American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2015 - 131

At the time they were released, IPAA
estimated the land use plans would delineate
11 million acres as no surface occupancy
without exceptions, 35 million acres as
no surface occupancy with some exceptions,
and collectively, 66 million acres with
some type of limitation or restriction.
Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of
government and public affairs for the
Western Energy Alliance, characterized
the sage-grouse land-use plans as being
"as bad, if not worse, than (an endangered)
listing."
State, Private Efforts
In announcing the not-warranted decision, Jewell also credited the many
state and private conservation efforts in
place to preserve sage grouse habitat.
She mentioned specifically the "core
area" strategy employed by Wyoming
and Montana, Oregon's "all lands" approach, and land management plans developed by Colorado, Utah, Nevada and
Idaho.
Indeed, five days before USFWS's
listing decision was made public, Colorado
Governor John Hickenlooper announced
that he had asked BLM and USFWS to
recognize his state's new Colorado Habitat
Exchange, which he described in a press
release as a voluntary conservation effort
through which financial incentives would
be offered to ranchers to create, maintain
and improve habitat on their properties.
This would earn landowners conservation
credits that they could sell to industry to
compensate for development, Hickenlooper explained.
USFWS also points to 4.4 million
acres of sage grouse habitat that has been
restored or conserved by more than 1,100
ranchers through the Natural Resource
Conservation Service's Sage Grouse Initiative. USFWS says the U.S. Department
of Agriculture expects the Sage Grouse
Initiative to reach 8.0 million acres by
2018, and adds that USFWS and the
BLM have received commitments on 5.5
million acres through candidate conservation agreements.
The future of the sage grouse "depends

on the successful implementation of these
federal and state management plans, and
the actions of private landowners, as well
as a continuing focus on reducing invasive
grasses and controlling rangeland fire,"
USFWS insists, saying it "has committed
to monitoring all of the continuing efforts
and population trends, as well as to reevaluating the status of the species in
five years."
Wrong Way There
That formula is half right, suggests
WEA's Sgamma. She says, "DOI arrived
at the right decision, but took the wrong
path to get there. The (no-listing) decision
rests on robust population numbers and
effective state and local efforts that are
working to protect the species, not the
flawed federal land-use plans, (which)
exaggerate the impact from energy development and fail to recognize that oil
and natural gas coexist with sage grouse
conservation."
Sgamma references the Western Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies'
2015 population update, which shows a
63 percent increase in sage grouse numbers
over the past two years. WAFWA also
found that the population in core sage
grouse areas was essentially unchanged
since 1965, she adds.
Sgamma says WEA estimates the federal government's land-use plans could
cost as many as 31,000 jobs and $5.6
billion in lost annual economic activity.
WEA projects impacts from blocked oil
and natural gas development at 9,267
lost jobs and nearly $2.5 billion in lost
annual economic growth.
According to one published report, at
least 40 protests to the land-use plans had
been directed to BLM by the end of June.
One of those was filed by the Petroleum
Association of Wyoming. It listed as especially problematic, mandatory compensatory mitigation for development inside core areas and the net-conservationgain standard for mitigation, as well as
noise limitations, timing restrictions, and
required unitization and design features
in core areas that "will render many proj-

ects uneconomical (AOGR, August 2015,
pg. 126)."
Erik Milito, director of upstream and
industry operations for the American Petroleum Institute, says, "These proposals
to further limit access to development
only serve to stifle critical energy production and prevent job creation. Not
only are the land-use proposals inconsistent
with established multiple-use mandates,
they suffer from flawed science."
Indeed, Sgamma reports a coalition
consisting of 21 counties in Colorado,
Montana, Nevada and Utah, along with
numerous mining and energy associations
that include IPAA, WEA, PAW and the
Montana Petroleum Association, has filed
three Data Quality Act challenges to reports that BLM, USFWS and the U.S.
Geological Survey are using to justify
their land-use decisions (see related story,
page 121).
The DQA challenges contend the reports "fail to meet basic standards of science, resulting in misinformed policy
that will harm the greater sage grouse
and the West," Sgamma says, adding,
"The scientific work underpinning our
DQA challenges will be invaluable to
support the not-warranted decision while
still enabling legal challenges to the landuse plans to move forward."

Hard-Rock Mining
In conjunction with the sage grouse
no-list decision and land-use plans, BLM
and USFWS say they also initiated a
public comment process on a proposal to
prevent hard-rock mining-subject to valid,
existing claims-on 10 million acres of
public and National Forest System lands
in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah
and Wyoming.
According to a USFWS fact sheet,
the proposal would prohibit for up to
two years "the location and entry of new
mining claims in the designated areas,"-
identified as Sagebrush Focal Areas-
while the Department of Interior exercises
its authority under the Federal Land
Policy and Management Act to make the
withdrawals permanent.
❒

TAEP Update

Texas Oilmen Face Overlapping Issues
By Corinne Westeman

FT. WORTH, TX.-For heavy energy-producing states such as Texas, many
federal and state issues are overlapping,
industry representatives suggest.
Texas Alliance of Energy Producers

staff members comment that while their
focus is divided among several local
issues, such as induced seismicity and
municipal ordinances, federal regulations
are being enacted or discussed at the
state level as well.
"It seems almost everything the U.S.

Fish & Wildlife Service or the Environmental Protection Agency does is crossing
over into the state agencies, especially
the Endangered Species Act or federal
air quality standards," Alliance government
relations consultant Bill Stevens states.
"The association is monitoring local legal

OCTOBER 2015 131
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