Why Lease Oil and Gas in National Forests?

This rig is on the Pawnee National Grassland.

Here is an op-ed from the 21st, “Explanation needed: Why are we selling oil and gas leases in Talladega National Forest?”

Although the safeguards and regulations — if put in place and adhered to — do seem to promise that any drilling will be conducted as environmentally friendly as possible, this page is waiting for a better explanation of why the leasing is being done in the first place.

Considering the rising price of oil and gas, finding new supplies would seem a justification; however, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service told The Star that it was unlikely that much of the land would ever be drilled.

If that is the case, if there is not much chance oil or gas could be profitably extracted, then why lease the land and raise fears and concerns that are currently rising?

Is this a way to raise money for a financially strapped agency, or to help reduce the national deficit?

And why was there so little notification that the leasing would take place? Calhoun County Commissioner Tim Hodges, in whose district some of the land lies, did not know of the plan until it was announced. Courtesy, if nothing else, should at least require that local officials be told of what was in the offing.

As so often happens when a federal agency decides to do something, the need to explain those actions seems of little importance. This adds to the widely held belief that bureaucrats do things because they can, and the public be damned.

Rather than create another case of agency insensitivity, the BLM and the Forest Service need to step back, delay the sale and explain to the public why their plan is good for those who own the land — keeping in mind that a “National Forest” belongs to the nation, not to the agencies that oversee it.

Note from Sharon: I thought oil and gas leasing occurred due to Congress’s (elected officials) intentions, and the agencies are following through on the results of energy legislation. Apparently they decided that the leasing program is “good for those who own the land.” There does seem to be more controversy over energy uses of public lands in the east than the west, although there is plenty in the west as well.

Coal Mine Methane: Is the Better the Enemy of the Good ? Voltaire by Way of Allen Best

A methane drainage well, or MDW, as they are known for short

What does this question have to do with the Forest Service, you might ask? Well, under Forest Service managed land lies some underground coal mines in Colorado, Utah and out East. Some of these coal seams require the methane to be removed to protect workers. Currently, it is vented into the atmosphere- a potent greenhouse gas. The problem the agencies have is that greenhouse gases are not regulated at this point in time. One idea was a surgical piece of federal legislation that would require capture for underground coal mines on federal land. Environmental groups have been convincing agencies to analyze capture of the methane in their NEPA documents. So we have longer NEPA documents but still no actual improvement in the environment. Here is apparently a potential solution- if it would work, good news for GHG reduction. So far there don’t seem to be a lot of competitive policy options on the table, unless I am missing something.

P.S. You gotta love someone quoting Voltaire in an article about Colorado coal mines!

The merits of methane harvesting
A proposal before the Senate seems like a no-brainer, but environmental groups are inexplicably against it.
Posted: 03/18/2012 01:00:00 AM MDT

By Allen Best

Allen Best, a journalist in Colorado for 35 years, publishes an e-zine called Mountain Town News (The Denver Post | handout)

The French philosopher Voltaire in the 1700s warned against letting the better, or perfect, be the enemy of the good. That advice would seem to apply to an attempt by environmental groups in Colorado to block a market mechanism that could yield immediate reductions in emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas.

The proposal going before the Colorado Senate this week is whether to expand the state’s renewable portfolio standard to include electricity generated by burning methane emissions being vented from coal mines, both active and abandoned. The current legislation already allows electricity produced by burning methane emitted by landfills.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. The Environmental Protection Agency says the heat-trapping properties of methane are 21 times greater than that of carbon dioxide, the more common greenhouse gas. That means generating just minor amounts of electricity from coal-mine emissions could substantially reduce Colorado’s emissions of greenhouse gases.

Energy analyst Randy Udall, who has been working the numbers of coal-mine methane for a decade, calculates just 5 megawatts of electricity generated from coal-mine methane emissions, at a capital cost of $10 million, would offset more carbon than all the solar so far installed in Colorado as of 2010, which has cost roughly $700 million. Total methane harvesting from coal mines near Paonia could produce 20 megawatts, using fairly simple technology, say advocates, and, with more challenge, up to 50 megawatts.

