Drilling Opponents Want BLM To Consider Cumulative Effects in San Juan Basin

There used to be big talk about a big boom coming to the San Juan Basin. Industry thought they’d sink 20,000 new oil wells. Companies wanted to take advantage of oil deposits squeezed into tiny fissures in tight shale deep underground. That was a few years ago. Today, the estimate is for fewer than 2000 new oil wells. About 100 wells have already been drilled, and the federal government’s given a green light to about 150 more. That’s not even close to what industry predicted, but critics say the new development’s still a big deal. “It has a dramatic impact on the landscape,” says Kyle Tisdel, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center, “and it has a really dramatic impact on the people that live there, and where this development is taking place in their backyards—sometimes literally.” Tisdel represents conservation and Indigenous groups who say the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) hasn’t studied the new technologies being used on the oil shale wells. These new technologies include multi-stage hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and horizontal drilling. That is, drilling underground in different directions from one well, rather than drilling straight down, like with conventional wells. The groups are also challenging the BLM’s practice of approving one well at a time, rather than considering the cumulative effect even a couple hundred new wells could have on the landscape and nearby communities...more