EPA official says coal-bed methane should get okay
Date: 12-Aug-02
Country: USA
In April the Denver office of the Environmental Protection Agency in a draft letter gave an EU-3 rating - the worst grade possible - to an environmental impact statement written by the Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the Interior Department.
The draft was a preliminary one and since then BLM has been working on the environmental impact statement for the Powder River Basin in northeast Wyoming, a major natural gas play.
The new report will be completed by the end of the year.
"We are working with the BLM to try to deal with the issues. We meet with them every week," Robert E. Roberts, regional administrator of EPA's Region 8 in Denver, told Reuters.
"In the end we can do the project and do it right," Roberts said.
CONCERNS ABOUT WATER
Details of the EPA's concerns in April about the draft report were not disclosed other than they were about water that is extracted from the coal-bed methane.
Environmentalists have criticized the drilling, saying they are worried water will be contaminated.
Methane is stored in the seams of the coalbed and held in place by water pressure. Once the water is removed the gas is freed. But a problem can arise because the water, which can contain sodium, could harm humans, cattle or irrigation if it is allowed to run off.
Powder River Basin could contain between 25 trillion and 30 trillion cubic feet of recoverable reserves of the clean-burning fuel.
To date about 12,000 wells have been drilled and the environmental impact statement examines the 12,000 plus another another 39,000 that industry wants to drill for a total of about 51,000 wells.
In western Colorado, residents of Delta County have sued to stop test well drilling for coalbed methane in an area that has a very different geologic formation.