That’s an important point to digest. In terms of reducing the risk to our climate during the next century, just a few megawatts planned at the West Elk Mine could have as much impact as all the solar panels erected on rooftops at DIA and everywhere else in Colorado so far. As Udall puts it, renewable energy is the means, not the end unto itself. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This bill’s politics has the bewildering aspects of a Mobius strip. Introduced by one of the most conservative members of the legislature, Rep. Randy Baumgardner, R-Hot Sulphur Springs, House Bill 1160 passed the House by a 34-29 vote. Only Rep. Wes McKinley, the self-described cowboy from southeast Colorado (that’s what it says on the legislature’s website), bucked fellow Democrats to join Republicans, who were unanimous in support.

Now, in the Senate, it is sponsored by Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, whose base includes some of the most diligent global warming warriors in the state.

Udall has to be considered one of those warriors, and it’s a further irony that he is aligned in this case with Bill Koch, owner of the nearby Elk Creek Mine and a member of the family that has been stirring the undertow of opposition to climate-change action. However, there’s no evidence that Koch has been involved in this case. <note Allen Best corrected this story to clarify that Koch is the owner of Elk Creek Mine and not the West Elk Mine>.

Are you confused? You’re not alone. Del Worley, general manager of the Glenwood Springs-based Holy Cross Energy, an electrical cooperative that provides electricity to the Aspen and Vail areas, says he’s baffled. “The politics are mind-boggling to me,” he says. “If you’re truly trying to stop global warming, this is one of the best bills out there. It’s not a giant resource, but why waste it? It should be a no-brainer.”

Regardless of whether HB 1160 passes, Worley’s co-op has agreed to buy 3 megawatts of electricity produced by burning coal-mine methane near Paonia. Like other co-ops in Colorado, Holy Cross is required to provide 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Holy Cross exceeded that mark last year. Now, directors have adopted an internal goal of 20 percent by 2015. Although terms have not been disclosed, they are apparently willing to pay a higher price to achieve that, both with a biomass plant proposed at Gypsum and with purchase of the methane-produced electricity.

Driving this bill is Tom Vessels, a Denver-based entrepreneur who now heads North Fork Energy. He was stirred to innovate by what he saw in Germany, where coal-mine emissions are harnessed to produce electricity. The same is true in Australia and China. But in the United States, almost nothing has happened, he says.

This is despite a 2004 EPA report that found active mines contributed 10 percent and abandoned mines 5 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. (This is from emissions of methane, not from burning coal).

While he is also tapping methane from an inactive mine in Pennsylvania, Vessels argues that Colorado can demonstrate how to tap the existing resource — and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

To make the numbers work, however, Vessels needs more customers than Holy Cross who are willing to pay a premium for electricity. He approached more than a dozen utilities. All rejected him — because they couldn’t count it toward their renewable portfolio standard mandate.

His other income stream would be carbon offsets, mostly generated by the California market.

Vessels charges that the existing renewable portfolio standard has now become the “business as usual” model. It’s thwarting innovation and stifling opportunity.

“It has been said that (renewable portfolio standards) were originally passed with the goal of supporting the new energy technologies of the legislature,” Vessels said. “The legislature a few years ago decided that solar and wind were the technologies of the future. But the Germans kept their eye on the ball and said, ‘If we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we do it by building up wind and solar — and these other things.’ I think here in Colorado we missed the ‘and other things.’ “

Among the powerful environmental groups opposing HB 1160 has been Western Resource Advocates. John Nielsen, the group’s energy program director, argues that the existing legislation is not well thought out. While the goal of reducing methane emissions is a worthy one, he says, it’s not clear the bill will actually achieve it — and might hinder better efforts in the future. “Are there better tools out there to get this done?” he asks.

But there’s another possibility that seems to bother Western Resource Advocates and other groups. If coal-mine emissions can be considered as renewable, he says, then does that mean that fugitive emissions of methane from natural gas drilling and pipeline transport can similarly be tapped someday to produce electricity under renewable portfolio standards?

Nielsen agrees that this tempest in Colorado can be considered a forerunner of a broader national debate about the clean-energy standard proposed by President Barack Obama in his 2011 State of the Union address. That debate will be about whether technology should be agnostic in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At its heart, the debate is whether we can realistically hope to completely eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels anytime soon. Most sober assessments have concluded that it will be impossible. That point is even more emphatic if the Chinese, Indians and Indonesians are brought into the conversation, as they absolutely must be.

