JACKSON HOLE, WY – The battle for
the Wyoming Range wore on and on. So long, it’s been a difficult story
to follow with rapt interest. Most know the outline: Big Oil threatened
to drill in some of the most pristine acreage the state has to offer.
Opposition mounted. Citizens rallied.
And then, the most unlikeliest of endings. Bambi beats
Godzilla. A loose-knit band of sportsmen, hunters, ranchers, and
tree-huggers put away their differences long enough to stare down a
common enemy. Only that wasn’t the end. After the credits rolled came a
teaser for the sequel. Energy extraction companies are again polishing
their drill bits, hoping to squeeze out some of the estimated three
trillion barrels of shale oil from beneath the surface—the largest such
deposit on the planet.
Years ago, it took an act of Congress and nearly nine
million in payoff money to ransom the range back from oil interests. But
one thing bothered conservation movement leaders like Dan Smitherman
and Lisa McGee. Even as they popped the champagne in 2012, they had an
uneasy feeling. A map of the protected mountain range revealed tiny
pockets of grandfathered drilling permits. They were nothing, right?
Totaling just three percent of the 1.2 million acres, maybe the oil
companies would forget about them.
They didn’t.
The dispute over which was more valuable—the land or the
juice trapped in the rock beneath it—began long ago. What made the
Wyoming namesake range so special happened much, much earlier.
Geologists call it the Green River Formation. It’s a
product of the Eocene epoch dated to about 40 to 55 million years ago.
At the beginning of this six million year period, earth was a
sauna—Wyoming, a lush jungle. Dinosaurs had been dead and gone for some
10 million years and now other stuff was growing like crazy.
And you think we have greenhouse gasses? Scientists
estimate oxygen levels were double what they are today. Plant and animal
life flourished to the degree that carbon dioxide and methane gases
were correspondingly off the chart. All this kept the planet warm until
it didn’t. By the end of the epoch, massive glaciers covered Wyoming,
and trapped all that prehistoric photosynthesis under varves and varves
of sediment.
Add a few uplifts and a fold-and-thrust belt, and the
surface of the Wyoming Range sprouted mountains, rivers, and valleys.
But the rugged land’s beauty ran more than skin deep. When the energy
age came, roughnecks and riggers powered a nation on the mineral trapped
underground. Recent improved technology suddenly made a forgotten lake
algae known as cyanobacteria the hottest commodity going. Oil shale
deposits could literally be wrung from rock, brought to the surface, and
burned in our cars and homes. And far below the hooves of her wild
animals, Wyoming was sitting on a fortune of it.
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