Editorial: Protections still needed

Monday, Dec. 4, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

The Interior Department has released a new report in which the Bush administration says about half of the oil and more than 25 percent of the natural gas found under federal land is off-limits to drilling because of environmental restrictions.

According to a recent story by the Associated Press, the report says that only 3 percent of oil deposits and 13 percent of natural gas contained beneath 99 million acres of federal land may be accessed under Bureau of Land Management's standard leases, which require only basic protections for cultural and environmental resources. Companies can drill for another 46 percent of the oil and 60 percent of gas deposits only after abiding by more stringent restrictions, designed to prevent erosion, protect antelopes' winter forage and bald eagles' nesting areas.

Energy industry officials lobbied Congress for creation of this new report, which drastically revises the findings of a 2003 Interior Department inventory of the same oil and natural gas deposits. That 2003 report, the AP says, covered 59 million acres in the Rocky Mountains, where it said more than 80 percent of the energy deposits were accessible, even though they were subject to restrictions.

Under the revisions, the BLM included much more federal land than was studied in the 2003 inventory and also redefined as significantly restricted those areas where drilling prohibitions are seasonal - such as areas where restrictions ensure that wild animals have enough to eat during the hard winter months.

Energy industry officials hoped the new report would help show that protecting animal habitat, preventing erosion and ensuring that water supplies remain clean are just so much unnecessary red tape. The restrictions haven't changed. But this new report makes it sound as though the environmental rules severely restrict access to drilling. So industry officials could use the report to wrongly gain support for easing environmental restrictions and possibly gain access to areas presently off-limits - such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

It is not surprising that such measures were quietly passed by a Republican-led Congress and written by the Bush administration's Interior Department. But Congress is now run by Democrats, who typically support strict environmental protections. We hope they can clarify how to responsibly apply this new inventory and make sure that our fragile cultural and environmental resources are preserved.