Can we someday wean ourselves entirely off fossil fuels? Perhaps, but we’re going to have to live with coal for a few more decades, possibly longer. The current pushback by environmental groups and their Democratic allies smells of a litmus test of ideological purity. It confuses battles with the war.

If the war is against dangerous accumulations of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, this is a bill that should land on the desk of Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Allen Best, a journalist in Colorado for 35 years, publishes an e-zine called Mountain Town News.

Read more: The merits of methane harvesting – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_20183852/merits-methane-harvesting#comments#ixzz1pVs0TxbS

India’s panel price crash could spark solar revolution

Price, not efficiency, will make solar panels more widespread (Image: Joerg Boethling/Alamy)

I know this post doesn’t really fit NCFP. But David Beebe’s comments below reminded me of this piece. We often hear about climate change, but if you believe as I do that cheap low-carbon energy technologies are the only answer, you might appreciate this article, in New Scientist, one of my favorite magazines.

India’s panel price crash could spark solar revolution

02 February 2012 by Michael Marshall

Price, not efficiency, will make solar panels more widespread

SOLAR power has always had a reputation for being expensive, but not for much longer. In India, electricity from solar is now cheaper than that from diesel generators. The news – which will boost India’s “Solar Mission” to install 20,000 megawatts of solar power by 2022 – could have implications for other developing nations too.

Recent figures from market analysts Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) show that the price of solar panels fell by almost 50 per cent in 2011. They are now just one-quarter of what they were in 2008. That makes them a cost-effective option for many people in developing countries.

A quarter of people in India do not have access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency’s 2011 World Energy Outlook report. Those who are connected to the national grid experience frequent blackouts. To cope, many homes and factories install diesel generators. But this comes at a cost. Not only does burning diesel produce carbon dioxide, contributing to climate change, the fumes produced have been linked to health problems from respiratory and heart disease to cancer.

Now the generators could be on their way out. In India, electricity from solar supplied to the grid has fallen to just 8.78 rupees per kilowatt-hour compared with 17 rupees for diesel. The drop has little to do with improvements in the notoriously poor efficiency of solar panels: industrial panels still only convert 15 to 18 per cent of the energy they receive into electricity. But they are now much cheaper to produce, so inefficiency is no longer a major sticking point.

It is all largely down to economies of scale, says Jenny Chase, head of solar analysis at BNEF. In 2011, enough solar panels were produced worldwide to generate 27 gigawatts, compared with 7.7 GW in 2009. Chase says solar power is now cheaper than diesel “anywhere as sunny as Spain”. That means vast areas of Latin America, Africa and Asia could start adopting solar power. “We have been selling to Asia and the Middle East,” says Björn Emde, European spokesman for Suntech, the world’s largest producer of silicon panels. Over the next few years he expects to add South Africa and Nigeria to that list.

The one thing stopping households buying a solar panel is the initial cost, says Amit Kumar, director of energy-environment technology development at The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, India. Buying a solar panel is more expensive than buying a diesel generator, but according to Chase’s calculations solar becomes cheaper than diesel after seven years. The panels last 25 years.

Even in India, solar electricity remains twice as expensive as electricity from coal, but that may soon change. While the price drop in 2011 was exceptional, analysts agree that solar will keep getting cheaper. Suntech’s in-house analysts predict that, by 2015, solar electricity will be as cheap as grid electricity in half of all countries. When that happens, expect to see solar panels wherever you go.

Firewood for Charity, Rio Grande National Forest and Others?

PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN PHOTO/MATT HILDNER Craig DenUyl, a volunteer for the San Luis Valley charity La Puente, hauls fire wood that will later be handed out to people who need help heating their homes.

Foto asked about volunteers and firewood, and I found this one from the Rio Grande National Forest. I bet this happens all over the west. Please comment and link to other articles if you know of them. Many people on this blog disagree on many things, hopefully this is something people can all get behind, a “Thing we Agree is Good”?.

By MATT HILDNER | matth@chieftain.com | 0 comments

BIG MEADOWS — In a region where the size of a home’s wood pile is no laughing matter, the U.S. Forest Service and a local nonprofit are teaming up to make sure those in need stay warm this winter.

Employees from the Rio Grande National Forest and volunteers with La Puente, a San Luis Valley charity, spent a day last week cutting and hauling wood from this campground near Wolf Creek Pass.

The wood, in the neighborhood of four cords, will be handed out through the charity’s utility assistance program to families whose homes are heated primarily with wood.

