Utah Oil and Gas Lease Auction Protested, Legal Deal Struck

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, December 19, 2008 (ENS) - Today, in front of the Bureau of Land Management headquarters in Salt Lake City, more than 100 demonstrators braved the wind and cold hoping their protest could save some of Utah's prime wilderness lands from destruction for oil and gas development.

 

Inside, the BLM was auctioning off 131 parcels of land for oil and gas leases, but the protesters were not allowed in.

At the sale, the BLM sold 116 of the 131 offered parcels, totaling 148,598 acres of federal land located in Carbon, Duchesne, Emery, Garfield, Grand, San Juan and Uintah Counties. Leases on the parcels were sold between $10 and $200 dollars an acre for a total of $7.47 million.

Oil rig in Utah (Photo courtesy Utah BLM)

Near the end of the auction, two registered bidders were detained by Bureau of Land Management Special Agents. An investigation is being conducted by the BLM and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Utah into the possibility that federal offenses were committed by these bidders in an apparent effort to impede the bidding process to prevent others from bidding.

Late last night in a legal protest of the lease sales that may save 100,000 acres of the most vulnerable wilderness, an agreement between the BLM and a coalition of environmental and preservation groups was filed in federal court in Washington, DC.

The deal will temporarily prevent the BLM from issuing leases on 80 contested parcels of Utah wilderness, including land adjacent to three national parks, for 30 days, until January 19.

The coalition on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia seeking an injunction to stop the lease auction.

Although BLM went forward with the auction today, the agency has agreed not to issue the contested leases. This will give federal court Judge Ricardo Urbina in Washington, DC time to hear the case.

The environmental and preservation groups filing the case include - Earthjustice, Grand Canyon Trust, National Parks Conservation Association, National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and the Wilderness Society.

In a joint statement today, they said, "Our legal actions have delayed today's transfer of pristine Utah wilderness, but the fight is not over. We will get our day in court with BLM, and we will do all we can to protect Utah's unspoiled landscapes."

"Yet President [George W.] Bush can still do something to save these areas. He can take Utah's unprotected wilderness off the auction block for good. This is not a mess that should be left to the Obama administration," the groups declared.

In their lawsuit, the groups decribe the damage that they are trying to prevent. "Development of these leases will degrade air quality at Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park and Dinosaur National Monument. It will lead to construction of well pads, pipelines and roads in some of Utah's most impressive wilderness quality landscapes such as the Desolation Canyon wilderness character area ... one of the largest roadless areas in the lower forty-eight states."

"These activities will also harm Nine Mile Canyon, an area that BLM describes as 'the longest outdoor art gallery in the world' because of its substantial concentration of prehistoric archeological sites and rock art," the lawsuit states.

These lands were made available to industry in late October and early November through six resource management plans that will affect three million acres of public lands.

The plaintiff groups argue that these plans were hastily approved so the leases could be sold before President-elect Barack Obama takes office on January 20, 2009.

"The Bush administration has rushed to get these leases out the door," said Sharon Buccino, senior attorney for NRDC. "In their midnight maneuvering, BLM failed to complete the analysis required by federal law for the protection of America's natural and cultural treasures."

Polar bears dying out in Russian region: expert

MOSCOW (AFP) – Polar bears are dying out in the remote Arctic region of Chukotka because of melting ice and increased killing by humans, an expert with the International Fund for Animal Welfare warned on Friday.

"If this tendency continues, the population will disappear very quickly, said Nikita Ovsyanikov, a researcher from Wrangel Island natural park in Chukotka who has spent the past 18 years studying polar bears in the region.

"We need to create new protected areas in the Arctic," said Ovsyanikov, who has conducted research on behalf of IFAW.

The shrinking of the Arctic ice sheet is forcing more bears to live on land in the summer where they often have trouble finding food, which means they have to go into villages to scavenge and are more likely to be shot, he said.

Polar bear furs are also becoming increasingly popular in Russia, where the killing of polar bears is strictly forbidden except for self-defence. IFAW estimates around 100 polar bears are killed illegally in Russia every year.

There are a total of around 22,000 polar bears in the Arctic. Five thousand of them live between Chukotka and the US state of Alaska and are being forced further and further north because of the melting ice, IFAW said

 

Northwest power managers struggle with electricity surplus

Posted by Gail Kinsey Hill, The Oregonian June 26, 2008 17:32PM

 

The Northwest is awash in electric power this spring. Rivers are swollen. Columbia River dams are running full bore. Wind farm blades are spinning.

