• Bureau of Land Management officials say they underestimated oil and gas reserves in the region and will consider accommodating more development.

 

By Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile.com

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s effort to remove barriers to energy development within the 3.6 million-acre Rock Springs Resource Management Plan area will include revised estimates of oil and natural gas reserves, according to the agency.

“We previously determined the potential for fluid mineral development to be low, especially for the Red Desert area,” Kris Kirby, Wyoming BLM’s acting state director, told a legislative panel Thursday. “However, new technologies and industry interests have changed over recent years, and the reasonably foreseeable development scenarios will be re-evaluated.”

Those initial “low” estimates, which may change dramatically based on new calculations, will potentially be used to reduce restrictions on oil and natural gas development imposed under “area of critical environmental concern” designations in the Rock Springs RMP updated in December. That plan will likely change after a review spurred by President Donald Trump’s Unleashing American Energy executive order, and Interior orders under his administration.

The U.S. Geological Survey — the BLM’s sister agency under the Interior Department — released a report Wednesday revising estimates of “undiscovered, technically recoverable” oil and natural gas reserves underlying onshore federal lands, boasting “significant increases.”

Factoring in the industry’s advancing technologies, as well as additional surveys and modern modeling, there are 29.4 billion barrels of oil and 391.6 trillion cubic feet of gas underlying onshore federal lands nationwide, according to the USGS. That’s a 274% increase in potentially recoverable oil and a 95% increase in natural gas compared to 1998 estimates.

In southwest Wyoming, and in neighboring parts of Colorado and Utah where the BLM manages much of the oil and natural gas estate, the USGS released new estimates of 703 million barrels of oil and 5.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Though the Geological Survey didn’t provide context regarding the percentage increase for technically recoverable reserves in the region, Wyoming BLM officials acknowledged that the current Rock Springs management plan was based on “outdated” estimates.

“We’re going to be looking through those reasonable, foreseeable development scenarios,” BLM Wyoming Senior Advisor Brad Purdy told the Select Federal Natural Resource Management Committee. “We’ll be working with USGS, we’ll be working with the state of Wyoming and we’ll bring that into that evaluation.”

 

Rock Springs RMP

Meantime, the BLM is proceeding under the December version of the management plan for the Rock Springs region.

Though the agency is under orders from the Trump White House and Interior to review the plan and remove aspects that may inhibit energy development, the current plan still allows for robust oil and gas development that keeps pace with the industry’s demand, Kirby said. The BLM’s Rock Spring office has approved 27 permits to drill since January and is on track to approve twice that number this year, which is more than each of the last couple of years, she said.

“So we wanted to make clear that we have continued to permit and to do mineral development within the Rock Springs area and that [the Rock Springs RMP] has not prohibited us from doing that,” Kirby told the committee.

Before the plan was finalized last year, the BLM proposed excluding nearly two-thirds of the Rock Springs management area from potential mineral development by increasing areas of rights-of-way restrictions for things like maintained roads, power lines and pipelines — essential components to drill and ship oil and natural gas. But the agency slashed those restrictions by more than half.

Now, Wyoming lawmakers are eager to see the fruits of the Trump administration’s efforts to open the doors to further mineral development. Still, some on the legislative committee said they worry about what happens when a new leader eventually takes the White House.

“Administrations change all the time,” Casper Republican Sen. Bob Ide said. “Will [the BLM’s changes] get rescinded by the next administration?”

“That’s a great question,” Kirby said. “Our goal is to come up with a durable decision that will kind of survive, you know, different administrations.”

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.