“It really helps us to keep people warm,” said volunteer Craig DenUyl after unloading an armful of wood.

A portion of that wood also will go to La Puente’s homeless shelter in Alamosa.

Keeping warm in the San Luis Valley is no small task.

Alamosa, which annually does battle with places such as Fraser and Gunnison for the coldest spot in the state, had three days earlier this month where it was the coldest spot in the lower 48 states, according to USA Today.

Many homes are heated with natural gas, but firewood remains a common source of fuel in the Valley.

Last year the Rio Grande sold permits for cutting of roughly 6,000 cords of wood.

The project also served a useful end for the Forest Service, which has undertaken thinning the insect-laden trees crammed into the campground.

“These are dead and dying trees that we knew were going to fall over eventually,” said Mike Blakeman, a public affairs officer for the Rio Grande National Forest.

The trees, which are in a stretch of forest that has been hit hard by spruce bark beetles and the western spruce budworm, represented a threat at Big Meadows, which is the busiest campground in the 1.9 million-acre national forest.

The agency’s volunteer coordinator Rob Santoro said the thinning work at the campground, which had included the cutting of the wood into small sections, made contributing it to charity an obvious choice.

“When I came out and saw it was all bucked up, it was a no-brainer,” he said.

Forest Service Rules Just a Waste of Wood

From Tom Bean Photography

There’s probably more to this situation than meets the eye…wish we had a way to hear the other side of the story. From the Payson Roundup here.

Forest Service rules just a waste of wood
February 17, 2012

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Now, we don’t mean to sound ungrateful. Lord knows, we don’t want to fall into the category of a fella whose wife buys him a nice new Jeep and then complains that it does not have leather seats.

Still, as we paused this week to choke on the smoke from burning piles of debris off Houston Mesa Road, we couldn’t help but lament the waste of all that perfectly good firewood.

Mind you, we’re awfully grateful for the millions of dollars the Tonto National Forest has spent thinning fire break buffer zones around almost all of the endangered communities in Rim Country. The Payson Ranger District has done a marvelous job of getting those projects ready then jumping on every possible source of funding to hire thinning crews. Those buffer zones may well save the community from destruction should the next Wallow Fire come roaring at us out of the dangerously overgrown forests of Rim Country.

Still, we also agree with the indignant complaint of residents this week who were dismayed to see all of that oak and juniper set to the torch.

The slash piles left by the thinning crews have been sitting out there for months. The Forest Service does allow people who purchase a permit to trudge out to the piles and haul armloads of wood back to the road. But rangers have also threatened to arrest people who try to get wood without a permit.

That’s a waste — a waste of wood and a waste of good will.

Instead, we think the Forest Service should make every possible effort to let locals gather up as much firewood from those slash piles as possible. The Forest Service should advertise the locations of the piles and then host a firewood day so residents can take their quads, pickups and Jeeps out to the piles to haul off everything they can before the contractors set fire to what remains.

Residents struggling to pay their extortionist propane bills would get a welcome break. The Forest Service would earn the local love it so sorely needs.

And all of us would have to choke down less smoke when it comes time to burn the wood that’s left behind.

Don’t get us wrong: We appreciate the shiny new fire break. But that doesn’t mean we can’t also dream of leather seats.

So while I was searching for a photo, I found this from the Dolores Ranger District here.

Dolores Public Lands Office Plans to Burn Slash Piles

Release Date: Nov 10, 2011

The Dolores Public Lands Office plans to begin burning slash piles in several locations on Haycamp Mesa as early as next week, beginning Monday, November 14th. The slash piles are a result of fuel reduction projects completed earlier this season. The public was allowed into the project areas after the work was completed to collect firewood from the pre-cut and stacked decks of ponderosa pine. The left over slash in these project areas will be piled and burned.

Pile burning operations will take place:

• In the Chicken Creek area along the Millwood Road (FS Rd. 559), north of Joe Moore Reservoir, on 104 acres treated for fuels reduction.

• In the Rock Spring area along the Grouse Point Road (FS Rd. 390), on 61 acres treated for fuels reduction.

• In the Little Carver area, south of the Indian Ridge Road (FS Rd. 557) on 11 acres treated for fuels reduction.

All three burn pile locations are located in ponderosa pine forests and will be monitored by a local staff of qualified firefighters. The projects are contingent on weather conditions that will help to assure predictable fire behavior and maximum smoke dispersion.

