Unicorp: Clemens Dome Drilling to Begin by Late July

Unicorp, Inc. said that drilling is expected to begin during the next four to six weeks on its Clemens Dome prospect located in Brazoria County, Texas. The initial well will be drilled to a depth of approximately 11,500 feet to test the Frio formation. The Company has increased its after casing point working interest to 25% from 15%. The company's before casing point interest has increased to 29.412%.

If the shallow zones are productive then the deeper objective will be drilled at a later date to test the Lower Nod, Tex Miss and Vicksburg formations at an approximate total depth of 14,500 feet. Total gross reserve potential for the prospect is up to 30 to 40 Bcf based upon which zones may be productive.

Unicorp, Inc is primarily engaged in the acquisition, development, exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas. Its focus is on aggressively acquiring working interests in crude oil and natural gas properties with the intent of exploration and development or by enhancing production through the use of modern development techniques such as horizontal drilling, satellite technology and 3-D seismic. The company's goal is to achieve a high return on its investment by limiting its up-front acquisition costs, by quickly developing its acquisitions and by practicing a sound and smart approach to oil and gas exploration and development.

Source : www.rigzone.com

Rocksource: Texas Drilling on Schedule

As a continuation of its Drews Landing drilling campaign, Rocksource ASA Group announced the completion of the State of Texas #3 well.

The well was drilled as a production well on the east side of the Drews Landing south fault block. The well reached total depth/TD (11,777 ft) on the 24th of May 2007 without HSE incidents. Subsequent wireline logging indicated the presence of hydrocarbons. The well is now being prepared for completion. Following further testing it will be producing gas to sales as soon as possible after Rocksource has received formal approval from the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC).

After the completion of State #3 the rig was moved to the north where the Morian #6 well was spudded on the 8th of June. This well will be deviated and is designed to optimize production from multiple zones following the successful application for a co-mingling permit from RRC.

Source : www.rigzone.com

Bid to relax offshore drilling ban defeated

A bid to relax the long-standing moratorium on new offshore oil drilling died Thursday in the Senate as an energy bill became bogged down by fights that underscored the regional nature of energy politics.

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) failed in his attempt to open the door to natural gas exploration off the Virginia coast.

Five of Warner's fellow Republicans, all from coastal states, joined 37 Democrats and two independents in opposing the effort.

Opponents warned that the move could have a "domino effect" that could unravel the drilling ban inspired by a devastating 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara.

The drilling fight came as Southern senators held up a vote on a proposal to require utilities to generate 15% of their electricity from cleaner energy sources, such as the sun and wind, by 2020.

The Southern senators said the requirement could increase utility bills in states that are not blessed with bright sunshine or strong wind.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers from vehicle-producing states objected to another provision that would boost mileage standards.

There also were the usual scrapes along party lines.

Republicans stepped up their attacks on the first major energy bill to come before Congress since the Democratic takeover in January, saying that it failed to include any measures to promote domestic production of oil and natural gas.

Saying that the bill's provisions — such as tougher miles-per-gallon rules — would provide no immediate relief from high gasoline prices, Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) said, "I can't go home and say to a fellow I met at the gas pump the other day, that filled up his truck and paid 130 bucks, 'Oh, don't worry about today. In the next 10 or 15 years we'll get to your need.' "

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that the Republican response was "drill, drill, drill — more of the same."

Warner, in seeking to relax the drilling moratorium, noted that officials in his state have expressed interest in natural gas exploration at least 50 miles offshore.

"Our citizens are laboring under higher prices," he said, "and we must look at the full potential of America to help resolve this situation."

Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat, supported his fellow Virginian's effort, saying it was a preliminary step.

"It's no longer responsible to talk about energy independence while saying no to even the most preliminary steps toward exploration and development of our domestic energy sources," he said.

But Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) called drilling off the Virginia coast a threat to the shores of New Jersey and other states.

"This is not about Virginia alone," he said. "This is about the entire federal Outer Continental Shelf."