 

That should be good news for the Northwest, where hydropower is cheap and wind a leader in renewable energy. It also should be good news for California, a huge electricity consumer that often sucks up Oregon's springtime surplus.

But a doubling of wind-power supplies and an unusually concentrated surge in water levels have challenged this season's power operations like never before.

"You throw a spiky late runoff into the equation, and a little extra wind, and it definitely gets interesting," said Kieran Connolly, a power manager for Bonneville Power Administration.

The result: wasted power generation, excessive spill through the dams and a sometimes frenzied juggling of dam and transmission schedules.

High water levels benefit power supplies and migrating fish, but the levels in recent weeks have been too much of a good thing.

Oregon and Washington can't use all the electricity that's available. And southbound transmission lines that are at capacity can't take the extra power California consumers otherwise would eagerly devour.

In some cases, power producers are paying customers to take electricity off their hands.

Operators of the Columbia-Snake River dams say there's enough give-and-take in the system to handle large fluctuations in water flow and wind generation. But pressures have steadily increased, and they'll intensify as more and more wind power comes into play.

"I wouldn't say it's totally under control," Connolly said, "but we're keeping up at this point."

The limits snapped into focus a month ago, when warm weather finally arrived and mountain snow melts poured into Northwest rivers.

River levels rise every spring, usually beginning in March or April and lasting until late June. This year, cool weather persisted until a mid-May heat wave.

"Then everything started running," said Rick Pendergrass, BPA's manager of power and operations planning.

Only in the past week did the dousing begin to ease. Overall, the region expects a close-to-normal water year.

BPA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation manage 14 major dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. They face a slew of requirements, from meeting electricity demand to protecting fish to preventing floods.

When water levels jump as quickly as they did this season and are squeezed into a short time, the difficulties close in.

For one thing, reservoir capacity is limited, so system operators can't store all the extra water that flows downriver. They can't allow flooding, either, so they turn to the dams' turbines and spillways to even things out.

For another, they can't generate power any time they want. They must have a market for the megawatts. Because electricity demand in the region ebbs in the spring -- the heat's turned off and so are the air conditioners -- high water can quickly become a resource without an outlet via the turbines.

That leaves the spillways, which divert flows around the dams' turbines. The corps manages spills in the spring to help juvenile salmon migrate downriver. If releases are too powerful, dissolved gas in the water can rise to dangerous levels and give fish a potentially lethal condition akin to the diver's disease called the bends.

Every day since May 16, the corps has spilled water at volumes that exceed state criteria for water quality and salmon protection. That's an unusually long time. Measurements of total dissolved gas have climbed during those spills but haven't gone high enough to harm the fish, corps officials said.

Trade-offs between power generation and spill can produce strange arrangements.

The Grant County Public Utility District, which owns Priest Rapids and Wanapum dams on the upper Columbia in Washington, had too much water to safely spill and too little demand for all the power the hydro turbines could produce. So it created a market by giving out, not taking in, revenue.

"You juggle resources as best you can," said Kevin Nordt, Grant County PUD's director of power management. "If you have electricity but no one needs it, sometimes you have to pay someone to take it."

These deals by a number of Northwest utilities meant prices -- which reflect the cost to the buyer -- sometimes fell into negative territory on the Mid-Columbia trading hub.

Meanwhile, prices in California remained considerably higher, seesawing with the weather and accompanying demand. Northwest utilities might have tapped that market, but high-voltage transmission lines heading south often were full.

Another variable also has blown in to challenge the system: the wind.

Wind-turbine capacity in the Columbia Gorge has doubled in the past year, bringing clean energy onto the grid but more stress to dam operations. The thermal winds that whip through the river corridor crank up in the spring -- the very time Columbia River flows peak.

BPA is responsible for blending wind power into the grid. Each hour, wind farm operators give the agency their best forecasts of the megawatts to come. BPA uses the schedules to anticipate changes in hydro generation, then deals with last-minute variations as they occur.

Hydro is considered a good complement to wind because its generation is relatively easy to manipulate. Still, with so many demands on the system and wind's precise velocity impossible to predict, BPA has found itself scrambling to keep the system in balance.

Several weeks ago, when an unexpected wind surge hit, McManus said he came close to telling wind developers he couldn't take the generation that exceeded the forecast. "So far, we haven't had to do that."

McManus is part of an effort to improve the way wind power joins the system. Dramatic changes must be made within several years, he said. "If normal operations continue, we'll have a hard time meeting (electricity) reliability standards. We're busting our tails. We don't have a lot of time."

-- Gail Kinsey Hill; gailhill@news.oregonian.com