Can’t tell if driving off road to the piles is the issue, or needing a permit or ??

Wind Turbine Approved on Green Mountain National Forest

stock photo of wind turbines from Bennington paper

I have heard (but cannot say for sure) that this is the first commercial wind project approved on national forest land. If you know of others, please comment and let us know.

Here’s the link.

KEITH WHITCOMB JR.
Staff Writer
SEARSBURG — The U.S. Forest Service has decided to approve 15 of the 17 wind turbines proposed on public land by Deerfield Wind, LLC, a subsidiary of Iberdrola Renewables.

Together the turbines will produce 30 megawatts of power. Eight turbines will be located on a ridge line to the west of Route 8 in Readsboro, while seven will be built to the east in Searsburg. The project area will take up around 80 acres, with the turbines painted off-white and spaced half a mile apart. At roughly 400 feet high, each will have flashing red lights in the nighttime.
The decision was issued by Colleen Pelles Madrid, forest supervisor for the Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forest, who said it is consistent with a decision made in 2009 by the Vermont Public Service Board giving the project a certificate of public good.
The decision comes with the approval of 4.5 miles of new roadway and the upgrading of 1.03 miles to existing roads, which will impact 47 acres of forest.

The decision is being criticized by Vermonters for a Clean Environment, which according to its website is a non-profit group that promotes environmental health.

“Conflict of interest”

“The decision is based on a process plagued with conflict of interest — experts were working for Iberdrola, the developer on a wind project in New Hampshire, at the same time they prepared the supposedly independent analysis for the Forest Service,” said Annette Smith, executive director of VCE, contending the project adversely affects the nearby George D. Aiken Wilderness.

The group says the project also impacts bear habitat and does more damage than it prevents in terms of offsetting carbon emissions.

Ethan Ready, spokesman for the Green Mountain National Forest, said the forest service has been working on the phases of the environmental impact assessment since 2004. He said a draft statement was issued in 2008, then a supplemental draft in 2010. The final assessment is over 400 pages and can be found at http://data.ecosystem-management.org/nepaweb/fs-usda-pop.php?project=7838.

The final document at the bottom of the page is the decision and record.
He said the public comment period was also extended, netting over 1,000 comments and prompting the forest service to directly respond to about half.

Ready said once a legal notice is posted in the Rutland Herald, the service’s paper of record, there will a 45-day appeal period. Ready said anyone who expressed an interest in the project during a formal comment period can appeal the decision.

It will be interesting to follow the appeal and points raised, if an appeal is filed.

What’s the Right Source of Energy for Now? And Who Does the Analysis When?

A truck hauls 447 tons of coal at Peabody Energy’s North Antelope Rochelle coal mine in Wyoming. Environmentalists are suing the U.S. Forest Service over actions that would allow one of the world's largest surface coal mines to expand. (Courtesy photo/WesTech)

This news story reminds me that some people are against oil and gas development, some against coal, some against wind, biomass, and solar (and nuclear). It also reminds me that some agencies have argued that the right place to do NEPA on the GHGs from coal-fired power plants (or other plants) is when the plant is permitted. Not when the material is mined nor when the power lines are permitted. And certainly not to analyze the same GHG impacts several times..

Seems to me like the decision lies with the power plant owners who buy coal (since they are likely to buy it from somewhere else, if not Wyoming). This is from a person who may be paying higher electric bills because my utility wants to switch to natural gas fired power plants.

Environmentalists renew attack on Wyoming coal that fuels LES plant

By staff and wire reports | Posted: Saturday, December 10, 2011 10:45 pm

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Environmental groups last week took their legal fight to rein in carbon dioxide produced from burning Wyoming coal to a new agency, the U.S. Forest Service.

Their effort is directed at the potential expansion of a mine served by both the Union Pacific and BNSF Railway, and from which comes fuel for the Laramie River Station, a generating plant that is owned in part by Lincoln Electric System.

The Forest Service oversees national grasslands and in October signed off on expansion of the North Antelope Rochelle Mine farther into the Thunder Basin National Grassland. The surface coal mine there is among the world’s largest.

Three groups — WildEarth Guardians, the Powder River Basin Resource Council and Sierra Club — say the Forest Service didn’t adequately consider how burning the additional mined coal would affect the climate. They sued the Forest Service in U.S. District Court in Colorado.

