17 injuries. This does not include this summer's train accident in which at least two tankers, carrying about 15,000 gallons of petroleum each, overturned in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge near Socorro, spilling oil into the arroyo near the refuge's wetlands. Historically, the dirty secret of oil spills is that only about 10 percent to 20 percent of the oil is ever cleaned up, under the best circumstances.
New Mexicans place a high value on our treasured landscape and our scarce water supplies — resources we cannot afford to destroy. Onshore oil and gas drilling threatens both of these. Culturally and ecologically important areas like Otero Mesa should not face potential destruction from oil and gas drilling spills. The area is not only home to 1,000 native wildlife species, New Mexico's only pure herd of pronghorn antelope, and thousands of petrogylphs and archeological sites, but it is also located above the Salt Basin Aquifer, possibly the largest, untapped freshwater aquifer left in New Mexico. Unique places like this make New Mexico the Land of Enchantment.
In addition, most of the oil and gas drilling in New Mexico is done through a method called hydro-fracking (or hydraulic fracturing). This uses millions of gallons of water, which is pumped into the ground to extract the oil and gas, effectively removing water that can be used for drinking and agriculture from the system. To make matters worse, when spills do occur, they can contaminate our groundwater, further reducing viable drinking water sources.
In the wake of the BP oil spill, we learned that the agency in charge of issuing offshore drilling permits to companies used guidelines that allowed for broad approval of projects instead of individual review and consideration, factors we later found out contributed to the severity of the Gulf spill. The same concerns apply for onshore drilling. In 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act that expanded the use of "categorical exclusions" by the Bureau of Land Management, the agency responsible for regulating oil and gas development on public lands, allowing short cuts that permit oil and gas drilling without adequate environmental impact assessments and public involvement. Essentially, this policy created a presumption that previous environmental reviews for specific projects could be applied to additional drilling. Without adequate environmental review, the full impacts of drilling projects are unknown, and potentially damaging projects are allowed to move forward.
We should take the time to remember the lessons learned from the BP disaster and make sure we take all precautions possible to reduce the chances of onshore drilling accidents. We urge Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall to lead Congress in removing loopholes that allow agencies to categorically issue permits based on generic analysis of drilling sites, instead of individual analysis.
You also can send comments via our comment form
|
|