Source : richard.simon@latimes.com

Precision Drilling Trust Announces Webcast of Annual and Special Meeting of Unitholders

Precision Drilling Trust ("Precision") will hold its Annual and Special Meeting of Unitholders on Wednesday, May 9, 2007. The meeting will be held in the Enmax Ballroom at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, 100 - 6th Avenue S.W., Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and will begin at 3:00 p.m. MT (5:00 p.m. ET).

A live webcast of the Annual and Special Meeting will be accessible on Precision's website at www.precisiondrilling.com by selecting "Investor Relations", then "Webcasts". An archived recording of the webcast will also be available after the conclusion of the live event.

Precision Drilling Trust is Canada's largest energy services trust and the leading provider of energy services to the Canadian oil and gas industry. Precision provides customers with access to an extensive fleet of contract drilling rigs, service rigs, camps, snubbing units, wastewater treatment units and rental equipment backed by a comprehensive mix of technical support services and skilled, experienced personnel.

Precision Drilling Trust is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "PD.UN" and on the New York Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "PDS".

Source : www.sys-con.com

NJ lawmakers write to Bush opposing drilling off Va. coast

WASHINGTON — Twelve members of the New Jersey congressional delegation wrote to President Bush today opposing his administration’s proposal to allow oil and natural gas drilling off the Virginia coast.

They accused the federal Minerals Management Service of "glibly" ignoring New Jersey's concerns about the ecological and economic damage the state could incur if drilling is allowed off Virginia's coast.

Reps. Albio Sires, D-Hoboken, and Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, didn't sign the letter. Calls to their offices to find out why weren't immediately returned.

The five-year plan, announced Monday by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, seeks to expand drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and proposes to sell leases to drill off Virginia in late 2011. Kempthorne said he included Virginia at the state's request.

However oil and gas exploration can't take place until Congress and the White House lift drilling bans for the Atlantic Coast.

Gary Strasburg, spokesman for the Minerals Management Service, said the agency made a "special effort" to listen to New Jersey's concerns at an Atlantic City public hearing in November. He downplayed fears of oil spills and other problems, saying Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused miminal environmental damage along the Gulf coast.

Source : www.app.com

Drilling delayed

The earliest ConocoPhillips Canada can drill its first exploration well off Newfoundland’s south coast is 2009.

The company says the lack of available deepwater rigs and longer than expected evaluation of seismic surveys have pushed back its drilling schedule in the Laurentian Basin.

That natural-gas-prone basin was the subject of a lengthy offshore boundary dispute between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. It was settled by an arbitration panel in April 2002.

“A well in 2009 would be what we’re currently working towards,” said John Hogg, manager of frontier and new venture exploration for ConocoPhillips in Calgary.

“We’re still interpreting the data. By the fall we should have a good feel for … where the best location for the first well would be.”

It is likely to be just one well to start.

“It’s pretty difficult in that environment to be drilling back to back.”

While the Laurentian Basin is ice-free compared with the Grand Banks, it is in the path of hurricanes and winter storms that move along Newfoundland’s south coast.

ConocoPhillips had tentatively planned to drill the first of seven exploration wells sometime between April and June of this year.

That was pushed back to 2008.

Hogg says the company warned about the potential drilling delay at an offshore oil conference in St. John’s last summer.

The provincial Department of Natural Resources is still developing a natural gas royalty regime — and Hogg says that regime is an important factor in drilling any well.

But, he said, that’s not the reason ConocoPhillips has yet to drill a well in the Laurentian Basin.

“We’re still trying to map the structures.”

Hogg also says the company will continue to work with the province as it develops the royalty regime.

“That being said, it is important to us to have the royalty (regime) before we drill the well.”

Without it, he says the company cannot factor in the cost of drilling off Newfoundland and compare it with projects elsewhere in the world.

The Geological Survey of Canada estimates the Laurentian Basin contains 8-9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and about 700 million barrels of oil.

When ConocoPhillips carried out its three-dimensional seismic surveys there in 2005, it encountered some unexpected difficulties.

The biggest was the hard sea floor that caused multiple echoes as the seismic signals bounced back from the seabed.

“That’s just part of learning in a new basin what you need to do,” said Hogg.