The groups are opposing the agency’s OK of plans to lease the South Porcupine coal tract. The five-square-mile tract near Wright, Wyo., holds 402 million tons of coal and is owned by Peabody Energy Corp. of St. Louis.

Burning the additional coal beneath more than 1,600 acres of national grassland would release more than 600 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the annual output from more than 150 coal-fired power plants, the lawsuit said.

The Forest Service seems to have taken climate change seriously in other contexts, Jeremy Nichols with WildEarth Guardians told The Associated Press.

“They’ve said things like global warming is a serious threat to national forests and grasslands. Well, that’s great. Now do something about it,” Nichols said.

U.S. Forest Service spokesman Steve Segin said the agency is reviewing the complaint. A spokeswoman for Peabody pointed out that the company is not party to the lawsuit and declined to comment.

Environmentalists are seeking all possible avenues to attack the coal industry, said Marion Loomis, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association.

“They’re just throwing everything they can at the wall and seeing what sticks. Hopefully the industries and the consumers will be successful in countering their arguments and will continue to rely on coal for many years in this country. Certainly the rest of the world will rely on coal,” Loomis said.

Two concentric loop tracks at the mine connect with the BNSF Railway and Union Pacific railroads’ joint trackage, according to Peabody’s website. Coal from the complex is currently delivered to more than 40 electricity generating customers operating more than 80 power plants throughout the United States, the website says.

Other recent lawsuits linking Wyoming coal and climate change targeted the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Citing federal figures, environmentalists say that more than 40 percent of all U.S. coal comes from Wyoming, making the state the original source of about 13 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

The BLM has been planning to lease the coal that is the subject of the lawsuit in February, said BLM spokeswoman Mary Wilson.

The lawsuit also said the coal mine expansion would disrupt wildlife habitat, land used for ranching and recreational opportunities.

Beetle-kill pine, other wood pushed as power source — and way to aid ailing Colorado forests

Another fine photo by Bob Berwyn

From the Denver Post last Thursday..

CARBONDALE — The Roaring Fork Valley lies close to abundant coal and gas fuel sources. But wood is the fuel that has a local consortium — and a state senator — fired up as an energy source that also would aid Colorado’s ailing forests.

A Roaring Fork Valley consortium found through a two-year study that there is plenty of wood in the form of drought- and beetle-killed pine, fire-stoking brush, aged aspen and construction scraps to make it a feasible adjunct to traditional fossil-fuel energy sources. Burning wood for fuel also is viewed as a potentially important part of saving the state from a conflagration like the one that ravaged Arizona forests this summer.

The Roaring Fork Biomass Consortium took the lead on the issue this week by releasing its study, which included trips to Europe to inspect biomass heating systems there and detailed analysis of the carbon footprint of trucks that would be needed to haul wood from forests in the valley.

The consortium also held a bio-mass “summit” Wednesday that brought together experts from across the state and from the East Coast, where a biomass project at Middlebury College in Vermont is looked at as an example for what might be done in Colorado.

State Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, said using wood to generate heat is more than an environmental dream. “This is not just another nice renewable thing to do. Colorado needs this,” she said.

Schwartz sponsored forest-health legislation in the last legislative session that created a working group to look at Colorado’s ailing forests and at solutions, such as reducing the amount of dead or diseased wood by using it as a fuel source.

She said that, so far, the forest problem has been looked at piecemeal on a statewide level — not comprehensively as the Roaring Fork consortium is doing.

White River National Forest supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams told Wednesday’s gathering that his agency has plenty of forest available for the collection of woody biomass but noted it would be a byproduct of forest restoration — not the object of such a project.

Like Schwartz, Fitzwilliams stressed the importance of promoting biomass now.

“I think we have a moral obligation to do this,” he said.

One biomass project already is in the planning stages for nearby Eagle County. Eagle Valley Clean Energy LLC is focusing on Gypsum as the site for a $46 million biomass plant that annually would consume 1,200 acres of wood — mainly waste such as branches, thinnings and dead trees. The Forest Service routinely stacks such materials in slash piles and then burns them.

Holy Cross Energy is on board with this project, which is projected to be operational in 2013. The company has committed to buying power for customers who are demanding that some of their power come from renewable sources, said Holy Cross chief executive Del Worley.

