As President Bush called for increased oil and gas drilling in the Rocky Mountain West and offshore, an environmental group launched a legal battle Wednesday against the Interior Department, saying the agency broke its promise to limit environmental damage from natural gas and oil development on the Pinedale Anticline, one of the country's top reserves.
The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a nonprofit coalition of hunting, fishing and other organizations, filed suit against the Interior Department and the Bureau of Land Management in U.S. District Court in Washington. The suit alleges the BLM, a division of the Interior Department, "failed unequivocally" to comply with its plans to monitor and mitigate the effects of gas and oil drilling on wildlife across the Anticline and violated the National Environmental Policy Act and Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
The Pinedale Anticline, which includes about 198,000 acres of federal, state and private land in western Wyoming, is estimated to hold 21 trillion cubic feet of gas -- enough to heat 12.5 million homes for as many as 20 years.
Oil drilling in Wyoming: A photo caption in Thursday's Section A with an article about a lawsuit over drilling in the Pinedale Anticline reserve identified an animal as a deer. It is a pronghorn antelope.
The project plan formulated eight years ago for the Anticline called for the development of about 700 well pads over a 10- to 15-year period. It included procedures to monitor and evaluate the effects of development. The suit alleges that a working group set up for that task held its first meeting in 2004, and has not met consistently thereafter.
"They haven't been following the processes that they put in place that would address impacts to the natural resources of the area and would comply with their obligations under federal law," said Katie McKalip, a spokeswoman for the conservation group.
Teresa Howes, a spokeswoman for the BLM, said she had not seen the lawsuit and could not directly address it, but added that the agency had been following procedures in the project plan.
