Wildlife areas leased for natural gas drilling
Posted on Tuesday, July 29, 2008
The Game and Fish Commission voted unanimously Monday to lease two wildlife management areas for natural gas drilling with an initial paycheck of $ 29. 5 million.
The areas, usually reserved for hunting and wildlife preservation, could bring in additional millions in royalties if natural gas company Chesapeake Energy Corp. is successful.
“We all feel good about it, and it has terms within the lease that will make everyone happy as we protect our natural resources,” said Loren Hitchcock, deputy director of the Game and Fish Commission.
Not everyone feels that way. Andy Cheshier, chairman of Booneville-based Citizens Against Resource Exploitation, said he thinks drilling in the areas will disturb wildlife and hurt the environment. Reaction from several hunters was mixed.
Drilling will not be allowed in the management areas during hunting seasons.
One of the wildlife management areas, Gulf Mountain in Van Buren County, is situated over the Fayetteville Shale, a geologic formation primarily located in north-central Arkansas that’s already proved to be rich in natural gas. Drilling in the shale is projected to have a $ 22 billion effect on the economy between 2005 and 2012, according to a study by the University of Arkansas that partially was funded by Chesapeake. State officials have since said that number might be too high.
With its prime location, the Gulf Mountain lease totals $ 28. 3 million for its nearly 4, 000 net acres.
The second lease, in the Petit Jean River Wildlife Management Area, totals $ 1. 2 million for its 7, 500 net acres. That land is considered to be part of the Arkoma basin, where Chesapeake has natural gas operations in nonshale formations.
Both leases are for f ive years at 20 percent royalties, well above the 12. 5 percent minimum royalty mandated by state law. If the company produces gas on the lands, it can automatically renew the leases.
Chesapeake’s bids were selected over those of several other gas exploration companies, but details weren’t available.
The leases provide drilling guidelines with a section on “best management practices” and also protect the endangered Speckled Pocketbook Mussels, which live in the Little Red River.
“I think that that’s two documents that go above and beyond what we would normally think about protecting in an area of natural resources, and of course that’s what we’re charged with,” said Hitchcock, the commission deputy director. “I think as long as we adhere to those documents, the impacts will be negligible.”
Amy Atwood, Portland, Ore.-based senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, deals with issues involving energy development on public lands. She said she’s concerned about the endangered mussel.
“Anything that’s going to affect water in this species ’ habitat, is going to affect this species,” Atwood said. “It’s pretty highly dependent on streams and feeds, and to the extent that they’re going to be diverting water or degrading the quality of water for the purpose of extracting this unconventional form of natural gas, it will impact a highly endangered species.”
Danny Games, director of corporate development for Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake, said it was too early to tell where Chesapeake would get the millions of gallons of water needed to drill wells in Gulf Mountain’s shale formation. He said the $ 29. 5 million lease total is the largest the company has done in Arkansas.
The commission has outlined uses for the lease proceeds, including water resource planning, new offices and conservation programs. It also plans to establish a matching grant program for local organizations and governments that undertake projects of their own that fit within the commission’s vision.
Hitchcock said the Gulf Mountain property was attractive to bidders because the shale and gas is at a shallow depth in that area of Van Buren County, plus the management area is located near existing pipelines.
Games said a shallow drilling depth of perhaps 3, 000 feet could reduce the time needed to drill each well by three to seven days. He said the company often has to drill to 6, 500 or 7, 000 feet.
The company hasn’t done any preparation work to determine where and how much it will drill in the leased lands, he said. However, Chesapeake has been drilling up to eight wells per 640-acre section, he said. While some areas will be avoided to protect the environment, he said that he expects about that many wells could go in.
B. J. Hardy, who runs an online service, thearkansashuntingandfishingforum. com, said he wants some answers from the commission as to how much habitat this will destroy and how it will affect hunters.
“Apparently nobody knows. I’ve never heard of any impact statements, they play their cards so close to their vest that it’s hard for anybody to know what happens,” said Hardy of Plainview. He hunts at the Petty Jean River Wildlife Management Area.
“I understood that Game and Fish’s job was to protect it, but you know when that dollar bill gets involved, things start happening that weren’t going to happen before.”
Miles Lacy, vice president and general manager of Green Bay Packaging Inc. in Morrilton, said his company owns many acres leased by the Game and Fish Commission, private hunting clubs and companies drilling for natural gas.
“Really, we have not seen an adverse affect on hunting,” he said, adding that he hunts as part of a private club on land surrounded by about five natural gas wells, with a new road running through it. The main problem is that the new roads make private hunting areas more accessible to the public, he said.
Even when the companies are drilling, “It’s noisy, and there’s a lot of traffic, but it has not affected my hunting,” he said.
Games said that the drilling ban during hunting season wasn’t a problem for Chesapeake, since the company has hundreds of thousand of leased acres on private land.
After talking to other states’ agencies, Hitchcock said the commission found that the effects of gas operations on hunting was negligible. Once a well is drilled, the extraction operation is largely automated. A typical well requires a clearing of about an acre, plus access roads. The lease has restrictions in an attempt to limit building new roads.
Bob Apple, former chairman and a vice president of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation, said that he’s concerned about the commission’s move to allow natural gas drilling on protected lands.
“It seems like it’s incompatible with the purposes of the wildlife management area,” Apple said.
He said that the noise could scare certain species and drive them away. “You’re going to spook them and you’re going to scare them off and you sort of defeat the purpose,” Apple said.
Hitchcock disagreed. “In the big scheme of things, it really doesn’t impact the wildlife,” he said. “They get used to a wellhead out there. They get used to the fact that there’s nice new grass planted around the wellhead and around the pipeline.”
The Fayetteville Shale has been a huge boost to the state’s economic state, said Maria Haley, director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.
“It’s a tremendous bonus for the state, and a tremendous bonus for the Game and Fish [Commission ] and the natural resources of the state,” Haley said.
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