Consortium speakers did point out that Colorado faces some drawbacks in moving into woody biomass power. The timber in Colorado is dry because of the climate and thus burns faster. And energy costs are lower in an oil- and gas-rich state, so the savings from using biomass would not be as large as in other places.

Schwartz said she will be working on further legislation that will remove governmental obstacles to creating biomass facilities.

Discussion On Oil and Gas and Roadless

I think this may be in the running for the single most arcane topic ever discussed on this blog (maybe discussed anywhere!). Nevertheless, I cross posted the piece below here on the High Country News Range blog here and actually got an interesting and thoughtful comment from another roadless geek. If NSO’s in roadless tickle your fancy, check it out.

Oil and Gas and Roadless Rules: Too Complex for Newspapers?

Photo of oil and gas pads and roads in Colorado, not Forest Service

As you all know, I think it’s really important that the public gets a chance to understand Forest Service (public land, natural resource) issues so they can make informed choices. The problem is that institutions such as policy centers don’t really help on the day to day issues and don’t necessarily allow dialogue with the public on the web; I hope this blog helps with that.

News stories are intended to help inform the public, but by their very nature and the current structure of the news industry, I don’t think they can ever be the right place. Even if the journalist takes the time to understand the complexity, and is committed to presenting both sides fairly, there is no guarantee that that can fit into a newspaper article format. It seems like a structural problem that falls somewhere between the Extension role and a journalism role.

So in this case I will take a news story and try to clarify the issue according to my understanding.This one I know something about (although I am not currently working on this, just to be clear), so I thought by posting here I could help share with readers my understanding of the somewhat arcane and confusing oil and gas terminology and processes (of course readers are interested in forest planning, so arcane and confusing is familiar territory ). Here’s the link. I also need to clearly state that I am not saying that the proposed rule is without flaw and directly transmitted by a Higher Power. I just think it’s important to understand what the issues really are. If we, who know, don’t inform the public, who will?

Below is the story with my annotations in italics

Amid efforts to protect Colorado’s pristine forests, drilling rights makes inroads

PARACHUTE — While top environmental stewards in Washington, D.C., fine-tune a plan to protect 4.2 million acres of roadless public forests in Colorado, regional Forest Service managers are opening some of that land to oil and gas drilling.

Drilling rights for several thousand acres in the Elkhead Mountains west of Steamboat Springs and the Mamm Peak area on the Western Slope are to be auctioned in November.

Forest Service officials at the agency’s regional headquarters in Denver declined to comment. Federal Bureau of Land Management officials confirmed the lease sale.

“It’s up to the Forest Service, and we don’t want to second-guess their decisions on how they manage federal lands,” BLM spokesman Steven Hall said.

The offering of access to minerals under pristine roadless national forest land has injected new rancor into the wrangling over plans to protect last remaining roadless forests in Colorado and other Western states.

“It’s looking like the current Forest Service regional leadership gives lip service to roadless area protection,” said Mike Chiropolos, lands program director for Western Resource Advocates, “but its actions don’t match its words.”

It seems to me that somewhere in the previous paragraphs it should have been made clearer that these leases have what are called “No Surface Occupancy” stipulations which means that the gas will be accessed from outside the roadless area through directional drilling. “NSO’s”, as they are known, prohibit surface occupancy, including well pads and roads.

Now I’m not sure exactly how that could affect a roadless area’s “pristine”- ness, since neither fish, wildlife nor humans can tell whether that gas is being pumped out. If they are claiming otherwise, I and others would be very interested to know more.

The proposed lease sale also highlights a growing peril of the lengthy crafting of a plan to protect roadless forests: As decisions are delayed, incursions keep happening.

These leases are also allowed under the 2001 Rule. So frankly I can’t draw any line at all between the Colorado process (“lengthy crafting of a plan”, who else could the author mean?) and leases under roadless, even if I agreed that it’s an “incursion.”

An aerial survey of several contested areas on Friday by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership revealed dozens of roads constructed over the past decade — many leading to well pads carved out of forest.

Clearly this didn’t occur on areas with NSO stipulations, so it’s not clear to me how is this relevant to the topic.

“We want to make sure the highest-value areas are safeguarded,” said Nick Payne, Colorado field representative for the partnership, a national advocacy group.

Forest Service managers “should not be leasing parcels on roadless areas right now, until the rule is passed. Then we’ll have firm guidelines,” Payne said.