Seismic surveys are used to map what lies beneath the ocean floor. Waves of compressed air are shot toward the seabed, and the signal reflected back creates an image of rocks and pools of oil and gas that are found kilometres below the ocean floor.

In the case of the Laurentian surveys, the pulse bounced back multiple times and the images were unclear. What might have taken 10 months to evaluate took 18 months to clean up the images.

“The Laurentian Basin is an absolute frontier basin. There are no wells in the deepwater portion of that basin,” said Hogg. “We are in our infancy in understanding the basin.”

The seismic survey focused on two main exploration licences where the company expects to drill a well — one west and the other east of the French-owned corridor that cuts the basin in half.

The west parcel of seabed lies in 1,100 metres of water, while the east parcel is in almost 2,200 metres of water. To drill there, the company needs one of two kinds of drill rigs that move under their own power.

They are:

‰ A deepwater semi-submersible similar to the Eirik Raude that recently drilled a well in the Orphan Basin off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. It can operate year-round in harsh environments.

‰ A drill ship similar to the Deepwater Pathfinder, which can operate in water depths up to 3,000 metres. In the harsh ocean environment off Newfoundland, Hogg says a drill ship would be limited to working from May to September.

ConocoPhillips is partnered with Murphy Oil Corp. and BHP Billiton Ltd. in the Laurentian Basin. They hold seven of the eight exploration licences in the basin. Imperial Oil Resources has the eighth licence.

Source : www.thetelegram.com

Landowners gear up to fight gas drilling

DENVER -- Having a nuclear blast site in their front yard didn't faze Cary and Ruth Weldon. After all, the bomb was detonated 37 years ago, more than 8,400 feet beneath the site of their log cabin among the pines and aspens in the western Colorado mountains.

They began to worry when natural gas wells were being drilled closer and closer to a buffer zone around the Project Rulison site. Then an energy company applied to drill even closer, fanning fears of radiation escaping from the site -- one of several where the federal government tried putting nuclear devices to peaceful use in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

With Project Rulison, about 190 miles west of Denver, and another near Rio Blanco, also in western Colorado, the government triggered underground blasts to free gas trapped in the area's tight sands. A well at Rulison produced gas, but it was too radioactive to sell.

"They put a bomb in the ground three times the power that was dropped on Hiroshima to fracture the mountain to get gas out," Ruth Weldon said. "What they don't know is what has happened since that time."

Presco Inc., based in Houston, Texas, withdrew a state application in 2005 to drill on the Rulison site after residents objected and local county commissioners withdrew their support.

But Presco, which has wells near the buffer zone, hasn't given up. The area is in the epicenter of the energy boom in western Colorado, where vast gas reserves are an industry magnet.

"We're a very small company and this is our most important project," said Kim Bennetts, Presco's vice president of exploration and production. "At some point, I would expect the application to be resubmitted."

The Weldons, who live part-time in Tennessee, and two other couples who live on or near Rulison aren't waiting for Presco's next move. The Weldons and their neighbors, Pat and Randy Warren and Wesley and Marcia Kent, who own the surface of their land but not the minerals underneath, have hired a lawyer and a consultant, created a Web site, handed out brochures protesting drilling inside a half-mile-wide buffer zone and circulated petitions.

Weldon said her biggest concern is the potential contamination of water -- underground and surface.

"Within rock-throwing distance of the site, there's a little creek that runs into Battlement Creek that runs into the Colorado River," Weldon said.

Bennetts said the U.S. Department of Energy hasn't found anything amiss during its years of monitoring wells and groundwater, and neither has Presco. He noted that DOE has said most of the radioactivity from the 1969 blast was trapped in a glass dome formed when melted and vaporized rock collected in a puddle with a diameter of about 160 feet and cooled.

"There's no chance of radioactivity leaking into the water because there isn't any," said Bennetts, referring to sampling that has been done.

"Is the Presco spokesperson saying that potential environmental contamination is of no concern at nuclear test sites?" asked Robert Moran, a Colorado scientist hired by the Weldons and other landowners to review the data on the Rulison site.

