Public comments are being taken on a proposal to lease six parcels totaling 5,632 acres of public mineral estate in Dolores and Montezuma counties in an upcoming Feb. 11, 2016, oil-and-gas lease sale in Denver.
Five parcels are in Dolores County, including three parcels totaling 2,742 acres north of Groundhog Reservoir. Two of those overlap the Lone Cone State Wildlife Area.
The other parcels up for lease in Dolores County include a 1,080-acre parcel east of Elston Mountain and a 196-acre parcel east of Plateau Creek and the Summer Camp creek confluence.
In Montezuma County, a 720-acre parcel is up for lease west of McPhee Reservoir at the end of County Road Z.
The Bureau of Land Management’s Tres Rios Field Office is accepting comments.
Ten parcels had been nominated for leasing, but the BLM deferred four parcels, equivalent to 3,880 acres, in and around Lone Mesa State Park north of the town of Dolores. The agency said the deferrals allow for additional review of appropriate protections for state park land from oil-and-gas development.
BLM field manager Connie Clementson said the act of leasing does not authorize any well development or use of the surface of lease lands, without further application by the operator and approval by the BLM.
“There are several steps in the process,” she said. “A successful bidder of a lease must submit an application for a permit to drill (an APD), then it goes through more environmental reviews and a public process again.”
Whether or not hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” as it is commonly known, will be used in the drilling process is not yet known.
“We won’t know until the lease is sold and an APD is submitted,” Clementson said.
Foreseeable oil-and-gas development for the San Juan National Forest and BLM’s Tres Rios district is estimated at 2,900 new wells in the next 15 years, according to the national forest’s Resource Management Plan (RMP) approved in February 2015.
But that rate seems unlikely, according to a BLM worksheet published this month on the upcoming oil-and-gas lease sale.
“Since the RMP was signed, only two new wells have been approved,” it states. “This totals one new well every two months, which is only 3 percent of the predicted monthly average.”
jmimiaga@cortezjournal.com
To comment
Written comments on the oil-and-gas lease proposal must be received by Sept. 11, 2015, and may be submitted via email to blm_co_trfo_2016_lease_sale@blm.gov or by mail to Bureau of Land Management Tres Rios Field Office, Attn: Robert Guarrigues, 29211 Highway 184, Dolores, CO 81323 or via fax to (970) 882-6841.
For more information on the project, click on the link http://on.doi.gov/1IONVSh.
