Click a headline to
automatically scroll down to a specific article.
Sale of oil and
gas lease blocked, Santa Barbara News-Press, Sep 7,
2006
BLM voids lease
sale of energy rights, Bakersfield Californian, Sep
7, 2006
Wilderness
plots won't be sold for oil exploration, San Luis Obispo
Tribune, Sep 9, 2006
BLM withdraws
oil leases from Los Padres land, Ojai Valley News,
Sep 13, 2006
SANTA BARBARA NEWS-PRESS
September 7, 2006
Sale of oil and gas leases
blocked
Federal officials respond to
complaints by a nonprofit group and landowners
by Anna Davison, News-Press
Staff Writer
The sale of 10,000 acres of oil
and gas leases near Los Padres National Forest has been canceled
in response to objections from a nonprofit group and some
landowners.
Los Padres ForestWatch had been
trying to stop the sale, which included land in the Cuyama
Valley, for some time, and eight landowners later joined the
group in protesting the sales.
ForestWatch's appeal blocked
the planned lease auctions in November 2005, but the sales went
ahead in June. However, now federal officials have
announced that 11 leases are being revoked in response to the
complaints.
"We took a look at those and
said, 'Yeah, they might have a point here,'" said John Dearing,
spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management, which conducted the
sale.
"They are no longer up for
lease at this time," he said, although "they may be offered at a
future time."
Jeff Kuyper, executive director
of ForestWatch, said "we were primarily concerned that the oil
drilling would cause significant impacts to wildlife, forest
recreation and clean water supplies, and all of these oil leases
were located right along the boundaries of some of our national
treasures."
The leases are rimmed by Los
Padres National Forest, the Carrizo Plain National Monument and
the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge -- established to
protect habitat of endangered California condors.
Both ForestWatch and landowners
had also protested the Bureau of Land Management's notification
of the lease sales.
The areas in question are
what's called "split estate lands." The surface land is
privately owned, but the federal government owns the minerals
under the surface. The Bureau of Land Management is required to
conduct competitive lease sales for those rights.
Leaseholders have the right of
access to the leases, but they need to get other permits to be
able to drill, either for exploration or production. Conditions
are often put on permits in order to protect plants, animals and
the environment.
THE BAKERSFIELD CALIFORNIAN
September 7, 2006
BLM voids lease sale of
energy rights
The Bureau of Land Management
has retroactively withdrawn some 10,000 acres from an oil and
gas lease sale that took place in June.
The agency's Aug. 31 decision
voided the sale of energy rights under 11 parcels in or near
Kern County.
Environmentalists see this as a
victory, but the agency plans to redraft environmental documents
and hold another auction, said Ron Huntsinger, who manages the
BLM field office in Bakersfield.
Huntsinger doesn't know when
that auction might take place, but the agency will likely wait
until it has enough properties in that general area to warrant a
sale, he said.
BLM's environmental documents
"need more than just a little brush up," said Jeff Kuyper,
executive director of Los Padres ForestWatch, one of the groups
that protested the sale.
These lands are all home to
sensitive species and aren't appropriate for energy exploration,
he said.
Huntsinger disagreed. "That's a
bunch of bunk, frankly," he said. "The areas we're leasing are
areas we've used for energy development for quite some time."
In addition to Los Padres
ForestWatch and the Center for Biological Diversity, eight
property owners protested the sale.
Among the companies that
purchased the contested rights is West Coast Land Service of
Bakersfield.
SAN LUIS OBISPO TRIBUNE
September 9, 2006
Wilderness plots won't be
sold for oil exploration
Bureau of Land Management
will delay sale after activists objected
by Stephen Curran
Months after an
environmental coalition challenged its plan to
auction ecologically sensitive land for possible
oil exploration, the federal Bureau of Land
Management announced it will suspend the sale of
10,000 acres that include some of San Luis
Obispo County's most remote areas.
The decision — the
second time in less than a year the agency has
withdrawn the deal — revokes the June 16 sale of
11 parcels near the Carrizo Plain National
Monument, Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge
in Kern County, and Los Padres National Forest.
Activists from
Los Padres ForestWatch and the Center for
Biological Diversity had challenged the sale,
saying the BLM did not adequately study the
effects of oil drilling on sensitive wildlife in
the region. The auction, they said, would have
been the first step to allowing oil development
on the land.
Withdrawing the
land delays any possible sale until that more
thorough analysis is completed. More than 20,000
acres in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Kern,
Ventura and Kings counties were eligible for the
auction.
"It's a
victory," said John Buse, an attorney for the
Center for Biological Diversity. "... For now, I
think it means that we're not going to see oil
development on those sites without some further
work by the BLM."