Moran, who has studied water quality and geochemistry in industrial, mining and nuclear sites, noted that some material released by a nuclear blast doesn't decay for thousands of years. An unknown amount of the material from the Rulison explosion likely wasn't trapped in the glassy dome and could have migrated, he added.

The U.S. Department of Energy is trying to determine whether radioactive materials spread underground since the detonation. A study of the Rulison site by an independent contractor for DOE might be released as early as mid-June.

The area's geology is quite complex, Moran said. There are all kinds of fractures -- some natural, some created by the explosion.

Oil and gas companies operating in the region inject water, sand or chemicals underground in a process called hydraulic fracturing to crack open the tight sands.

Rulison was part of the federal government's Plowshare Project, which sought peaceful uses for nuclear devices. The former Atomic Energy Commission detonated a 43-kiloton bomb to free gas in the Williams Fork Formation, 8,426 feet below the surface.

A well drilled by DOE produced gas, but it was considered too radioactive to be sold commercially. The agency began deactivating and cleaning the area in the 1970s.

Long-term management of the blast site was turned over last fall to the DOE's Office of Legacy Management, but it's the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which oversees the state's oil and gas industry, that approves drilling permits.

Tom Pauling, environmental team leader in the Office of Legacy Management in Grand Junction, said federal and state officials have been working closely together.

"We've indicated to them that we think it would be prudent to give us the time to finish our study and evaluate the results," Pauling said.

The DOE prohibits drilling below 6,000 feet within a 40-acre zone around the blast site. The state oil and gas commission has set boundaries that trigger more scrutiny but no outright bans. The commission notifies the DOE when a company wants to drill within a three-mile radius of the site and requires a hearing if a company wants to drill within a half-mile.

Pauling said managers will consider whether the existing restrictions at the site are enough. Critics say they're not and complain that it's unclear which agency is responsible for what.

"The thing that upsets me the most is the DOE dumps the problem on the state and the state is dumping it on the neighbors," said Luke Danielson of Gunnison, a lawyer representing the Weldons and other landowners.

Under the application it withdrew, Presco proposed starting its well inside the half-mile buffer and drilling at an angle so the bottom of the well would have been outside the zone.

Bennetts of Presco said he's not sure any study will mollify landowners if their goal is to just stop development.

Ruth Weldon, though, said she and her husband, who bought 40 acres on the mountain in 1976, don't oppose development. "We're not against drilling, but I don't understand why they have to drill in this one area," she said. "Why drill on top of a nuclear blast site?"

Source : www.casperstartribune.net

Report: Drilling squeezes hunters, habitat

BILLINGS, Mont. -- Loss of wildlife habitat and fewer places for sportsmen to hunt in the West are blamed in a new report on Bush administration energy policies that spurred a boom in oil and gas drilling.

Drilling on federal lands in five Western states doubled over the last decade, to more than 2,000 wells per year, according to the report to be released today by the Environmental Working Group and the National Wildlife Federation.

That so-called "rush to drill" in Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Colorado and New Mexico is squeezing hunters off public land and destroying crucial habitat for species including antelope, mule deer, elk and sage grouse, the report says.

"What we've seen is runaway drilling on many of our public lands that has turned these areas into industrial zones where hunters and wildlife are pushed out," said Dusty Horwitt with the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group.

A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees most drilling in the West, said the boom was a result not of actions by her agency but market forces that have seen demand for oil and gas rise worldwide.

Spokeswoman Celia Boddington said the BLM attempts to balance the nation's energy needs against concerns about development, and conducts lengthy environmental reviews before allowing projects to proceed.

"When we lease land now, it's very, very different from the drilling of wells even a decade ago," Boddington said. "The science is improving, there are best management plans in place, land is reclaimed" after drilling.

The report comes amid growing pressure to rein in drilling on public lands in the West.

The 19-state Western Governors Association recently urged the administration to end automatic waivers of some environmental reviews for oil and gas projects. And over the last two months, Democrats in Congress hosted a series of hearings to highlight the oil and gas industry's negative impacts to the landscape and those who hunt on it.