I don’t know what is meant by “firm guidelines”, nor what they are intended to do”; IMHO it would have been helpful to ask for more specificity from Payne here.

The core question many residents of western Colorado face is whether they stand to gain more in the long run from recreation industries, which require pristine forests, or mining and other extractive industries that need roads.

Interesting assertions. Does the recreation “industry” require “pristine” forests? On my vacation I noticed a lot of recreationists on roads. I see people having a great time on 14ers with mining roads, from which you can see dams, roads, towns, etc. And what exactly does “pristine” mean? If it means “untouched by human impacts,” does that include air pollution and climate change? Can human trails exist? You want to write with colorful, meaningful words.. but there is a tension between writing the readable and being careful so people understand.

And going back to the topic, since NSO’s require no roads in roadless areas, this must be an argument against oil and gas drilling at all outside of roadless areas.

Hunting outfitter Jim Bryce, making a supply run from his camp in the currently roadless Currant Creek area this week, said roads into that contested pristine habitat would ruin his business. Currant Creek provides habitat for elk and deer.

But these leases have NSOs, so there would be no roads.

Coal-mining companies that supply power plants in the eastern U.S. oppose roadless protection because they seek access to reserves.

“If they go in there and punch in coal mines and make roads, it’ll be just another area cut up by roads. This whole country is getting cut up, and it affects the wildlife and everything else,” said Bryce, 59, based in Delta, who has run his company for 31 years.

Oxbow Mining employs more than 300 miners at its Elk Creek mine nearby, and neighboring mines employ at least 700 more.

I don’t know how coal (which needs roads to vent methane but is allowed on only 20 K or so acres in the proposed rule) even entered this story which has the topic “NSO leases advertised.”

By early next year, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is expected to decide on the plan Colorado officials and regional foresters hashed out together over several years.

It offers top-tier protection to about 13 percent of the land protected under the Clinton-era roadless rule, which blocks most road-building on 4.4 million of the 14.5 million acres of national forest in Colorado.

Federal courts still are scrutinizing that 2001 rule. The Colorado proposal would make exceptions for mining, logging and ski-area expansion.

I would object to the use of the term “logging” used here. That usually implies trees going to mills. I think this sentence would be more accurate and clearer if it said “20K acres for the North Fork Coal Mines, fuels treatments for 1/2 mile around communities and 8K acres for ski area expansion. This week, at least, I think fire protection for communities would resonate differently from “logging.”Also the writer’s choice to use the acres as I did, calculate them as a percentage of the total (e.g. 20K/4.2 mill=.005%) or not include acreages are all accurate in their own way but may be perceived differently (FWIW, I would have used the acres and let the reader do the math).

Environmental Protection Agency​ officials have urged the Forest Service to ensure top-tier protection for more land.

The drilling rights that federal foresters are offering have had stipulations attached in the past, limiting surface activities. Exceptions can be made.

This sentence is not clear to me. But it would seem to be a good time to mention that the proposed Colorado Rule has specific restrictions against changing such stipulations after the lease is sold.

Energy companies also can drill horizontally so that wells adjacent to roadless forests could be used to extract gas and oil.

Some groups, such as the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, support that approach to development. Others do not.

“The impact of more energy development is going to result in more fragmentation, more isolation, of that roadless area,” said Peter Hart, staff attorney for the Wilderness Workshop in Carbondale, who noted that the Forest Service already has approved 70 wells in the Mamm Peak area, where lynx, a threatened species, have been found.

“Lynx and other wildlife are using this area as a movement corridor, and connectivity is necessary to ensure that these species can survive,” Hart said.

This is either a question of 1) not trusting the NSOs to stay in place or 2) saying that even if the drilling occurs outside roadless areas, it still impacts roadless areas. I can’t really tell which. The Mamm Peak wells were approved based on existing leases without NSO’s (as far as I know) so, again, not clear that that’s relevant.

It seems like this story is really about “some people don’t like leasing in roadless areas, even if no roads or pads are allowed in the roadless areas. They don’t think there is sufficient regulatory certainty or they think ???”. This would be an interesting story to read, to me. In fact, this is exactly the kind of question that would profit from some respectful blog discussion, IMHO. But maybe that would be too short or too specific (or wonky) to fit a newspaper article or newspaper buyers might not want to read it. What do you think?