John Dearing, a
Sacramento-based spokesman for the BLM, did not
return calls for comment Friday afternoon. In
December, he told The Tribune that the agency
was in the midst of a draft management plan,
which is less thorough than a full environmental
impact statement.
That management
plan, said ForestWatch executive director Jeff
Kuyper, came after the BLM aborted an auction
initially scheduled for December after his group
complained the agency failed to properly notify
the public. A second auction was scheduled for
June.
The BLM's
history, he added, does not bode well for future
attempts to sell the land.
"The BLM had
tried twice to make these lands available for
oil drilling, and they've failed twice," Kuyper
said. "It's definitely going to be an uphill
battle for them if they do try to open up these
lands for oil drilling. We're going to be
watching them every step of the way."
Four of the
revoked parcels covering more than 1,800 acres
lie along the boundary to Carrizo Plain National
Monument, most of which is located in the
southeastern corner of San Luis Obispo County.
Environmentalists say the monument contains one
of the highest concentrations of endangered
plants and animals in the state.
OJAI VALLEY NEWS
September 13, 2006
BLM withdraws oil leases
from Los Padres land
Landowners credit
ForestWatch for removal of more than half of acreage
by Nao Braverman
Environmentalists and rural
landowners celebrated a hard-earned victory last week.
The U.S. Bureau of Land
Management withdrew 10,088 acres of land from a recent oil lease
sale.
"Our region's national forests,
monuments, and wildlife refuges are now safe from development,"
said Jeff Kuyper, executive director of Los Padres ForestWatch,
a nonprofit environmental organization that works to protect
public lands from damage caused by oil development.
In June the Bureau auctioned
19,870 acres near the border of Los Padres National Forest,
Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge, and Carrizo Plain
National Monument including pacels in Ventura, Santa Barbara and
San Luis Obispo counties.
With the purchase of a lease,
an oil company has the right to set up oil wells, drill and
install pipelines on a parcel even if there is a surface
landowner, said John Dearing, public affairs representative for
the Bureau of Land Management.
Before the sale, Los Padres
ForestWatch collaborated with eight landowners in the area to
file a formal complaint asking the bureau to withdraw about half
of the properties up for lease.
Charles Fox owns a plot of land
in the foothills above Cuyama. He bought the land so that he
could savor the undeveloped wilderness of his surroundings and
enjoy a peaceful retirement, tucked away from the rest of
civilization.
So several months ago, when he
heard that the mineral rights to his parcel might be leased to
an oil company, he was in a state of shock.
The thought of oil rigs, and
pipelines tearing up the landscape surrounding his home was
enough to make him consider moving away.
"The government never attempted
to contact me when my land went up for lease," he said. "If it
weren't for ForestWatch, I wouldn't have known about it."
Though the bureau was required
to inform all of the surface landowners whose mineral rights
were being auctioned, there was only a bulletin posted on the
bureau's field office and one on the web site. None of the
approximately 48 surface landowners were contacted personally.
If they had known about it, the
landowners would have been able to buy back the mineral rights
from the government or to bid on them during the auction.
However, none were personally informed by the bureau, said
Kuyper.
Eight landowners joined
ForestWatch, made phone calls to the bureau's officials and
signed a formal complaint asking them to remove the 10,088 acres
from the sale because the property owners had not properly been
informed.
The formal complaint also
included concerns about the environmental damage to land which
comes dangerously close to a natural wildlife refuge and is near
the home of various endangered species.
The Bitter Creek National
Wildlife Refuge has been set aside as habitat for the endangered
California condor since 1985, and Carrizo Plain National
Monument contains one of the highest concentrations of
endangered plants and animals in California, according to
Kuyper's research.
"Every piece of land they were
proposing to lease has an endangered species on it," he said,
"including the California condor, San Joaquin kit fox as well as
a number of rare plant species."
Initially the bureau did not
respond. The auction took place in June, all 19,870 acres
included. Some land was auctioned off for a price as low as $2
per acre.
Then last week, after reviewing
the protest, the bureau decided to remove all challenged
properties from the sale, and revoke all the leases. Eleven of
the parcels for sale were revoked. Of those parcels, 2,160 acres
returned were along the boundary of the Bitter Creek National
Wildlife Refuge and more than 1,800 were along the boundary of
the Carrizo Plain National Monument.
This was the second time that
the bureau canceled the lease sale of subsurface rights to these
properties. A lease sale including the same parcels was first
canceled in November of 2005 because th eagency did not properly
notify the public and failed to prepare a proper environmental
assessment.
Fox is pleased with the
bureau's decision but doesn't believe the battle is over.
"It's happened once before,
though I never knew about it. And I don't doubt that it will
raise its ugly head again," he said.
For now, ForestWatch staff are
happy to see their protest was adhered to.
"We're very pleased with their
decision to protect national treasures," said Kuyper.
|