The environmental groups' report was based on comparisons of state wildlife agency habitat maps with BLM oil and gas lease sales. Their analysis showed the agency has leased 23 million acres of mule deer habitat, 18 million acres of antelope habitat, 17 million acres of sage grouse habitat and 13 million acres of elk habitat.

The report attributes the increase in activity on those leases to an aggressive push by the Bush administration to give drilling priority over other uses such as hunting. It cites a memo issued by a BLM official in Utah, who wrote, "staff need to understand that when an oil or gas lease parcel ... comes in the door, that this work is their No. 1 priority."

Jason Begger with the Petroleum Association of Wyoming said opponents of drilling who pit industry against wildlife ignore the complexities of the issue. He pointed to a recent meeting hosted by his organization that challenged companies -- and also state and federal regulators -- to find ways to drill with fewer impacts.

"It's very narrow-minded to believe oil and gas development is not going to occur," he said.

In tailoring the report around the issue of hunter access, the environmental groups targeted a constituency normally thought of as friendly to the administration.

Emerging research out of Wyoming and Montana shows two frequently hunted species -- sage grouse and mule deer -- on the decline in areas of intensive oil and gas exploration, including the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming and the Pinedale Anticline in Wyoming.

"George Bush has lowered the bar down to the ground, and you can just step over it," said Chris Marchion, president of the Montana Wildlife Federation.

A BLM official in Wyoming, Steven Hall, said in the case of the Pinedale Anticline, any local mule deer decline appears to have been offset by a statewide increase in the animal's population, as tracked over the last decade by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Source : casperstartribune.net

Minefinders 2006 Drilling Results: 'Dolores, Eres Preciosa'

Trey Wasser (III-D Capital) submits: Last week, Minefinder’s (AMEX: MFN - News) released the drilling results from their 2006 program at their advanced stage gold and silver project in Chihuahua State, Mexico. The results were impressive and should translate into a significant upgrade for resources, reserves and production at Dolores. The new resource report is due out any day.

The 2006 drilling program had four goals:

1. To convert inferred resources within the proposed pit to measured and indicated reserves.
2. To test near-pit inferred resources to extend the proposed pit.
3. To test areas outside the existing open pit and extend the mine life.
4. To test mineralization at depth and confirm the potential for underground mining at Dolores.

Drilling results of the inferred resources in and near the pit were very good. This should result in a significant upgrade to measured and indicated as well as a possible extension of the open pit. M&I resources are currently over 5.4MM gold equivalent ounces [GOE] while inferred resources represent additional 1.1MM GOE. Dolores reserves are about 60/40, gold to silver.

A new zone north of the pit that was previously drilled show significant results on three separate structures. Condemnation drilling to the east, west and south all produced results that will require more work. 2007 drilling locations will include all four areas.

Dolores is becoming “Mucho Grande”

While the open pit mine continues to expand, deep drilling at Dolores is what really got my attention. 2006 results almost insure that an underground mine will be constructed at the project. Gold intercepts at 400 to 550 meters occurring below the open pit were impressive not only in grade, but in width. These include widths of 48 to 104 meters averaging 6.1 gpt and 3.81 gpt (Aueq) respectively, with internal intervals grading 22 gpt over 4 meters. Smaller intervals of 2-4 meters were also intersected with grades as high as 1-2 ounces per ton. The Company is moving quickly into a feasibility study which includes a bulk cave and traditional underground mine plan.

But the good news does not stop there. With the underground mine, will come a mill and floatation system. The current mine plan, production and economics are based strictly on a heap leach operation with no mill. Annual production of about 200,000 GOE is based on recoveries rates of only 74% for gold and 51% for silver. The addition of the mill and floatation will enhance recoveries from the open pit on about half of the reserves. Metallurgical testing has shown that this process should yield gold recoveries of greater than 90%, and silver recoveries from 82% to 94%. This will add about 650,000 GOE of production to the current mine plan, a 23% increase. Add to this, the production from the underground mine plus the additional resource areas and Dolores may have just doubled in size.

With these enhanced recovery rates, cash costs could easily drop to under $200/GOE, adding even more leverage to the economics at Dolores.

If a mill and floatation system would have this impact on production, why not build the mill now?

