I went to the BLM website to check out what they had to say about it; for each particular state they have information on Onshore Drilling and what is being done where. The first page I stumbled upon was the FAQs page for Utah, a popular destination of skiing and exploring the beautiful landscape. Guess how much land is available for the BLM to lease? “Approximately 17 million acres are available” according to the BLM and the “Utah BLM currently administers over 3,800 oil and gas leases, containing approximately 4.3 million acres of land.” That is 4.3 million acres of land that is already being drilled on in JUST UTAH. How does the BLM justify this? “According to a report by the Utah Energy Office, the drilling of a typical well in the Uintah Basin adds approximately 15 jobs and $360,000 in additional personal income.” So Onshore Drilling is okay because it creates jobs and money and helps out the economy, but is it worth possibly destroying our environment?
Friday, October 8, 2010
Who the frack is BLM?
One of the organizations at the heart of Onshore Drilling in the United States is the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The BLM controls and manages our national park system, public lands, and national forests. “The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 and the 1987 Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act authorizes oil and gas leasing on BLM, national forest, and other Federal lands, as well as private lands where the Federal government has retained mineral rights.” So in a quick summary, the government leases out our National Forest lands to Big Oil Companies so they can drill; that just sounds absurd to me. But they don’t lease out that much land do they?
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Wow. First off, it’s pretty extreme that the government allows this organization to have access to and lease out these national land environments. What would happen if an incident occurred where these natural habitats and lands were harshly damaged or destroyed due to a malfunction of machinery? There is not more than one environment on Earth, and it certainly cannot be wholly restored in a brief amount of time if a tragedy happens. Maybe that’s just the environment advocate coming out in me, but I think it’s a concept that people don’t always consider when reasoning operations like these.
ReplyDeleteThen, it is even more outlandish to see how large the amounts of land available are! If 4.3 million acres are being drilled on in Utah alone, how much land is leased and drilled on in larger states such as California or Texas?
I understand that it is imperative that jobs are created to help our struggling economy at this point in time, but I do not believe that it should be at the expense of the environment. So to answer the last question, I definitely do not believe that economic improvement is more valuable than exhausting and harming the only environment we have.
This post may be harsh and expose negative qualities of this organization, but I think it is eye-opening and shows people one example of this type of corruption. Great post!
To answer your question about what would happen if the machinery failed or malfunctioned I have some answers. Many natural wells have been exploding or causing explosions in nearby personal wells of people due to the immense pressure built up and the flammability of the chemical cocktail and gas. Here are numerous links to articles talking about well explosions and drilling explosions, many resulted in several injuries and at least 2 deaths: http://www.propublica.org/article/officials-in-three-states-pin-water-woes-on-gas-drilling-426 , http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ksinding/tragic_gas_well_explosion_kill.html , http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703303904575292560762588460.html , http://www.newsinferno.com/health-concerns/pennsylvania-well-blowout-west-virginia-explosion-highlight-dangers-of-natural-gas-drilling/ , http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201009200308.
ReplyDeleteI too hope and pray that we find safer and easier ways to drill natural gas out of the ground if we can’t find alternative means of energy. It is a shame that we are putting our environment at such risk on a daily basis.