The answer is that the deposit at Dolores is a combination of oxide and sulphide ores. The oxide material is lower grade and the silver recoveries would not be enhanced, at the mill, from the oxide ore. Rather than dilute shareholders with the expense of the mill, the plan is to leach the oxide ore first. Cash flow will be then be used to build the mill and the underground mine.

Yesterday, Coeur D’Alene (NYSE: CDE - News) announced a merger with Palmarejo [PJO:CVE] for $1.1B. Palmarejo has a “fast-tracked” project, near Dolores, that CDE clearly believes is going to be a world class asset. PJO is projecting production of 300,000 GOE starting in late 2008 from an open pit mine with a mill. With production on schedule to begin in Q4 2007, MFN is at least a year ahead in mine construction. The defined resource at Palmarejo is about 3MM GOE and is approximately 2/3rds silver. PJO has no proven reserves and no feasibility study to define cash costs. Dolores already has over 4MM GOE in proven/probable reserves and a bankable feasibility study. CDE is excited about the underground potential at Palmarejo, but very little drilling has been done at depth and grades are nowhere near those at Dolores.

Minefinders' current market cap is about $600MM. The stock remains extremely undervalued based on my matrix and Coeur D’Alene’s.

Source : biz.yahoo.com

Lawmakers for N.J. fight drilling off Va.

WASHINGTON New Jersey lawmakers in both parties are objecting to a Bush administration proposal that would promote offshore drilling for oil and natural gas off the coast of southern Virginia.

"Tourism is an incredibly valuable economic engine for our state, and much of that industry is dependent on clean beaches and oceans," 10 New Jersey congressmen and two U.S. senators from New Jersey wrote in a letter to President Bush on Friday.

The bipartisan group alleged that the U.S. Interior Department's plan for drilling east of Virginia "ignored the proposal's potential impacts on New Jersey's environment."

U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Monday announced his agency's strategy for increasing oil and natural gas production from the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska.

But Kempthorne's plan also would authorize exploration for oil and natural gas in one mid-Atlantic region a 3-million acre region shaped like a wedge and situated 50 miles east of southern Virginia if the president were to approve a lease of the site and if Congress were to nix an existing moratorium on offshore drilling that covers the Atlantic seaboard.

The Interior Department's approach could produce 10 billion barrels of oil and 45 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over 40 years, generating almost $170 billion in tax royalties, Kempthorne said in a statement Monday.

In appropriating funds for Interior Department programs, members of Congress have blocked offshore drilling along the Atlantic coastline every year for the past 25 years.

Additionally, President Clinton signed into law a ban that should prevent oil and gas exploration along the Atlantic seaboard through 2012.

Source : www.nj.com

Residents voice concerns over drilling near Rulison blast site

Western Garfield County residents have voiced their concerns regarding oil and gas drilling in close proximity to the so-called "Rulison Test Site" near Battlement Mesa.

A group of concerned citizens, with the support of the Grand Valley Citizen's Alliance, represented by Gunnison lawyer Luke Danielson, sent a letter to oil and gas companies requesting they "exercise caution" when drilling around the 40-acre site.

According to the press release from Danielson's office, the area in question "involved detonation of an atomic bomb underground in 1969, to see if it could stimulate gas production from so-called 'tight formations'." However, the gas that was freed at the time carried significant radioactivity.

Danielson states in the press release that contamination of local water supplies and of the gas cultivated from the wells is the main concern of area residents and that further studies need to be done in order to ensure the safety and health of local citizens.

Robert E. Moran, Ph.D., of Michael Moran Associates LLC in Golden, is a hydrogeologist and geochemist who researched past studies conducted on the area since the blast and wrote an evaluation of his findings. His research revealed that all of the most recent studies have been done by gas companies and that none have been done by independent groups.

"I just researched the available studies," Moran said. "We are putting together more than 30 years of work and found that all the recent information was coming from the gas industries."

The point of the letter, according to Moran, is for the citizens to start a discussion on the best possible way to proceed for gas development in a safe manner. And that if the Rulison test area is still contaminated, drilling should not be permitted within a safe perimeter.

"We just want some independent studies done," Moran said. "None of us are saying that we know what the actual situation is."

However, it's those unanswered questions that the residents would like answered before more drilling continues near the old site.

Moran concluded in his report that "the magnitude of what could go wrong is considerable and future problems could be practically irreversible."

They are now awaiting responses to the letter from the oil and gas companies.

Source : www.glenwoodindependent.com

Palisade residents invited to watershed drilling meeting

Palisade residents have a final opportunity to suggest how to manage drilling in the watershed above Palisade by Genesis Gas and Oil.

A meeting is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Palisade Community Center in Palisade Park, 120 W. Eighth St., for the public to suggest the best ways to drill on Bureau of Land Management lands in the watershed.

The meeting is not to discuss whether drilling should occur in the watershed.

“They (the BLM) have chosen to lease those properties,” said Tim Sarmo, Palisade’s town administrator. “What we are talking about now is what is the best way to protect those properties if and when drilling occurs.”

At this point, the plan is only a draft. It was prepared by stakeholders, including the town, Grand Junction, Genesis Gas and Oil, the BLM and private property owners.

Public input is invited and encouraged, Sarmo said.

“If we miss something, we would like to hear about it,” Sarmo said. “Now is the chance to get those things incorporated into the plan.”

When complete, the plan “will be the model the BLM will use for handing out permits to drill,” Sarmo said.

The Palisade Board of Trustees is expected to take final action on the plan before fall, Sarmo said.

• Residents of Collbran are invited to attend a meeting from 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday at Collbran Town Hall, 1010 High St., to begin drafting a Plateau Valley water protection plan.

All three Mesa County Commissioners are scheduled to attend, as are representatives from Powderhorn and Mesa water districts. The town of Collbran and the two water districts are joining forces to draft a “source water protection plan,” said Colleen Williams, from the Colorado Rural Water Association.

“We assist small communities with developing source-water protection plans for their drinking-water plans,” she said. “Public water systems provide the drinking water to their communities, and it is a whole lot more expensive to treat water that has been contaminated than to treat water that has not been contaminated.”

Source : www.gjsentinel.com

Drilling plan gets slammed by N.J.

Twelve members of New Jersey's congressional delegation wrote to President Bush on Friday opposing his administration's proposal to allow oil and natural gas drilling off the Virginia coast.

The five-year plan, which Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced Monday, seeks to expand drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and proposes to sell leases to drill off Virginia in late 2011.

In their letter, Garden State lawmakers accused the Minerals Management Service, an arm of the Interior Department, of "glibly" ignoring New Jersey's concerns about ecological and economic damage the state could incur if drilling is allowed off Virginia's coast.

"MMS itself estimates that the amount of technically recoverable oil . . . would last only between 17 to 41 days, and the amount of technically recoverable gas would last only three months. To put our beaches, our fishing, and our tourism economy at risk for such minimal resources is short-sighted and unacceptable," they wrote. "The Minerals Management Service has ignored our serious concerns and the will of Congress."

The letter asks Bush to instruct Kempthorne to remove Virginia from the proposal.

Reps. Albio Sires, D-Hoboken, and Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, and Donald Payne, D-Newark, didn't sign the letter. An aide to Sires said she was trying to find out why. Garrett was traveling and couldn't be reached for comment. An aide to Payne said she neglected to attach the congressman's name to the letter and that he opposes drilling off the Atlantic coast.

The White House didn't return a telephone message seeking comment.

Kempthorne said he included Virginia at the state's request. However oil and gas exploration can't take place until Congress and the White House lift drilling bans for the Atlantic Coast, which have been in place for 25 years.

New Jersey lawmakers have said the closest point in the proposed drilling area is less than 100 miles from the South Jersey shore.

Gary Strasburg, spokesman for the Minerals Management Service, said the agency made a "special effort" to listen to New Jersey's concerns at an Atlantic City public hearing in November.

Before drilling could begin in the mid-Atlantic, the government would conduct environmental studies and take other steps to minimize ecological and economic harm, he said.

Source : www.courierpostonline.com